Ex-Clash man Joe Strummer re-appeared on stage with The Pogues during their red-hot sell-out week of concerts in the Town and Country Club in London.

Strummer has just finished the soundtrack for the Alex Cox film Walker (which closed after just a week in America, tough luck), and has also just completed the soundtrack for yet another film.

This one's called Permanent Record and it deals with teenage suicide. What makes a very difficult subject especially tough for Strummer is that his own brother David killed himself in 1970 when he was just 18. For those who remember The Clash as the bravest and the best to come of the '70s, grab a new record which comes out tomorrow.

The Story of The Clash is a 28-track double album on CBS Records and I swear a good burst of 'London Calling' and 'White Riot' will wipe out all the current rubbish in the charts.

KEEP it to yourselves, but ACE hears on the grapevine that The Pogues are playing a “secret” gig in Scunthorpe. The band are due to top the bill at a special charity show on December 7 at the town’s Baths Hall.

The hush-hush warm-up for their already announced British tour during December will raise funds for Save The Children and Scunthorpe General Hospital’s children’s ward. Also appearing are Irish singer/songwriter Andy White and After Tonight, who supported The Pogues on their last British jaunt. Kirsty McColl and possibly Joe Strummer may also make up the numbers.

Tickets for the event are like gold dust at the moment, but Scunthorpe Baths Hall have a limited number left for postal application only. The Pogues release a new single “Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah” on December 5.

Roger Holland

It was a slightly surreal moment when Joe Strummer, once of The Clash, joined The Pogues on stage at the Town & Country Club. The band already feature two ex-members of The Nipple Erectors, and have absorbed so many other elements over the years that a former punk frontman fitted in as naturally as a fiddler or a tin whistle. The band, with Shane MacGowan at the helm, steamed through a lively set, highlights of which included the now seasonal duet, Fairytale of New York (with Kirsty MacColl), and London Calling, which Strummer delivered in typically passionate style. The crowd, as ever, were rowdy and affectionate; the band delivered a set to match.

Page 16 , THE GUARDIAN Friday January 15 1988

THE FRIDAY REVIEW RECORDS
ROCK/POP Robin Denselow

The sound is Irish and intoxicating. Adam Sweeting on the Pogues' rise to stardom and Robin Denselow on their latest release

Drunk on the Pogues

PARADOXICALLY, the two years and more which separate The Pogues's last LP, Rum, Sodomy & The Lash from the new If I Should Fall From Grace With God seem somehow to have enhanced the band's standing. If nothing else, the time between has served to emphasise their distance from the packaging and balance sheets of the contemporary pop industry.

Still, the lay-off between studio dates wasn't from choice. A dispute with Stiff Records kept the ramshackle octet out of the recording studios during that period, although they managed to score an Irish Number One by recording The Irish Rover with The Dubliners, and made a relatively dignified contribution to the cacophonous soundtrack of Alex Cox's spurious Spaghetti Western, Straight To Hell. Otherwise, it was only their pungent live shows that kept them going.

"It was the only way we could survive," says banjo player Jim Finer. "A lot of bitterness built up as a result of being constantly on the road, because it becomes really hellish despite the glamorous image some people give it. A lot of Stiff's licensees overseas were falling out with the company, so we were touring in places where people couldn't buy our records."

In any event, the disc-less years have seen The Pogues feted by celebrities like Matt Dillon, Tom Waits and Faye Dunaway, while the group supported U2 on part of their world-subjugating tour last year, including a show at New York's Madison Square Garden. Chicano superstars Los Lobos invited them along as support act on a couple of Californian dates before Christmas, when the Pogues were augmented by Joe Strummer, deputising for ailing guitarist Philip Chevron. Concertina-man Terry Woods and accordionist James Fearnley will also feature on the forthcoming Talking Heads album, at David Byrne's request. If name-dropping alone won't pay the rent, the new album probably will. Its arrival was heralded by the Yuletide success of the single Fairytale of New York, a touching and bibulous saga of a doomed Irish love affair in the Big Apple. The record's Pogueish stew of bruised knuckles and misty eyes was delivered with rare panache by Shane MacGowan and guest vocalist Kirsty MacColl, and it struck a note of poignant authenticity among the T'Paus and Rick Astleys surrounding it.

