Pogues In the USA

*circles 3/18; checks frequent-flier mileage*

Dear Pogues,
Come to Chicago.
I love you,
Amanda

http://64.106.149.201/movies/detail.asp?MID=4055

I bet the band would sell out First Avenue, where they drew a packed crowd even for the Shane-less Pogues, but maybe times have changed...

And Christ, who here has been inside the Nokia Theater and is it as awful as its location would have me believe?

http://www.tcpunk.com/ubb/Forum7/HTML/000462-2.html

I guess I am going to have to skip X next week and put the money towards the pogues. Not that any of you find this interseting.

Whereby, possibly in honor of their touring again, the questions are raised: Just how famous are the Pogues in the USA, anyway? And who are their fans? And what is their biggest hit? And things like that:

songs that weren't a bands biggest hit, but have gone on to be their legacy song and biggest iTunes seller

In addition to Fairytale of New York, Fiesta is also a favorite in American "Irish Pubs."

And The Wire did a lot to pump "The Body Of An American."

College kids still like the Pogues.

I'm a long-time fan. Most of the Pogues fans I've run across are punk kids

biggest hits:
fairytale
dirty old town
everything else

I had several Pogues tapes as a jr. high student in the 1980s so they were famous enough to be known by the likes of I.
famous to kiddies who liked "ska" and yeah "fiesta" was the fave offa "and if i should fall..."
plus they were in sequel to Repo Man, yar.

'Fairytale...' is by far their biggest hit and so over-played as to be outright annoying unless it's Xmas eve and you're drunk and maudlin. I've heard 'Thousands are sailing' a lot in Irish pubs, fwiw.

In SF Irish pubs, that is.

I think Michael White is kinda right. In the US, in my experience, they earned and have held a huge following among punk peoples. Especially the suspenders & Docs crowd, small as it is. And probably a lot of people in Boston.

It may stem from Shane's devil-may-care attitude. I made sure to show all the punk kids I know photos of his new teeth, though.

yeah all the fans I know are/were punk kids

they were one of my favorite bands when I was in high school, so they had enough exposure to penetrate the culture of 80s suburban America. I remember seeing their (totally awesome) video for "Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah" on Request Video on channel 56.

they got MTV 120 minutes play for sure
there were anglophilic "mods" in the NW USA til early 90s at least

There was a Spin article circa Rum, Sodomy And The Lash which was what first made me check them out.

I feel like Pogues in the USA are at the exact same famousness as Tom Waits, and liked by a lot of the same ppl.

"gritty" characters into "old" stuff

yes, jon lewis totally otm. these ppl also like nick cave in my experience.

I feel like Pogues in the USA are at the exact same famousness as Tom Waits, and liked by a lot of the same ppl.

these people are called "drunks"

Wonder to what extent they actually pull in the urban white Catholic blue-collar crowd (esp cops and firemen) that's implied on shows like The Wire and Rescue Me, as discussed on that other thread I linked to. Guys who were never punks, I mean. (Maybe Boston's a special case? Though I definitely heard them all the time in Irish pubs in Queens -- which might not count either, since there were usually lots of actual Irish people there, and all the jukeboxes had Thin Lizzy albums, too. But I hear the Pogues in bars in Austin now, too -- and not just specifically Irish ones. Hey, they're pretty good to drink to.)

Wonder to what extent they actually pull in the urban white Catholic blue-collar crowd

they are popular in that milieu, altho it is largely suburban these days

yes, nice snarky generalization up there about the "gritty" & "old" types who like pogues, waits & cave. well done. pork pie hats, maker's mark, lucky strikes, swing dancing and roller derby. maybe a bad tattoo that once looked sailory and tough but now looks von dutch. steampunk minus the goth plus a mortgage. ha ha.

still, would rather go for a beer with these types than most.

no, no, you got me wrong, these fans are people who like gritty, old types; they are not gritty nor old themselves. I was like 13 when I liked the Pogues ... no drinking or smoking anywhere ... just romance.

oh that's nicer

yo dog lighten up, not trying to be snarky! i like all of those artists! tho the pogues less so than the others. nothing wrong with maker's or lucky strikes either btw.

nothing wrong with any of it - some of my best friends are the dude I'm talking about, just saying there is an identifiable type there - and with anything like that there's room to make fun. but as far as types go, they're good drinking buddies. shakey mo said it more succinctly re: drunks

Excellent taxonomy gentlemen, Pogues/Waits/Cave definitely triangulate a certain listener and there is definitely at least one tattoo. No snark intended, these types are generally solid ppl, wkiw.

They a.k.a. we also tend to like Johnny Cash.

amen

i sold some pogues to punks not long ago. nice punks too. the one who bought pogues really desperately wanted billy childish records. i didn't have any.

