In "Hell's Ditch", inspired by Jean Genet, he watches the goings on in some terrible prison ward a million and nineteen miles removed from sanity or salvation;
"The killer's hands are bound with chains,
At six o'clock it starts to rain,
He'll never see the dawn again,
Our Lady of the Flowers"
And,
"Genet's feeling Ramon's dick,
The guy in the bunk above gets sick,
In the cell next door a lunatic,
Starts screaming for his mother"
In "Lorca's Novena" he muses upon the life and death of Federica Garcia Lorca, from the bullfight that killed his best friend and lover ("Ignacio lay dying in the sand / A single red rose clutched in a dying hand") to the bullet that ended him:
"And Lorca the faggot poet
They left till last,
Blew his brains out with a pistol up his arse
Mother of all our joys, mother of all our sorrows,
Intercede with him tonight,
For all of our tomorrows"
"Summer In Siam", which he intended as no more than a "musical haiku", but which the band stretched out to four and a bit minutes, with its half-asleep vision of a "moon full of rainbows".
"Rain Street", with its series of characters and episodes slathered in the blackest of humor and the most gorgeous vulgarity:
"The church bell rings, an old drunk sings,
A young girl hocks her wedding ring,
Down on Rain Street"
"Bless me father I have sinned,
I got pissed and I got pinned,
And God can't help the shape I'm in,
Down on Rain Street"
"There's a Tesco on the sacred ground,
Where I pulled her knickers down,
Where Judas took his measly price,
And St Anthony gazed in awe at Christ
Down on Rain Street"
In addition to Shane's offerings, staggering one and all, are a couple of Terry Woods numbers (The ragged, angry "Rainbow Man" and the closing "Six To Go", a beautiful chant-a-long sounds like it arose fully formed from 'tween the cracks of the Sahara) and Jem Finer's "The Wake Of The Medusa" which, as Gavin Martin notes, "linked the tale behind the famous cover artwork used on Rum, Sodomy & The Lash" - a reworking of Théodore Géricault's The Raft Of The Medusa with the band-members seamlessly added to the horrific tableaux amongst those scurvy- and insanity-ravaged sailors - "with a bitter commentary on the legacy of Margaret Thatcher."
Hell's Ditch. Aye.
I walked about with an erection for a fortnight after the first listening, and whilst it pained me some, knowing that this was all there was to be had, the fifth and final Pogues record with Shane's words being wrung screaming out Shane's own yap, still the ecstasies conjured in the head-bumps and the blood-pump and the loin-stump had me wandering the estates like a man possessed with the gargle o' Lucifer's bollocks for those fourteen holy days and nights.
Article comments
1 - -E
Congrats! This article has been selected as one of this week’s Editors’ Picks.
2 - Duke De Mondo
thank you!