Jem Finer and MacGowan originally wrote Fairytale as the group's Christmas single for 1985, but they couldn't get it to sound right. "I was trying to think of a realistic Christmas angle instead of this ridiculous isn't-Christmas-wonderful thing, because obviously for a lot of people it isn't," Finer recalls. "Christmas really puts a focus on problems, whatever situation you're in."

While Kirsty MacColl was sinking her claws into her duet with MacGowan, her husband Steve Lillywhite produced the new album. The Pogues had been pondering using Chrissie Hynde instead of Kirsty but, in Lillywhite's view, "she's a bit similar to Shane not as a person, but it would have been two sluts together." Not that he's biased or anything.

Lillywhite is best known for his work with U2, Peter Gabriel, Simple Minds and Big Country, and on the face of it he would appear to be the last choice for the massed acoustic instruments and lo-tech sensibilities of The Pogues. But when he was doing final mixes on bits of U2's The Joshua Tree in Dublin a year ago, Lillywhite had casually mentioned that he'd be willing to have a go at a Pogues record if they'd let him.

The band had considered approaching Tom Waits, David Byrne and even the fabulous Ennio Morricone to produce them, none of which worked out. "We tried Ennio out when we did the Straight To Hell music," Finer says, "but I think he was a bit miffed that he wasn't being asked to do the music itself."

But everything has worked out with a success which seems to have surprised all concerned. "I don't know why," Lillywhite says. "I always seem to do incredibly well with Celtic-based music like U2, Big Country, and now The Pogues. Maybe it's because I don't know anything about it, and don't feel I have to play by any traditional rules."

Lillywhite had to be talked out of using synthesizers instead of real strings, but, newly re-educated in the ways of recording almost completely live, he's brought a punchy clarity to the group's recorded sound often lacking in previous works. This has allowed them to pull off ambitious pieces like Finer's celtic-jazz instrumental Metropolis, as well as filling in the fine detail on more familiar fodder like The Broad Majestic Shannon or Lullabye Of London. Elvis Costello produced Rum, Sodomy & The Lash, but in retrospect the group can see there was some room for improvement.

"We did the songs almost live, but Steve just got all the instruments sounding a way we'd never heard them before," says Finer. "He had great ideas for overdubs and stuff as well, but what he gave us that we hadn't had before was this really good sound. With all due respect to Elvis, that's something he just couldn't have done."

The thoroughly English Lillywhite will admit to the occasional qualm about The Pogues's Irish-rebel stance, which comes into sharpest focus on the new album in MacGowan's song, Birmingham 6. It's an uncompromising piece, and even if the MacGowan growl makes it difficult to decipher, the words are printed on the inner sleeve - "There were six men in Birmingham/In Guildford there's four/That were picked up and tortured/And framed by the law." Not a lot of room for ambiguity there.

Nowadays, as Jem Finer points out, only three-and-a-half out of eight Pogues are Irish. "I do get a bit fed up with the way it's represented as complete Irishness rather than just a strong influence among others. But I suppose that's because for a long time the only person anyone would ever talk to was Shane."

The Pogues's London-Irish origins date back to 1982, when Shane and Spider Stacy sang some rebel songs at the London nightclub, Cabaret Futura. Their ranks were soon enthusiastically swelled by Messrs Finer, Fearnley, and drummer Andrew Ranken, a bunch of friends based around Euston. Their musical backgrounds were largely amateurish and punk-orientated.

"A lot of us lived in this street called Burton Street," Finer reminisces, "and there were loads of groups there. I played bass in a sort of punky R&B band, called The Petals. Andrew and I were in another local R&B band, and Spider had been the singer in a punk group called The Millwall Chainsaws." Original bassist Cait O'Riordan (now Mrs Elvis Costello) had been an avid fan of MacGowan's fractious ensemble, The Nips, which had also featured James Fearnley on guitar.

By the end of 1984, they'd released their first single, Dark Streets Of London, and been voted Best New Band in a New Musical Express poll. Rum, Sodomy & The Lash appeared in September of the following year, an event celebrated by a notoriously well-oiled party aboard HMS Belfast, moored on the Thames.

