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“This is an album of dreams for broken poets.”—Heidi Siegmund Cuda for Bette Dangerous
I still make friends through t-shirts.
On a Monday night in Letterfrack, I walked into Veldon’s Seafarer and observed that the banjo player and I were wearing identical shirts, The Pogues’ Fairytale of New York.
We just nodded at each other, as you do, a recognition of shared taste in music.
It was, of course, the beginning of a beautiful friendship with Michael “The Hog” Casey, as I document here in my report Raw Madness and Savage Beauty:
On the anniversary of Shane MacGowan’s death, I had interviewed Connemara musicians The Hog and Paul Mulligan on why Irish music has never been better. I also shared anecdotes about that time The Hog got hired and fired by the Pogues in one day.
I had been invited to see The Hog and Paul perform in Tipperary, at a pub called Philly Ryan’s in a town called Nenagh. The event was the second anniversary of the passing of MacGowan, whose mother was from a village in the area called Kilbarron. The Pembury-born Pogues’ frontman spent a lot of time at Philly’s, his favorite pub in the area. He became close friends with the owner, an undertaker named Philip Ryan, who created a makeshift shrine to MacGowan of posters and photographs in the pub’s performance space. There is even a large mural of MacGowan on the pub’s exterior.
It was at that night at Philly Ryan’s where I learned about MacGowan’s process. The guitarist of the Bogus Pogues, a Pogues cover band who headlined that weekend, said he once asked Shane how many songs he’d written.
“Shane said, “I never wrote a single song. I write poetry. Some of those poems just happened to get turned into songs.’”
The Measure of My Dreams
On Friday evening, as I was obsessing on distressing breaking news from the US, The Hog sent me this video clip below from his interview with Hot Press Magazine from Whelan’s Pub in Dublin, Ireland. The Hog was among the musicians interviewed about 20th Century Paddy: The Songs of Shane MacGown, a new 36-track tribute to the artist, who passed away from pneumonia on 30 November 2023. It could just as easily have been subtitled; The Poems of Shane MacGowan.
What a gift.
I detached from the wretched awfulness of the US breakers, and fell into the warm embrace of music.
I immediately bought 20th Century Paddy and when I saw the first track was from Bruce Springsteen, a cover of my much beloved A Rainy Night In Soho my heart dropped ever so slightly. To have a raw and melancholy, punk rock love song recreated by a Big American Icon seemed terribly risky.
But with the greatest of care, Bruce cradles the song gently in his outstretched hands, treating it like the rarest of gems, caressing each lyric so delicately and reverently. And in his hands, we receive our first Christmas present of the season.
It is perfect.
When he whispers out the final lyric, “You’re the measure of my dreams,” he has given us a kiss to build a dream on.
Fairytale of New York
MacGowan, who was born on Christmas Day in 1957, is widely known for his style, which merged Irish trad with punk rock, and his personal struggles with substance abuse. In Ireland, he is recognized as one of the great poets of modern times. And he gifted us all a cherished Christmas song with Fairytale of New York, which is a Tom Waitsian ballad filled with gutter expletives and seasonal wonder.
Written in 1988 with the Pogues banjo player Jem Finer, Fairytale of New York became a duet with folk singer Kirsty MacColl, about a couple having a holiday blow out filled with regret and vitriol (“Happy Christmas, you arse, I pray God it's our last”), all to a nostalgic backdrop of drunk tanks and cops singing Galway Bay.
Legend has it that Elvis Costello bet MacGowan he couldn’t write an unschmaltzy Christmas tune. So naturally, Fairytale of New York propelled the band to fame. At MacGowan’s funeral three years ago, Fairytale of New York was sung Glen Hansard, an Irish singer who died in a motorcycle accident in July, and folk artist Lisa O’Neill.
On the new record, the song is interpreted by Hozier and Jessie Buckley, and even though I can’t help but ache for the original, all Christmas carols deserve to be covered by a million different artists, and they do it justice. White Christmas it ain’t but it has all the melancholy and longing of the Irving Berlin classic, made famous by Bing Crosby, who, like MacGowan, knew his way around drink.
Lyra does a haunting and powerful version of Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six, a political song about The Troubles, co-written by Pogues’ musician Terry Woods.
