{"id":15740,"date":"2023-12-01T15:52:11","date_gmt":"2023-12-01T15:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=15740"},"modified":"2023-12-01T15:52:11","modified_gmt":"2023-12-01T15:52:11","slug":"classic-paddies-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2023\/12\/01\/classic-paddies-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Classic Paddies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\"><em>The music was the code. It was the transliteration of the style. It was not giving a bollocks in a thoroughly musical manner. It was fuck this and fuck that and frankly fuck you. A rockety life came with the territory. You didn\u2019t have to be Irish. Their England had been influenced by that Ireland of the 50\u2019s. Behan, Kavanagh, O\u2019Brien. Roaring Boys all. Drunken, rackety, genius bores. And Shane could be as drunk and boring and rackety or he could write as beautifully as any of them.<br \/>\n<\/em><\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pogues.com\/Print\/geldof_essay_2005.html\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Bob Geldof, Waiting for Herb, 2004.<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/CAKZ9eyuhiY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Night Crossing<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As the ferry lurched out of Dublin port we reminisced on crossings of yore. In response to regretful talk about the withdrawal of the service out of Dun Laoghaire \u2013 which at least had a rail connection \u2013 Shane MacGowan recalled, with typical belligerence, \u201cDun Laoghaire was there before a fucking DART line,\u201d before hissing reassuring laughter.<\/p>\n<p>He then spoke wistfully of his grandfather telling him about how \u2018lower order\u2019 passengers would have to share decks with the livestock on board. It seemed a very different world to a Stena Lounge bereft of passengers on this night crossing, but at least the wine was complimentary, and Tina didn\u2019t mind a few<span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"> <a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.urbandictionary.com\/define.php?term=Messer\">messers<\/a><\/span> on board.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, the aesthetic, or anti-aesthetic, of the Pogues was a throwback to a bygone Ireland \u2013 and Irish \u2013 often scorned by \u2018respectable\u2019 people. In particular, those compelled by economic circumstances to take up jobs \u2018across the water\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>Shane MacGowan was born in Tunbridge Wells in Kent in 1957 to Irish immigrant parents, but spent his early youth living with maternal aunts and uncles in Puckane, Co. Tipperary. Formative teenage years were spent in 1970s London.<\/p>\n<p>For the emerging poet, rural Ireland \u2013 for all its faults \u2013 seemed a fairy realm, enlivened by song and alcoholic excess, compared to the industrial decay and entrenched class system of England at that time. Having dabbled in punk with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishmusicdaily.com\/shane-macgowan\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">The Nipple Erectors<\/span><\/a> he returned to his musical roots, forming the Pogues (from the Irish phrase <em>p\u00f3g mo th\u00f3in<\/em>, meaning \u2018kiss my arse\u2019) in 1982.<\/p>\n<p>He previously described the \u2018Irish look\u2019 the band self-consciously adopted:<\/p>\n<p><em>The suits, black suits with white shirts which we wore, were Brendan Behan uniform and that\u2019s why we chose them, not to look smart, but to look as if we could have come from any decade \u2026 We could have looked like people from the fifties, sixties, or seventies \u2026 we just looked like classic Paddies.<a href=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/society-culture\/classic-paddies\/#_edn1\" name=\"_ednref1\"><strong>[i]<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Pogues - Galway Races\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UP3PCZR9-gA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Extended Fairground<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As the night wore on, in particularly good cheer, Shane began humming a medley, beginning with the \u2018Rocky Road to Dublin\u2019, \u201c<em>When off Holyhead wished meself was dead<\/em> \/ <em>Or better far instead\u201d, <\/em>culminating in a vision of Irish inclusivity \u2013 at least before the men in the mohair suits moved in \u2013 at the \u2018Galway Races\u2019:<\/p>\n<p><em>There were half a million people there<br \/>\nOf all denominations<br \/>\nThe Catholic, the Protestant, the Jew,<br \/>\nThe Presbyterian<br \/>\nYet not animosity<br \/>\nNo matter what the persuasion<br \/>\nBut failte hospitality<br \/>\nInducing fresh acquaintance<br \/>\nWith me wack fol do fol<br \/>\nThe diddle idle day<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This evocation of carnival wherein social hierarchies disappear in joyful Bacchanalia helps understand what Shane MacGowan engendered with the Pogues during the 1980s: a two-fingered reaction to Thatcherism that helped define our Irish identity.