But Steve Lillywhite points out that it's a mistake to regard The Pogues merely as a bunch of stumbling Irish drunks, much as a song like MacGowan's new Bottle Of Smoke might seem to buttress the band's drinking, wenching and gambling ambience.

"They're really conscientious," says the producer. "Shane's a really good lyric-writer. Bottle Of Smoke, for instance, is really funny. They take what they do really seriously, and that sometimes doesn't come across in the way they act."

If I Should Fall From Grace With God is released on January 18. The Pogues begin a British tour at Leicester De Montfort Hall on February 23, and play at London's Town & Country Club on March 14, 15 and 16.

——

Spirit of the wild

HELL, DAMNATION and alcohol, the battered history of the far-flung Irish, and a wild, fine manic spirit pervade this album, the third, and the boldest that the Pogues have yet recorded. The bunch who started out as a drunken shambles, back in the days when they could be heard bashing out Paddy Works On The Railway in an Islington pub cellar, have somehow developed into a world-class band.

They've managed this in two ways, by expanding the range of their music and their often very clever or bemusing lyrics, while remaining absolutely true to their London Irish folk punk roots. Musically, they have kept up the old mania, most evident in Shane MacGowan's vocals, and the sheer pace with which they treat the songs, but they have skilfully added in some excellent players, including the folk world veterans Terry Woods and Philip Chevron.

The band is now an eight piece, and on this set they mix their guitars, whistles, saxophone, harmonica, banjos, and mandolins with a five-strong brass section and extra Irish instruments like the harp and bodhran.

The selection here includes a Turkish-Irish collision in MacGowan's wild and wailing Turkish Song of the Damned, a bit of boogie, and even brassy hints of an Untouchables-style theme. It's mixed in with jigging and reeling on Jim Finer's adventurous instrumental Metropolis, a swinging and wacky drunken Spanish party piece (presumably inspired by the Straight To Hell filming) in Fiesta, and even sections where The Pogues sound like Tom Waits. The final pay-off, Worms, is a burst of morbid jollity that could have come straight from Swordfishtrombones, and there's more than a hint of early Waits on the opening to their Christmas single, Fairytale of New York, on which Shane is backed by keyboards and sweeping strings, before crashing off into his bittersweet duet with Kirsty MacColl.

That song shows how cleverly The Pogues have expanded their appeal. Like U2, they have made the transition from Ireland to America, though their view of the Irishman's fate at the far side of the Atlantic is rather more bleak than Bono's desert visions. "It was Christmas Eve, babe, in the drunk tank the boys from the choir were singing Galway Bay," sums it up. The Irish in New York can end up as losers or cops.

The same theme is continued in Philip Chevron's more straightforward and direct ballad Thousands Are Leaving, which deals with the new migration across the Atlantic, "to a land of opportunity that some of them will never see." Chevron may "celebrate the land that makes us refugees," but The Pogues also look at the sometimes bleak consequences. As a London Irish band they've dealt before with the experience of the Irish in Britain, and in Birmingham Six MacGowan has written his most controversial and bitter song yet, a furious piece about those accused of the Birmingham pub bombings who were "tortured and framed," and are "still doing time for being Irish at the wrong place and at the wrong time."

Ruefrex are another Irish band with punk roots, angry lyrics, and a rather different perspective on the country's problems. They come from the North, from Belfast, and are best known for their work in trying to use music to bring the communities together, and for their musical attacks on supporters of the IRA.

The new mini-LP, a charity recording for the Enniskillen fund, contains five direct, straight-from-the-shoulder songs dealing with bomb and ballot box, the realities of a Belfast childhood, or a subtle and sympathetic story of a bomber, and those pulling his strings. Like the Pogues, Ruefrex were once signed to Stiff, in happier days for the label. The Pogues now have their own label and a distribution deal with EMI, while Ruefrex are back on a small indie label. I hope they survive. There's a rather more spurious Pogues link to the new Virgin double-album of film themes by Ennio Morricone. The Pogues recorded their own distinctive version of The Good, The Bad And The Ugly for Straight To Hell.

