231: The Pogues // If I Should Fall from Grace with God

If I Should Fall from Grace with God The Pogues 1988, Stiff

Take my hand, and dry your tears babe Take my hand, forget your fears babe There’s no pain, there’s no more sorrow They’re all gone, gone in the years babe

Ah Shane, another man surely claimed by the number one cause of death in Ireland: Irishness. Sometimes it felt like you had to take your finger and fish around in his horrible mouth for all the poetry you’d been told was in there, but if you kept at it you’d always pull out some slurred gem eventually. Like a lot of men of my genre, to me the Pogues personified down-but-not-out romance, the sort of music for cavorting and resisting but also for sliding your heavy boots along some dusted wood floor, with your hands around a woman’s waist and your exhausted nose in her good-smelling hair. They made masculine music, certainly, but in that manner that admits tears and tenderness among men, the way enough beer can blur the stiff boundary between straight dudes and whiskey can burn right through it by the end of a night. And they made smart music too, cognizant of history, ever on the side of the common person, but with a maniac zest for bloody myths and black-humoured political sloganeering.

MacGowan loved doomed poets like Federico Garcia Lorca and Brendan Behan, and it seemed that in his understanding there was no separating the doom from the poetry. Certainly he was avid in his commitment to both. In his lyrics and in his stage presence, he presented the figure of a tattered, drunken tramp, whose low state gives him vision, reckless freedom, and the right to broad sentimentality. It’s a pose that’s existed about as long as literature itself has, and there’s plenty of Irish and English folk songs that lean into the trope—what MacGowan, via his punk roots, brings to the table is that he sounds like that character when he sings. It’s moving when a ruinous drunk opens their gob and a high pure “Danny Boy” voice emerges. But with MacGowan, you feel like you’re right there in the bar or the prison cell or the ghostly pirate ship where the action is happening.

Of course, the Pogues were always more than just Shane, and it’s not unlikely he’d be a very obscure figure today if he hadn’t joined forces with such a formidable crew of instrumentalists. Though I’m partial to the MacGowan-dominated Rum Sodomy & the Lash, their most successful record, If I Should Fall from Grace with God, is the moment the band and their brilliant frontman achieved equilibrium. Many of the album’s finest songs are co-writes between MacGowan and banjo player Jem Finer, while new additions (and actual Irishmen) Terry Woods and Philip Chevron (himself passed away in 2013) each contribute moving originals. The band is every bit as put-together as Shane is not, but the record finds them as always shifting gracefully between hellraising punk, rare old dewy folk, and honest-to-God Christmas music without once seeming out of their element. On the better than respectable (though less than classic) albums that followed, they would effectively take up the slack left by their decreasingly functional singer. Even when Shane was often little more than a reeking stage prop, they remained a force in concert.

I own the first three Pogues records (and the Poguetry in Motion EP), and prior to today I hadn’t decided which I would write about. But when I heard the news, I knew immediately it would be Grace’s “The Broad Majestic Shannon” that would be the song to make me weep; and that decided it. Lesser known than the similarly swinging “Fairytale of New York,” but no less special to my heart, it tells in plain speech of the pain and relief in time’s passing. As MacGowan told it, “Shannon” is “a song about an Irishman returning to his hometown in County Tipperary after many years of living in London, and finding that everything about the place he grew up in has changed or disappeared.” He remembers a last drink with friends and a lover, a pensive moment sat at a crossroads where he took the place in a final time before pushing off. Sometime later, he returns to a wall where that crossroads once stood and stands by it a while, pushing around some old rubbish with his foot before shaking his head wryly at himself for being so sentimental about it. Threading those two moments in time there’s the chorus I quoted at the top of this piece, this rich, tender, accepting thing. On the first pass through, it could be the speaker comforting his loved ones on the eve of his departure; on the second, it seems the memory of his own words gently chides and comforts him. “The Broad Majestic Shannon” makes the iron, inescapable fact that all people and things must pass away sound like a blessing, and that coming to accept this fact is the requirement that makes truly living possible. Poets tend to be denied the benefits of their own insights, but they say even in his ruin Shane was content with his lot. He loved and was loved. And now he’s gone where there are no tears or cops or dentists, and we have our time together before we go too.