<\/p>\n<p>As the cultural critic Joe Cleary put it in <em>Outrageous Fortune: Capital and Culture in Modern Ireland<\/em> (Field Day, 2007) in the music of the Pogues: \u2018The [Irish] nation is imagined as a kind of extended fairground.\u2019<a href=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/society-culture\/classic-paddies\/#_edn2\" name=\"_ednref2\">[ii]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>He adds, however, that with the Pogues: \u2018this version of carnival is never allowed to become cosily celebratory because it is always shot through with sentiments of anger and aggression, sometimes strident, sometimes more muted.\u2019<a href=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/society-culture\/classic-paddies\/#_edn3\" name=\"_ednref3\">[iii]<\/a><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Pogues - Streets of Sorrow \/ Birmingham Six\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_iYqWtIm0zI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Hooliganism<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The word <a href=\"https:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/word\/hooligan\">hooligan<\/a> derives from the surname of a fictional rowdy Irish family in a music-hall song from the 1890s. Later, applied to the antics of English football fans, steeped in post-imperial hubris, it took on angry connotations.<\/p>\n<p>But the Pogues were all about the hoolie \u2013 a big noisy party \u2013 and unashamedly \u201cUp the RA\u201d, when it was still risqu\u00e9 to be so. Their song \u2018Streets of Sorrow \/ Birmingham Six \u2018refers to the plight of the Birmingham Six and Guilford Four and was censored by the BBC.<\/p>\n<p>Their old school, rumbunctious hooliganism, fused elements of punk and traditional Irish music with the incantations that arouse from Shane MacGowan\u2019s errant soul.<\/p>\n<p>As Cleary puts it the Pogues, \u2018merged the \u2018modernist\u2019- and \u2018avant-garde\u2019-coded aesthetics of punk with the \u2018romantically\u2019-coded idioms of the Irish musical forms.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>He argues:<\/p>\n<p><em>For the Pogues to yoke together \u2026 the avant-garde future-orientated metropolitan aesthetics of punk, with the retro aesthetics of c\u00e9il\u00ed and the broadly political edginess of the pub-ballad scene was an inspired act not only of musical synthesis but of semantic sabotage as well.<a href=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/society-culture\/classic-paddies\/#_edn4\" name=\"_ednref4\"><strong>[iv]<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Alongside self-destructive excess there was something serious going on, \u2018saving folk from the folkies\u2019 as Elvis Costello put it<a href=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/society-culture\/classic-paddies\/#_edn5\" name=\"_ednref5\">[v]<\/a>, while asserting a brash, yet accommodating Irish identity \u2013 after all, many of the band were not even Irish \u2013 notwithstanding an unashamed approval of violent Republicanism, based on a long historical memory of famine, torture and resistance.<\/p>\n<p>The success of the Pogues and Shane MacGowan \u2013 who transcended traditional Irish music to become a rockstar celebrity \u2013 may go some way to explaining an enduring, relative openness among Irish people to new cultural encounters \u2013 even multiculturalism \u2013 at least by comparison with erstwhile colonisers.<\/p>\n<p>Like it or not, any witness to an average Saturday night in Dublin can testify to the presence of a carnival of sexual deviancy, donnybrooks and nonsensical pranks. This has become a generally inclusive ritual for Irish self-expression.<\/p>\n<p>In <em>The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity <\/em>(London, 2021), David Graeber and David Wengrow suggest \u2018[t]he really powerful ritual moments are those of collective chaos, effervescence, liminality or creative play, out of which new social forms can come into the world.\u2019<a href=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/society-culture\/classic-paddies\/#_edn6\" name=\"_ednref6\">[vi]<\/a> That just about sums up the Pogues\u2019 contribution to Irish culture.<\/p>\n<p>After the Pogues, along with their precursors and followers, we would wear a distinctively wild Irishness as a badge of honour, invite everyone to the party, then regale each other with far-fetched stories of nights that should have ended sooner, at least before the cops turned up, when the fun really started.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Shane MacGowan and the Popes - The Snake With Eyes of Garnet\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/IDJrt7unKUI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>The Big Red Fun Bus<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>With the Irish Sea bathed in pale moonlight on a blissfully calm night, conversation turned to Westerns. With a glint in his eye Shane reeled off his favourites \u2013 \u2018The Life and Times of Judge Roy Beans\u2019 (1972), \u2018The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance\u2019 (1962), \u201cwith Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne competing for the same girl\u201d, and \u2018The Searchers\u2019 (1956).