Morricone's version, orchestrated and conducted by himself, is a reminder that this theme, with its wailing and whistling, and clonking guitars, will forever link his name with that of Sergio Leone and spaghetti westerns. The fact that he's written themes for everything from The Battle Of Algiers to The Mission will be forgotten, despite this lengthy collection. There's a far more stirring Latin release from the great Cuban artist Celina Gonzalez, who after 37 years as a professional singer starts her first ever visit to Britain on January 22, with a show at London's Town And Country Club. The veteran "Queen of music from Cuba's countryside" has a glorious clear voice and is backed by a band who play a light, swinging and highly rhythmic salsa style. Some of the tracks are as lilting as soca, and others are more dramatic, with brass mixed in with the guitars and marimbas.

Finally, another dash of a very different LP that's also five years old. Suicidal Tendencies are a four-piece guitar band from Venice Beach, Los Angeles, who mix the post-punk "hardcore" style with a dash of heavy metal.

Songs like Suicide's an Alternative, the bleakly humorous Suicidal Failure, I Shot the Devil ("I shot Reagan") or Institutionalised (about parents sending you off to a lunatic asylum), are played with Pistols-style intensity, with a dash of sub-Jimmy Page guitar thrown in, and occasional hints that this outfit could churn out big-stadium rock if they wanted.

—

THE POGUES: If I Should Fall From Grace With God (Pogue Mahone/EMI NYRI).

Photo: Shane MacGowan and, top right, a plethora of Pogues

Picture: ILKAY MEHMET

ROCK

Rhythm and booze

THREE years ago The Pogues were regarded as no more than an interesting curiosity. They were just a band who'd had the eccentric idea of playing Irish folk music with a punk rock abandon. They included a dishevelled singer, Shane MacGowan, an almost tooth-less, bibulous carouser, and a whistle player, Spider Stacey, who bashed himself on the head with a baking tray for percussion. Their most celebrated song, "Boys From The County Hell", was a drunkard's rallying cry with the chorus "Lend me a tenner and I'll buy you a drink."

The same basic description still holds, though as Monday's ecstatically-received performance at London's Town and Country Club showed (the first of six sold-out nights) there have been changes. The baking tray has given way to a wealth of folk instruments (there are now eight Pogues, plus an extra percussionist), their best songs are far more literate tales of the low life and they've gained a lot of respect.

Carousing with The Pogues: Shane MacGowan.

One thing, however, is constant. Shane MacGowan is still an unlikely pop figure ("pop's Mr Ugly" is how the Sun has spitefully, but successfully, dubbed him) and he still spits out lyrics in an unhealthy low rasp before lurching in a precarious rag-doll stagger as if it's only the tightly-clenched micro-phone stand that keeps him off the floor. Consequently it is nearly impossible to hear what he's saying, but then this show, isn't, it seems, about advertising to potential converts. It is about celebrating the music The Pogues obviously love-Irish folk and the brasher side of British pop-with their fans and their friends.

The first of the friends is singer Kirsty MacColl, perform-ing her part of their Christmas hit, "Fairytale Of New York". She's followed swiftly by country star Steve Earle and then Joe Strummer, formerly of The Clash. By the second group of encores, when guitarist Lynval Golding (previously in ska group The Specials) leads everyone through the old Specials hit "A Message To You Rudy", there are 18 people on stage, the whole audience is dancing and this is no longer a concert, just a rowdy, slightly. drunken, very happy party.

Chris Heath

ROCK/Dave Hill reviews an exuberant St Patrick's night concert by The Pogues at the Town and Country

The ruck of the Irish

Photo: Shane MacGowan: 'the North London publican's friend' / GERAINT LEWIS

AT THE core of the rich, inebri-ated disorder of St Patrick's night with The Pogues lies a spiritual cohesion that intoxicates your senses in a rush of bad breath and sweat, but cannot be easily de-fined. Among the heaving ruck at the front, an Irish tricolour or two are passed from hand to hand. A ragged sort of nationalism is part of what stokes Pogue fervour. But there is more to it than that.