231/365

Tracklist:

If I Should Fall from Grace with God • Turkish Song of the Damned • Bottle of Smoke • Fairytale of New York • Metropolis • Thousands Are Sailing • Fiesta • Medley: The Recruiting Sergeant / The Rocky Road to Dublin / Galway Races • Streets of Sorrow / Birmingham Six • Lullaby of London • Sit Down by the Fire • The Broad Majestic Shannon • Worms

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RIP Shane MacGowan

“A Pair of Brown Eyes,” “The Boys from the County Hell,” “The Broad Majestic Shannon,” “Dark Streets of London,” “Lorca’s Novena,” “The Old Main Drag,” “Sea Shanty,” “White City,” “Birmingham Six,” “The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn,” “Bottle of Smoke,” “Haunted,” “The Ghost of a Smile.” His voice on “Kitty,” “Dirty Old Town,” “Navigator,” “The Auld Triangle,” “The Irish Rover,” “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda,” “Honky Tonk Women,” “Misty Morning, Albert Bridge.” So many other songs he gave us, and who knew there could be such joy in such profound pain. Night, Shane.

Jonathan Shaw

The Broad Majestic Shannon · The Pogues

The last time I saw you was down at the Greeks

There was whiskey on Sunday and tears on our cheeks

You sang me a song as pure as the breeze

Blowing up the road to Glenaveigh

I sat for a while at the cross at Finnoe

Where young lovers would meet when the flowers were in bloom

Heard the men coming home from the fair at Shinrone

Their hearts in Tipperary wherever they go

Take my hand, and dry your tears babe

Take my hand, forget your fears babe

There's no pain, there's no more sorrow

They're all gone, gone in the years babe

I sat for a while by the gap in the wall

Found a rusty tin can and an old hurley ball

Heard the cards being dealt, and the rosary called

And a fiddle playing Sean Dun na nGall

And the next time I see you we'll be down at the Greeks

There'll be whiskey on Sunday and tears on our cheeks

For it's stupid to laugh and it's useless to bawl

About a rusty tin can and an old hurley ball

So I walked as day was dawning

Where small birds sang and leaves were falling

Where we once watched the row boats landing

By the broad majestic Shannon.

This is my favourite Pogues Song. It's so beautiful. Such a poem. Such a poet. Unique, iconic. Rest in peace Shane McGowan.

Photography Andrew Catlin - from Shane McGowan.com (via pinterest)

www.teallach.com

Take my hand and dry your tears, babe

Take my hand, forget your fears, babe

There's no pain, there's no more sorrow

They're all gone, gone in the years, babe

So I walked as the day was dawning

Where small birds sang and leaves were falling

Where we once watched the row boats landing

By the broad majestic Shannon

Thank you Shane MacGowan

The Pogues // The Broad Majestic Shannon

Take my hand and dry your tears, babe

Take my hand, forget your fears, babe

There's no pain, there's no more sorrow

They've all gone, gone in the years, babe

@i-run-a-trash-blog Tagged me in a Name your Top 5 Albums and Top 5 Tracks for each one thingy, so I’ll be happy to oblige! For something to be a great album, in my eyes, it must be greater than the sum of its parts. 

Whether or not the songs are good is kinda besides the point.

1. Pink Floyd’s The Wall (Not huge on “Another Brick in the Whatever” but I’ve listened to this album all the way through more than any other. The guitar bit at the end of One of My Turns is about as Music-With-Rocks-In-It as you get).

One of My Turns

The Trial

Nobody Home

Mother

Waiting for the Worms

2. On the Third Day by the Electric Light Orchestra (I feel like this album marked a crossroads for Jeff; how hard was he gonna go? Not only can you hear all the wonderful albums that’ve yet to be made, but you can also hear what they’ve left behind).

New World Rising / Ocean Breakup Reprise

Ma-Ma-Ma Belle

Dreaming of 4000

Oh No Not Susan

Showdown

3. Hunky Dory by David Bowie (None of the songs here are as good as the ones on Iggy Stardust, but... this one’s special. The songs don’t have to be good to make a great album).

Kooks

Queen Bitch

Fill Your Heart

Oh! You Pretty Things

The Bewlay Brothers

4. Preludes, Airs And Yodels by the Penguin Cafe Orchestra (Their entire discography is superb... but this is probably my Desert Island Album. No-one else I know likes this band and therefore it’s my favorite).

Giles Farnaby’s Dream

Music for a Found Harmonium

Steady State

Dirt

Penguin Cafe Single

It’s not on this album, but Organum is my favorite full stop.

5. If I Should Fall From Grace with God by the Pogues (Most of their albums are hit-or-miss, but this one is... all hits? It’s an anomaly and it’ll set you up for disappointment should you explore this genre more. Only Album I have on cassette s’matter of fact).