<\/p>\n<p>But fittingly for a bard whose songs are steeped in tales of underdogs \u2013 like the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=OSTk-lXf6xA\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">navigators<\/span><\/a> who \u2018<em>died in their hundreds with no sign to mark where<\/em> \/ <em>Save the brass in the pocket of the entrepreneur<\/em>\u2019 \u2013 his favourite was the more recent \u2018Geronimo: An American Legend\u2019 (1993), in which, unusually, a Native American victim is the hero.<\/p>\n<p>By now the rest of our posse seemed to be asleep \u2013 it must have been passed 4am \u2013 but Shane\u2019s mind was racing in this liminal phase. The high life of London beckoned and the rockstar in him was growing giddy.<\/p>\n<p>We had another Brendan to thank for the drive to London. He and Shane\u2019s full-time carer Elizabeth provide vital assistance and crucially, a sense of humour, in support of Victoria, Shane\u2019s loving wife.<\/p>\n<p>Once installed in the hotel room there was a chance for more songs, including a few Percy French ditties. Then an overlooked classic from his underrated period with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thepopesofficialsite.com\/\">Popes<\/a>: a homage to the nineteenth century poet James Clarence Mangan: \u2018The Snake with Eyes of Garnett.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>It begins fittingly:<\/p>\n<p><em>Last night as I lay dreaming<br \/>\nMy way across the sea<br \/>\nJames Mangan brought me comfort<br \/>\nWith laudnum and poitin<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The vision moves to the scene of a public execution being held on Stephen\u2019s Green in 1819, before another crossing<\/p>\n<p><em>If you miss me on the harbour<br \/>\nFor the boat, it leaves at three<br \/>\nTake this snake with eyes of garnet<br \/>\nMy mother gave to me!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The snake is a symbol of renewal, and for Shane perhaps the republican ideal. It also reveals his engagement with the literary canon. After all, he did once earn a scholarship to the exclusive Westminster public school.<\/p>\n<p>He chimed in:<\/p>\n<p><em>This snake cannot be captured<br \/>\nThis snake cannot be tied<br \/>\nThis snake cannot be tortured, or<br \/>\nHung or crucified<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>It came down through the ages<br \/>\nIt belongs to you and me<br \/>\nSo pass it on and pass it on<br \/>\n\u2018Till all mankind is free<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Contrary to the association of the snake with deceit and temptation \u2013 a phallic devil \u2013 according to Chevalier and Gheerbant\u2019s <em>Dictionary of Symbols<\/em>, the serpent is \u2018a continuation of the infinite materialization which is none other than primordial formlessness, the storehouse of latency which underlies the manifest world.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>It is an archetype representing \u2018an \u201cOld God\u201d, the first god to be found at the start of all cosmogenesis, before religions of the spirit dethroned him.\u2019<a href=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/society-culture\/classic-paddies\/#_edn7\" name=\"_ednref7\">[vii]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>This becomes the moving spirit of another vagabond poet, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/culture\/books\/james-clarence-mangan-the-rebel-poet-1.3536399\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">James Clarence Mangan<\/span><\/a> who as a Young Irelander renews the spirt of the nation, suffers and dies, apparently of malnutrition at the height of a cholera epidemic, but re-appears in spectral form.<\/p>\n<p><em>He swung, his face went purple<br \/>\nA roar came from the crowd<br \/>\nBut Mangan laughed and pushed me<br \/>\nAnd we got back on the cloud<br \/>\nHe dropped me off in London<br \/>\nBack in this dying land<br \/>\nBut my eyes were filled with wonder<br \/>\nAt the ring still in my hand<\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Pogues - A Rainy Night In Soho\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/PSyL-TrD_2g?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>\u2018this dying land\u2019<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Arriving in central London I am struck by the imperial grandeur. The scale and ambition of the architecture makes Dublin seem like a provincial town, but there\u2019s a cold reserve that used to send a shiver down my spine when I lived here.<\/p>\n<p>So many buildings appear uninhabited; unimaginably grand hotels seem more like fortresses with concierge-sentries posted outside to keep the <em>hoi poloi<\/em> at bay; uttering \u201ccan I help you sir,\u201d with a snarl. We\u2019d have to make our own fun.<\/p>\n<p>The launch of Shane MacGowans\u2019s art exhibition \u2018<span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/store.shanemacgowan.com\/products\/book-opt2\">The Eternal Buzz and the Crock of Gold<\/a><\/span>\u2019 took place at the boutique Andipa gallery in Knightsbridge, a stone\u2019s throw from Harrods, where his art resides alongside that of Banksy\u2019s.