Póg Their Thóin

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Every Friday, we give away a Golden Discs voucher worth TWENTY FIVE big fellas to spend at any GD branches in the country (14 in total).

All we ask from you is a tune we can play at an unspecified time next week.

This week’s theme: The Pogues

Care to celebrate the news of a musical collaboration between The Pogues and Wire creator David Simon with a song?

To enter, please complete this sentence

‘Not including Fairytale, the finest song The Pogues ever recorded is_____________________________’

Lines MUST close MIDNIGHT SUNDAY!

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56 thoughts on “Póg Their Thóin

  1. ivan

    Not including Fairytale, the finest song The Pogues ever recorded is Thousands Are Sailing. For this bit

    “Then we raised a glass to J.F.K.
    And a dozen more besides
    When I got back to my empty room
    I suppose I must have cried”

    1. Lord Snowflakee

      Agree with Ivan, these lines in particular are exquisite as are the ones

      In Manhattan’s desert twilight,
      in the death of afternoon,
      we stepped hand in hand on Broadway,
      like the first man on the moon

      how beautiful

  2. Henry Woods

    Not including Fairytale, the finest song The Pogues ever recorded is Sally MacLennane.

    The Anthem of every Irish Barman
    Does ring around the pub
    We fill you all with dirty beer
    And Supermacs for grub.

    Then later you will puke and fight
    And trash yourself about
    Your peers wont be judging you
    ‘Cos you’re just a drunken lout.

  3. Harry Molloy

    It’s a Rainy Night in Soho because it’s simply a lovely bit of songwriting and a simple but beautiful piece of music.

    Was listening to one of the lads from the Pogues on the wireless the last day who is a musical consultant for the show, he’s saying they’re fantasizing about bringing it to somewhere like galway after Broadway

  4. Mourinho

    Not including Fairytale, the finest song The Pogues ever recorded is A Rainy Night in Soho.

    Simply sublime.

    I might have suggested Faithful Departed (written by Philip) but I’m not sure The Pogues ever recorded it.

    1. ivan

      FWIW, Rainy Night and Sailing were in the run-off in my head. Here Comes Everybody by James Fearnley is a good read, btw.

      1. Harry Molloy

        listened to that this morning, found it hard to pick between that and rainy night.

      2. Kolmo

        +1…always, always twinges at the feels, I used to sing it to a former love who had the darkest, most beautiful, colombian brown eyes, unfortunately things move on and we went our seperate ways after a few years, it may or may not have something to do with the fact that I can’t sing, at all, tone deaf, in fact…
        (Whistful sigh..)

        PS. Perfectly happy now with a blue eyed maiden of a delightfully spirited demeanour.

  5. DaithiG

    Not including Fairytale, the finest song The Pogues ever recorded is Body of an American.

    Because The Wire is the greatest TV show ever broadcast and I’m going to get my US citizenship soon and I plan on singing that in my local when I do.

  6. Liam Deliverance

    Good to see a nod to one of our greatest song writers in Shane McGowan and one of our greatest bands.
    Not including Fairytale, the finest song The Pogues ever recorded is The Sick Bed Of Cuchulain. Musically it has not a lot to recommend it although it’s hard to dislike the slow-fast-slow-fast style typical of Pogues tracks and the witty and rambunctious delivery. Lyrically though, magnificent. No-one else but Mr McGowan could write a song like this and i’ll possibly be pushing Broadsheet.ie’s profanity filter a bit hard here.

    McCormack and Richard Tauber are singing by the bed
    There’s a glass of punch below your feet and an angel at your head
    There’s devils on each side of you with bottles in their hands
    You need one more drop of poison and you’ll dream of foreign lands

    When you pissed yourself in Frankfurt and got syph down in Cologne
    And you heard the rattling death trains as you lay there all alone
    Frank Ryan brought you whiskey in a brothel in Madrid
    And you decked some fucking blackshirt who was cursing all the Yids
    At the sick bed of Cuchulainn we’ll kneel and say a prayer
    And the ghosts are rattling at the door and the devil’s in the chair

    Rest of the lyrics here
    http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/pogues/thesickbedofcuchulainn.html
    Song
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcPIA6_zKX4

  7. Daisy Chainsaw

    Not including Fairytale, the finest song The Pogues ever recorded is Fiesta because I pogo round the place like a lunatic to it… and then wonder why my knees need replacing!