If I Should Fall From Grace With God

Medley: The Recruiting Sergeant / christ this title is long

Lullaby of London

The Broad Majestic Shannon

Turkish Song of the Damned

Honorable Mentions: Ma by Devendra Banhart, Talkie Walkie by Air, DEVO’s Greatest Hits, Running With Scissors by Strange Alfred, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco, Pop Food by Jack Stauber, Mouth Moods by Neil Sissyreba, All Things Must Pass by George Harrison, Every KPM 1000 Record, De Blob 2 Soundtrack, JOY! by the Ventures, More Songs About Buildings and Food by the Talking Heads, Caravan Palace by Caravan Palace, Mother 4 Sountraaaaaack!! (sic.), KONIEC by Yip Deceiver, An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer, and that one soppy Gorillaz album with only like 30 seconds of rapping.

Now I’m going to tag @overnightshipping @savefrog @sly161 @auttoton @weaponizeddadjokes except I forget who that last person is...

Daily Listening, Day #309 - November 4th, 2020

Album: If I Should Fall From Grace With God (Island, 1988)

Artist: The Pogues

Genre: Celtic Punk, Celtic Rock

Track Listing: 

“If I Should Fall From Grace With God”

“Turkish Song Of The Damned”

“Bottle Of Smoke”

“Fairytale Of New York”

“Metropolis”

“Thousands Are Sailing”

“South Australia”

“Fiesta”

“Medley”

“Streets Of Sorrow/Birmingham Six”

“Lullaby Of London”

“The Battle March Medley”

“Sit Down By The Fire”

“The Broad Majestic Shannon”

“Worms”

Favorite Song: “Lullaby Of London”

Watch "The Pogues - The Broad Majestic Shannon" on YouTube

#SongoftheDay

The Broad Majestic Shannon · The Pogues

No Funeral At All -- Carla Kihlstedt, Matthias Bossi, Shahzad Ismaily Haven -- Joan Shelley March of the One-Legged Dog -- Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh Irene -- Rodrigo Amarante 3036 -- Rachele Eve Alaskans -- Volcano Choir Delia -- Elizabeth Cotten Winter's Night -- Doc Watson Wooh Dang -- Daniel Norgren Brennan's Reel -- Martin Hayes Quartet The Frost is All Over -- The Chieftains Sailor's Bonnett -- Arlo Guthrie Biddy From Sligo / Punch for the Ladies -- Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh Yellow Tinker / Ríl Mhór Bhaile An Chalaidh -- Cormac Begley The Broad Majestic Shannon -- The Pogues Sugar Baby -- Sam Amidon The Day That's Just Begun -- Daniel Norgren Give Me Cornbread When I'm Hungry -- John Fahey

Tassies of Cnoc an Iuir

Tassies of Cnoc an Iuir

  Gloom hawks congregate squawking health iniquities preaching avoidance stretching rough luck fortifying condolence munching prescription vittles condemning bad violence falsifying falsified circumstantial evidence, smiling as the chill—

chronic condition grows worse suitably abject, scathing:

Acting out the old soldier routine again then are we watching souls swim by in mute glassy repartee?

Onl…

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This version is so calming and I don’t know why.

Lyrics with some cool info about the song below them: x

Lyrics also below the cut but you have to follow the hyperlink for the extra info.

The last time I saw you it was down at The Greek There was whiskey on Sunday and tears on our cheeks You sang me a song as pure as the breeze On the road leading up Glenveagh

I sat for a while at the cross at Finnoe Where young lovers would meet when the flowers were in bloom Heard the men coming home from the fair in Shinrone Their hearts in Tipperary wherever they roam

Take my hand, and dry your tears Shane Take my hand, forget your fears Shane There's no pain, there's no more sorrow They're all gone, gone in the years Shane

I sat for a while by a gap in the wall On a rusty tin can and an old hurling ball Heard the cards being dealt, and the rosary called And a fiddle playing Sean Dun Na Ngall

And the next time I see you we'll be down at the Greeks There'll be whiskey on Sunday, tears on our cheeks But its stupid to laugh and it's useless to bawl About a rusty tin can and an old hurling ball

Take my hand, and dry your tears Shane Take my hand, forget your fears Shane There's no pain, there's no more sorrow They're all gone, gone in the years Shane

[Instrumental]

So I walked as day was dawning Where small birds sang and the leaves were falling Where we once watched the row boats landing By the broad majestic Shannon

Where we once watched the row boats landing By the broad majestic Shannon