<\/p>\n<p>Walking in I pass Bob Geldof, an unlikely presence, given his aversion to Irish nationalism, but he has credited Shane and the Pogues with awakening an interest in traditional Irish musical forms that he had previously disparaged.<\/p>\n<p>In the relatively narrow confines of the gallery, with the king sitting contentedly on his throne, a carnival atmosphere asserts itself. He had escaped from all this, but that night he was enjoying a return to the crazy celebrity madness, which in England is built on a bedrock of aristocracy.<\/p>\n<p>The champagne flowed, as minor celebrities converged \u2013 \u201che\u2019s Liam Gallagher\u2019s brother you know\u201d \u2013 when the ocean parted before the eternal beauty of Kate Moss. A face to launch a thousand camera phones, and sell a few paintings.<\/p>\n<p>Then on to Soho, where the weather at least remained dry. The police were even called. It took seven of them to take old Tom down, or so they say: never let the truth get in the way of a good yearn\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Critics<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Acording to Joe Cleary:<\/p>\n<p><em>Ever since the Great Famine and the Devotional Revolution, and especially when they came to power after the establishment of the Free State, the traditionalists had been concerned to make Irish culture more refined and respectable by filtering out, as \u2018inauthentic\u2019 or \u2018degraded\u2019, all its more licentious and anarchic or uncouth elements \u2013 those very elements that were to make such a whoopingly triumphant return of the repressed in the Pogues\u2019 music.<a href=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/society-culture\/classic-paddies\/#_edn8\" name=\"_ednref8\"><strong>[viii]<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>In many respects, the unapologetic Shane MacGowan remains an embarrassment to the Official Ireland narrative, now principally articulated in the <em>Irish Times<\/em>, which inculcates a new breed of conformity that brooks no divergence.<\/p>\n<p>Previously, <em>Irish Times <\/em>journalist Joe Breen suggested that his distaste for the Pogues resembled the attitude of contemporary African-Americans who preferred contemporary music to a musical tradition obsessed with the miseries of slavery and Jim Crow.<\/p>\n<p>Breen\u2019s reference to American culture betrays the apparent objective of many Irish neoliberal cheerleaders to establish a deracinated Americana in Hibernia, a tax haven for multinationals where the atmosphere of the carnival is strictly commodified. Here, Irish history is reduced to the struggle of modernisers against religious authority \u2013 with nothing in between \u2013 and where celebration of the national struggle is associated with Populism, or even an exclusive \u2018white\u2019 nationalism.<\/p>\n<p>The art of Shane MacGowan and the Pogues offer a rowdy alternative to a creeping homogenisation. He endures, seemingly just to spite them, and even in the dying land he can still revive the spirit of the carnival.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/society-culture\/classic-paddies\/\"><em><strong><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">This article was first published in October, 2022.<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/society-culture\/classic-paddies\/#_ednref1\" name=\"_edn1\">[i]<\/a> Clarke and MacGowan, <em>A Drink with Shane MacGowan<\/em>, (London, 2001), p.168<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/society-culture\/classic-paddies\/#_ednref2\" name=\"_edn2\">[ii]<\/a> Cleary, p.283<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/society-culture\/classic-paddies\/#_ednref3\" name=\"_edn3\">[iii]<\/a> Cleary, p.277<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/society-culture\/classic-paddies\/#_ednref4\" name=\"_edn4\">[iv]<\/a> Cleary, p.271<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/society-culture\/classic-paddies\/#_ednref5\" name=\"_edn5\">[v]<\/a> Nuala O\u2019Connor, <em>Bringing it All Back Home: The Influence of Irish Music at Home and Overseas <\/em>(Dublin, 2001), p.159.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/society-culture\/classic-paddies\/#_ednref6\" name=\"_edn6\">[vi]<\/a> Greaber and Wengrow, p.54<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/society-culture\/classic-paddies\/#_ednref7\" name=\"_edn7\">[vii]<\/a> Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant, <em>Dictionary of Symbols<\/em>, trans. John Buchanan, (London, 1996), p.845<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/society-culture\/classic-paddies\/#_ednref8\" name=\"_edn8\">[viii]<\/a> Cleary, p.290<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The music was the code. It was the transliteration of the style. It was not giving a bollocks in a thoroughly musical manner. It was fuck this and fuck that and frankly fuck you. A rockety life came with the territory. You didn\u2019t have to be Irish. Their England had been influenced by that Ireland [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15742,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[1736,2104,3392,6940,8500],"class_list":["post-15740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society-culture","tag-classic","tag-culture","tag-food","tag-paddies","tag-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}