Boston-Irish punk band Dropkick Murphys handle Body of an American, a lament about the Irish-American immigrant experience, with a feisty sturdiness.
In Steve Earle’s capable hands If I Should Fall from Grace with God becomes a meditation on life and death, somewhere between heaven and hell.
Victoria’s Angels
20th Century Paddy was driven by MacGowan’s longtime muse, Irish journalist, author, and artist Victoria Mary Clarke, who channels angels in her art and work. Released on Friday by the Rubyworks Record Label, the record will benefit a Dublin-based charity that helps find housing and healthcare for unhoused people, the Dublin Simon Community.
I recommend giving the gift to everyone on your list who loves music.
Tom Waits’ rendition of Summer in Siam is like a wrapping yourself up in a scratchy old wool scarf you keep around for purely sentimental reasons, even though the weather is crickets-warm. If I still drank, I imagine it would go down like the smoothest of bottom shelf bourbons.
True Original
I, of course, listened to each new song by washing it down immediately with the Pogues’ original. Some artists opted to stay true to the sound of the original, like Johnny Mac and the Faithful’s very faithful cover of Fiesta and The High Kings’ version of Streams of Whiskey.
I’m not gonna lie: I wished they had included The Hog’s cover of Streams of Whiskey. Michael “The Hog” Casey has such a unique voice, he sounds like the storms of Connemara captured in a whiskey jug, preserved for all eternity.
And as I was listening to Tom Creagh’s cover of Paddy Public Enemy No. 1, I made a note to track down who was playing banjo. And then found out it was The Hog, who also sings the chorus. He is a virtuoso banjo player, and I am delighted that you can hear him on this record.
U2 brings all the sunshine in its buoyant performance of Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, and I momentarily return to the ‘90s — clad in motorcycle boots, a camouflage mini skirt, and a Triumph t-shirt (the outfit I wore as an extra in a Danzig video), as I mentally shimmy to the Jesus and Mary Chain’s deliciously fuzzy version of I’ll Be Your Handbag.
Other outstanding tracks include Primal Scream’s lush version of the gorgeous ballad, A Pair of Brown Eyes; and Johnny Depp and Imelda May’s sweetly grungey version of Haunted, although if you’re like me, you’ll immediately bathe your ears in MacGowan and Sinead O’Connor’s Haunted duet, one of my favorite love songs forever and ever. This is not to dismiss Depp and May, who I hope perform more music together. Depp’s former muse, supermodel Kate Moss, also contributes a track, the Nico-styled cover of Lonesome Highway.
F Yez All
Bob Geldof channels his inner Leonard Cohen as he contributes a spoken word track, St John of Gods, which contains the repeat refrain, “F yez all!”
One of my favorite Irish artists, Damien Dempsey, who I learned about when researching the Industrial Boys School in Letterfrack, a long ago shuttered house of horrors. Dempsey’s father was one of the boys housed there, and I that’s how I learned about his son, the musician. I now have Dempsey’s music on heavy rotation, and he turns in a fine cover of Sally MacLennane, a classic Pogues’ drinking song based on a bar MacGowan’s uncle owned which served Irish workers in Dagenham.
Oh, and I l just love the Murder Capital’s sexy reverby take on The Song With No Name.
By the time I made my way through the first pass of each of the 36-tracks on 20th Century Paddy I am stunned once again at MacGowan’s literary brilliance. His poetry is evocative and tangible, gutter and exalted, and filled with exquisite surprises, even now.
I will be listening to Moya Brennan’s delicate cover of Mother Mo Chroi and Garron Noone’s White City at least another three times before filing this review, because I want to drench my soul in lyrics like “it’s just another bloody rainy day… now washed away with dead dreams in the rain…”
This is an album of dreams for broken poets.
I type these words as Camille O’Sullivan is sweetly singing You’re the One.
“You fill my sweetest dreams,” she coos.
This record fills mine.
It’s the measure of my dreams.
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More info about Bette Dangerous: This magazine is written by Heidi Siegmund Cuda, an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter, author, and broadcast news veteran, as well as former music and nightlife columnist for the Los Angeles Times. A No. 1 Amazon best-selling author and award-winning film director, Cuda writes the Hot Type column in Byline Times, an independent UK-newspaper. She executive produced the film Kherson: Human Safari. Thank you for your support of independent investigative journalism, arts, and culture reporting.
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