  8. martco

    Not including Fairytale the best song the Pogues did was Sally MacLennane

    because that’s what Google says it is literally

    Ian Durys birthday today

  9. Al Jeers

    ‘Not including Fairytale, the finest song The Pogues ever recorded is “Worms”. It’s the last track from “If I Should Fall from Grace with God” and there’s a very long gap between the penultimate track and so it arrives horribly and unexpectedly. It’s a musical approximation of the horrors.

    “The worms crawl in and the worms crawl out
    The ones that go in are lean and thin
    The ones that crawl out are fat and stout
    Your eyes fall in and your teeth fall out
    Your brains come tumbling down your snout
    Be merry, my friends, be merry”

    I kind of like it.

  10. Frilly Keane

    well now GD
    I think ye’re music snobs

    and since the Pogues never did Beautiful City …………. charming and pretty

    its not worth the chance of 25 yoyos to choose something that ye only like

  11. Al Jeers

    Not including Fairytale or Worms, the finest song The Pogues ever recorded is “The Old Main Drag” because in just six verses it paints an evocative picture of a squalid, alocoholic, melancholic other World.

  12. Margarita Corscadden

    Besides Fairy tale, the finest song The Pogues ever recorded is A Rainy Night in Soho.
    A masterpiece.

  13. Mr Bojangles

    Besides Fairy tale, the finest song The Pogues ever recorded is ‘Lullaby of London’.
    Mac Gowan a modern Paddy Kavanagh.

  14. Zena

    Not including Fairytale, the finest song the Pogues ever recorded is, Love You ‘Till The End’.

    It’s a beautiful ballad and it featured in the film, ‘PS. I Love You’.

    Love all their songs and music, an outstnding and multi-talented band. Shane McGowan’s songwriting skills are unmatchable.

  15. PMCD

    A Rainy Night in Soho came to mind straight away but because others have picked it I’ll go for something else.

    Haunted is sung by Cait O’Riordan and was first featured on the soundtrack to Alex Cox’s Sid & Nancy back in 1986. In many ways its the best thing about the movie – though I’ve always had a soft spot for Gary Oldman’s Sid Vicious. The song’s got one of McGowan’s most beautiful lyrics and its chorus of, “I want to be haunted by the ghost of your precious love” is pretty spine-tingling stuff. Is it as good as A Rainy Night In Soho? Hmmm.

    1. Bertie "the inexplicable pleasure" Blenkinsop

      You know Sid would have been 60 the other day?
      Nuts.

    2. Frilly Keane, Sophistopath

      I nominated Haunted before for sum’ting
      ‘ can’t remember which Friday it was

      It didn’t win anyway

      But it is a beautiful and in its own way almost beautifying

    3. ivan

      the polished, Trevor Horn produced, Shane and Sinead version is good as well. I know the original had a murky charm, like….

  16. scottser

    not including ‘fairytale’ the finest song the pogues ever recorded was ‘and the band played waltzing matilda’ by eric bogle – arguably the best anti-war song ever written. no rendition of this tune ever matched shane’s road-weary and cynical delivery. there is very little perfect when it comes to the pogues, but that song is it.

  17. Gavin Synnott

    is The Boys from the county Hell.

    “The boys and me are drunk and looking for you
    We’ll eat your frigging entrails and we won’t give a damn
    Me daddy was a blue shirt and my mother a madam
    And my brother earned his medals at Mai Lei in Vietnam”

    MacGowen at his best. Previous consensus on Rainy Night in Soho a very close second.

  18. Deluded

    You are all correct.
    An honourable mention for the whimsical beauty of “Summer in Siam”.

  19. therave

    The best Pogues song would be Fiesta, Preachers pub on Washington Street in Cork was once owned by a guy called Ted, Ted loved the song but the regulars loved it more and at random points in the night Ted would blast it up on the stereo to which the crowd would go berserk , dancing on seats and tables…….. ahhh the good old days

  20. Pat Walsh

    Not including the magnificent A Fairytale Of New York, the finest song recorded by The Pogues is The Broad Majestic Shannon from their second album because even though it has some similarities to the tune of Fairytale, it also stands apart from it & because it captures the memories of the summers that Shane spent visiting his relations in Tipperary when he was a young fella. Liam Clancy also does a great version of the song.