The fetid throng, in their hats and Celtic hoops, elevate the occasion into a barn dance made in hell, but which can only be de-scribed as sublime. As front man Shane MacGowan the North London publican's friend and his cohorts gasp and rasp their way through bone-rattling reels like "Bottle Of Smoke", steaming lads, stripped to the waist, whirl each other round, crash to the ground, get up and do it again.

Perhaps it is the way The Pogues have coaxed the tradition of Irish rebel songs into becoming wider-reaching metaphors that accounts for the avid loyalty they inspire and do so year after year.

The idea of being endlessly up-rooted, of searching for salvation but finding respite only in sin, has struck a chord with several thou-sand young metropolitan men and women, many of whom like some of the band itself have not a drop of emerald blood in their bodies.

It is not just The Pogues' down-and-out narratives which create this effect, nor the cascades of party streamers, but their (literally) staggering demeanour. It does not matter if half of them are too sloshed to play with much precision. It is their slouching charisma that counts.

Even so, during the five or so years of their existence, The Pogues have moved on from a basic hybrid of punk and folk to-wards a musical and lyrical fluency which enables them to maintain that gut-level identity while at the same time switching their vision to the wide screen.

The Christmas hit, "Fairytale Of New York", was a grand, domestic example of that new maturity, and the surprise appearance of Kirsty MacColl, who features
on the record, was just the first bonus performance of the night. Unlike most celebrity stage invaders, The Pogues' guests improved the evening's chemistry instead of smothering it in self-congratulation.

Joe Strummer, his career on the up-swing again with his soundtrack album to Alex Cox's Walker movie, delivered phlegm-spattered renditions of Clash favourites "London Calling" and the increasing timely "I Fought The Law". Lynval Golding, formerly of The Specials, stepped up for an encore of "A Message To You Rudy".

These cameo contributions were doubly effective for the way they helped frame The Pogues' place among the folk heroes of the past dozen years. From Punk to the multi-racial brotherhood of 2-Tone to this hot night of London Irish delirium, there is an un-broken line of music where righteousness and disrepute collide and sometimes turn out to be just the upside and the downside of the same embattled culture of dissent.

THE POGUES, that roguish collection of Irish Londoners, finished off their current British tour by dazzling devotees at the Brixton Academy.

Although obviously exhausted after a non-stop week of gigs at the Town and Country Club, the eight-piece outfit were still in a party mood.

Even the good old-fashioned pogo was brought out for the occasion, and the revelry was never more evident than when the band struck up its soon to be released single 'Fiesta'.

This is a real knees-up on the Costa del Sol number—wacky and lots of fun. All the stops were pulled out for this one, the vast stage of the Academy filled with plastic party streamers and much frivolity, a la Madness.

But there was still room on the stage for a very tight four-piece brass section who accompanied them on this and other numbers, as did Kirsty McColl for their masterpiece 'A Fairytale of New York.'

Other surprise guests included Mary Coughlan, Joe Strummer, who'd obviously had too much of the party spirit and couldn't remember the words to 'London Calling', and Linval Golding from the Specials who joined at the end for a rousing finale with 'Message to You Rudy'.

Although they played almost the whole of their new LP 'If I Should Fall from Grace with God', they still had time in their 90-minute set to bring the house down with old favourites such as 'A Pair of Brown Eyes' and 'Dirty Old Town'.

Jenny Byrne

WHEN Ole Joe Strummer comes on the scene mumbling about the Pogues you know you’re in for a treat.

● Strummer’s gaunt features keep cropping up on this, the best live video I’ve ever had the pleasure to sing along to.

● The Pogues, Live at the Town and Country Club on St Patrick’s Night 1988, released on Monday, is like bringing a group of friends home after a rowdy night out.

● Along with Joe, Kirsty McColl puts in an appearance and does a duet with Shane McGowan in a sparkling rendition of Fairytale of New York.

● To get the best from the package, put the sound through your stereo and give it some volume. Well, its only fair to give the neighbours the benefit of such wonderful musicianship.

● Highlights from the 14 tracks include London Calling with Strummer (flaming his sanelle), Lynval Golding, fried appearance for "A Message To You Rudy" and somehow McGowan defies gravity and remains on his feet

● All this and more from the country’s best live performers. And at just £9.20 for a cheap way to party seven nights of the week.

TONY GARNER