Happy St. Pat's! Another round of Pogues covers on me!

Hey alls--  Yeah, as I've mentioned before, St. Patrick's Day is not one of those holidays that I go out of my way to celebrate.  Too much of the ol' fake cheer and hollow commercialism, same as most other aspects of public life?  Maybe.  But I remain a sentimental bastard and I do note St. Pat's when it rolls around. It brings back some very good memories from across the vast spread of years, and lately I've been trying every year to bang out at least one cover song for anyone who's interested.   For instance, here's last year's post, with links to a Pogues cover and one from Great Big Sea:

http://roadkillbuttsteak.blogspot.com/2014/03/happy-st-pats-rum-and-whiskey-covered.html

This year, mid-March snuck up alarmingly fast among all the work and winter and all, and I almost dropped the ball but managed to get things recorded over a couple sessions, mostly last Sunday.  It was again good fun and a great excuse learn these songs, to dust off the banjo and bouzouki and, lord help us, accordion and such, and to work on my even dustier skills on those instruments.  Strangely, the hardest part is probably when laying down the vocals, trying to stifle the impulse to mimic Shane's slurry brogue, but these sound pretty American to me.  You be the judge.  As usual, I mixed things down far too rapidly, and on headphones, but I'm hoping the fidelity is passable.  There's a cover of the Pogues own "If I Should Fall From Grace With God", and a meta-cover of their definitive version of Ewan MacColl's "Dirty Old Town".

Anyway, please do read James Fearnley's recent Pogues memoir Here Comes Everybody.  It's really unbelievably evocative stuff, and in the running for best music writing I've come across this year (and I read a lot of music writing).   Like St. Patrick's Day itself, there's a lot wrong with the rigamarol that's become associated the Pogues, and especially Shane MacGowan, over the years, but there is so much right as well.  Before he really revved up his slow-motion public suicide in earnest, the man wrote the ugliest and funnies and most achingly beautiful songs, and the band was a wonderful aggregate of individual personalities and contributions.  To me, "Rum, Sodomy and the Lash" and "If I Should Fall From Grace with God" are absolutely perfect albums, and the ones on either side no slouches either.

As a dear, departed friend of mine would say, "Slàinte y'all"!

jk

If I Should Fall From Grace With God:  https://app.box.com/s/kt1zlyeyjtqqyqcvh2wo489ogm2jh17k


Dirty Old Town:                                  https://app.box.com/s/eng240gfxs0g0xbhdp707xqew2scqh2c