  21. softlike

    a bottle of smoke or the old main drag. although well known as well I pick fiesta.

    1. sǝɯǝɯʇɐpɐq

      I don’t understand a word softlike said, but one of the words softlike said was Fiesta.
      Those first 27 seconds alone…
      I’m crying as I type… Hang on a minute….

      Let softlike win. Please.
      Just listen…
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pYI9t-I6qo

      (Sorry for buggering up your chances of winning softlike. I always post the BEST songs in these competitions. Guess how many times I’ve won?..
      -That’s right… NONE.
      I have given you the kiss of death, but I still love you. Sorry. I’ll stop now.)

  22. sǝɯǝɯʇɐpɐq

    I regularly e-mail a bloke who knows Shane, personally.
    Apparently Shane, Elvis Costello, Suggs out of The Specials and Terry Hall out of Bad Manners, and a representative of Diageo rent a cottage next-door to him in Donegal and he can hear everything they say when he’s in the jacks having a crap.

    It’s only €20 / month to get daily updates but most days nothing happens.

    1. sǝɯǝɯʇɐpɐq

      PS.
      I’d need his permission before I tell you his e-mail address.He won’t answer. I think he must be busy…New ideas and 5poot…
      …besides, he has 7 subscribers already. Ain’t nobody needs more than €140 a month.

  23. sǝɯǝɯʇɐpɐq

    €140…
    That’s like 7.77777777777777778 times the average weekly wage if you live in ‘Direct Unprovision’.

    Do the Maths.
    I’m drunk, but I amm corrrectt.
    that was the right amount of sevvens.

  24. Dubh Linn

    Not including Fairytale, the finest song The Pogues ever recorded is dirty old town.

    It’s why I learned the piano and haunted the mini-Linns to go to piano lessons too.

    All together now……. “I dreamed a dream……..”

  25. Friscondo

    White City, an Irish tune and Shane’s love of London. Best, maddest gig, I was ever at was seeing them in Dec. 1988 in Brixton Academy. Kirsty McCall guested and one of the guys I was with went missing for three days, on the night. He met a girl from Reading and went on a major session. Turned up on the Sunday totally blasé. Honourable mentions to Body of an American, The Old Main Drag, A Pair of Brown Eyes and Thousands Are Sailing.

  26. Orla Smith

    Not including Fairytale, the finest song The Pogues ever recorded is…I love them all but it has to be ‘ A pair of brown eyes’ – it’s Shane’s anti-war song that rivals ‘Waltzing Matilda’. Cait’s smokey harmonies comforting Shane’s raspy sorrowful tone, arguably the best example of how he actually could sing back in the day. The song has everything the Pogues were all about. “A hungry sound came across the breeze, so I gave the walls a talkin’, and I heard the sounds of long ago from the old canal. And the birds were whistling in the trees where the wind was gently laughing”. Shane’s song writing is unrivaled but when it’s combined with the genius and musicality the rest of the gang are blessed with – it’s pure magic. I saw them when I was nine, snuck into The Stadium on South Circular Road by me aunties in 1989 and it set me up for life!

    1. Frilly Keane, Sophistopath

      Are you sure t’was the National Stadium?

      Leisure Land, City Hall then Reading
      2nd half of August 89
      Then Dublin, the Olympia ’round Christmas same year
      But it could have been the Olympic – the state I was in

      For anyone who gives a shyte
      Those three nights in August 89 saved some lives
      As I and some others were also supposed to be on the Marchioness that night

      A scéal for another time

      1. Orla Smith

        Yeah you’re right t just checked with the girls it was 91, still an impressionable 11-year old! Don’t know how they managed to get me in, I do remember them dressing me up and putting make up on me. Either the bouncers were duped or they just felt sorry for me!

  27. :-Joe

    Auld main drag, fiesta, brown eyes.. the list goes on and on far too long to pick a winner…

    Meanwhile, there is this kind of stuff too…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iUEwB4ME3I
    – Interesting story about this collaboration in the doco linked below…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ez61mxRLFbw
    -Good aul oirish establismentarianism gets pat to do the trial by tv…..

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOu6PbfLO1g
    -Great doco by the bbc(sadly the brits appreciated him more worthy of attention than rte)

    Great post and a good reminder of a somehow still living legend.

    99% proof etc.

    :-J

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