Sell him some Mekons!

these were the kind of olde tymey punks who wanted british punk and james brown records. and pogues.

i have a friend who was a boston skinhead in the 80's. he likes pogues too. and ska.

tip!
http://www.shanemacgowan.com/articles/nme89.shtml

there's some venn diagraming to be done with all this

Pogues/Waits/Cave definitely triangulate a certain listener

lolz I overheard a shining example of this "certain listener" at a show awhile back loudly declaiming that the greatest songwriters of all time were Waits, Cave, and Leonard Cohen. Tbf we were there to hear a free performance of a local men's choir that does a capella versions of Leonard Cohen songs...

Adding Cash and James Brown to the mix crystallizes it pretty well. Segment of the punk/alternative crowd with a big roots & authenticity jones (massive theatricality of Waits & Cave doesn't prevent em from effectively broadcasting this vibe). Think they often like Steve Earle and Social Distortion, too.

I 'discovered' the Pogues in France at a time when they sounded vaguely similar to Les Négresses Vertes and other bands that had turned away from the rock guitar/new wave synth/Anglo-American dominant orthodoxy and seemed to me musically playful and capable of mixing together weird and disused traditions but I was just a kid then, so...

Earle and Cash and Social D all have a similarly 'authentic' vibe about them.

...ezzactly. Plus, as others have said: ska peoples, Anglophiles, maudlin drunks.

joe strummer fans. fans of SOLO joe strummer albums.

van morrison is playing astral weeks tonight at the indian casino. might be some pogues fans there.

nah, plenty of old Clash fans dig the Pogues.

xp

Elvis, X, Link Wray, The Blasters, The Cramps, Public Enemy, The Decemberists

The Decemberists

NO

dude, I'm with you. I can't stand them either, I'm just reporting my observations

You're probably correct, and I am thinking the Decembrists are causing a sharp schism within the venn overlap Cave/Waits/Pogues. Seperating the men from the boychilds perhaps.

sounded vaguely similar to Les Négresses Vertes and other bands that had turned away from the rock guitar/new wave synth/Anglo-American dominant orthodoxy and seemed to me musically playful and capable of mixing together weird and disused traditions

Yeah, I can definitely hear at least their first few albums as part of a tradition that starts at the Specials or Sandinista! and stretches through Les Negresses Vertes, Mano Negra, lots of rock en espanol, and on to maybe Gogol Bordello or whoever. Just don't see that determining the makeup of their American audience all that much.

I love how 'Anglophiles' on this thread somehow refers to the Irish as well; 700 years of animosity just evaporated.

Shane saw the Clash in '76 and had a punk band before The Pogues.

i bought a box of records from this woman and in it was everything U2 ever did. like, everything. bootlegs, promos, you name it. also, EVERYTHING, and i mean everything, the alarm ever put out. LOTS of clannad singles and albums. kate bush interview picture discs. and pogues records. and a tears for fears vinyl picture disc single shaped like a shamrock.

xp: we yanks just see em all as "brits" anyways. they all speak english, that's the thing. throw jamaica in there too while you're at it.

i thought the pogues were all english anyway. or british. or from england. or something. that's what brit ixors always say.

throw jamaica in there too while you're at it.

lol

Shane is English born of Irish parents and spent part of his childhood in Ireland before moving back to England.

xp: I'm actually kinda serious! :)

I saw/read an interview with Lee Perry somewhere and the interview asked him something like "you live in Switzerland; why don't you write songs in German, etc?" and Perry was like, "No! English only! I like soft tones, musical tones--that's English!"

Ha ha! That's hilarious.

terry woods was something a forgotten irish folk legend when he joined the pogues around the time of their 3rd(?) record. he was a member of Sweeney's Men and the original Steeleye Span line-up.

I wish "this type of listener" was more into Steeleye Span!

the 2 sweeney's men albums are A+. ashley hutchings wanted the whole band to join fairport convention (a 9 piece!) but the others balked so that's why he formed steeleye w/ woods

I just saw Sweeney's Men last night play a great show in Galway. Wondered if there was any mention of them on here before and there do seem to be a couple.
Wish somebody'd remaster the Woods band lp so it didn't sound like the tape was decomposing. Wish I'd got the chance to ask Terry woods about taht last night as well as get some things signed but had to go for a bus instead of hang around.
Glad I got to see them anyway. Don't think this reunion has any plans of lasting more tahn the dates on this tour and I don't know how long this is.
One of tehm made a reference to playing in a cinema on Eglinton st and it took me until I was wandering down Eglinton st trying to work out which was the cinema 40 years+ ago to realise that I'd watched the gig inside the same space. Town Hall theatre was an old cinema, one of 2 in town and the other one was knocked down in the 90s. Now the cinemas are elsewhere.

Spider Stacey lives in New Orleans these days. He and Cait O’Riordan are in the midst of a short US tour playing onstage with Louisiana’s Lost Bayou Ramblers , who do a 40 minute opening set before Spider & Cait walk onstage to join them. “Dirty Old Town” with some French Creole verses was great. They also did “London Calling “ as a nod to Joe Strummer’s stint with Pogues. Spider sang and played pennywhistle, Cait on bass , and on vocals for some cuts.

I saw the DC show btw.