36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Nine: Waxie's Dargle by The Pogues

Since I haven't purge all my celtic music from St. Patrick's Day, there are still some vestigal Irish rock and punk songs in my rotation....which is why we're discussing The Pogues.

Man, I love The Pogues.

Has there been a more authentic Celtic Punk band? While I have discussed my love for other Celtic Punk and Rock bands before--most notably The Dropkick Murphys--this is the source from which my love of all other Celtic bands flows. And what makes this loose collection of musicians (the official website provides bios for twelve recognized members, as well as three honorary members who passed on) were true to their Irish heritage while embracing the music forms of the future and the forms of other countries. I would always grab a new Pogues album off the racks with the anticipation of a child on Christmas morning, not sure what I was going to get--and these guys didn't disappoint. Where else could you find traditional Celtic songs, ghost stories, tributes to classic 60's pop groups, and festive latin rave-ups all on the same album?

This is Shane MacGowan with his fiance'.  You have no excuse
for not having a girlfriend.

This is from Red Roses For Me, their first album. This is the 'classic' iteration of the band, fronted by The Toothless Wonder Shane MacGowan. The song is a Pogue-ified version of a traditional Irish drinking song. Apparently, Waxie's Dargle refers to an annual get together originally held as part of the Donnybrook Fair, and the song is a simple tale of a woman who is trying to raise money to go to the titular event. Our POV character is recounting her woes to a friend--and is being rather vigorously rushed by the owner of the bar in which they're talking. It's not an earth-shaking tale by any means, just an excuse to have something to sing while drinking. But damn if the energy of the vocals and the uptempo playing of the group doesn't make it seem like something more. And even if it isn't--it's certainly got a beat, and I can dance to it.

The Pogues sputtered out after a split over ideologies with MacGowan, producing two albums before breaking up completely....and then reuniting in 2001 as a sporadic touring group. I kind of wish they were still recording so I can get that same thrill of discovery whenever they decide to put out a new album. Still, I'm grateful I still have a chance to see them before I die.

Here's a live performance from 2005.

　

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Seven: Time To Go by Dropkick Murphys

This may be the single most Bostonian photo I have ever
posted...

Well, it's March, which means it's time for another visit to my favorite Celtic rock band of all time, the Dropkick Murphys.

I've written about the Murphys before, discussing a song from the first album to feature Al Barr as lead vocalist. This song is from the third featuring Barr, Blackout, and it's a love letter to the Boston Bruins.

....which doesn't surprise me, truth be told. A quick look at the Murphys' history will show the band's love of their local sports teams--this is the band that reached national notoriety when they were asked to record the Red Sox anthem 'Tessie' for the 2004 season, after all. But they seem to have a particular love for the world's fastest sport. Back in 1999, they recorded a song called 'I Had Enough' for a tribute album to that ubiquitous hockey film, Slapshot, and other songs have been featured on the soundtrack to EA Sports' NHL line of video games.

What I like the most about this particular song is how it's actually a song about being a fan. Yeah, there's the cheering for 'Black and Gold' at the beginning, but the bulk of the song tries to capture the experience of leaving work, getting together with your pals, and taking the subway to root for your team. It's the perfect song to get yourself all worked up for some action, propelled fully by a riotous melody that benefits from its own chaotic nature. It's definitely one of the things I feel I can hand a non-sports fan to give them an understanding of why sports is important to so many people--myself included. And while that stupid lockout that closed down the NHL for an entire season cooled my ardor for a sport I used to love, this song does remind me what I saw in it in the first place.

The Murphys are still a Boston institution, and are touring right now in support of Going Out In Style: Fenway Park Bonus Edition, which couples their concept album from last year with a live concert CD recorded at the Mecca of Baseball.

Here's the song merged with photos of The Boston Bruins in action.

40 Songs, 40 Days (2011 Edition), Day Nine: Devil's Brigade by The Dropkick Murphys

Tonight....one of my favorite bands, and definitely my favorite Celtic band--and I owe my discovery of them to The Boston Red Sox.

Here's the deal--as I may have mentioned elsewhere, I am a native New Yorker who was driven a long time ago (thanks to a combination of things, most importantly my repulsion at the sense of entitlement the bulk of New York Yankee fans have, the way the Wilpons just will not run the Mets with any sense of coherence and my need to follow a sports team with an actual legacy, as opposed to stealing a legacy from the Los Angeles Dodgers) to become a Boston Red Sox fan...which did mean a lot of suffering as the Yankees beat our asses time and time again. All the pain fetish objects were in place--Buckner, Dent, etc.

And then in 2004, when I was watching the abberation that was ESPN's Cold Pizza in the mornings before going to work, I learned about this band called The Dropkick Murphys, who had been contracted by the Sox organization to rework the team's old rally song, 'Tessie' for play at the games.

I trust we all know what happened in 2004, right?

I really liked what I heard. I may only be one seventh Irish (don't ask), but I've always had an affinity for Celtic Rock--Hell, there was a period in my younger days, when I was running around with a crazy Turkish girl who would tease my co-workers with stories of being a virgin before going home with me, stripping naked and letting me do whatever evil thing I wanted to her perfect body, where I followed the New York based Celt-Rock combo Black 47. I don't know if it's because of my partial heritage, or because I respond to the unique sounds of the instrumentation, but it's one of my favorite musical genres. And in the Dropkicks, I found a band that combined my love of that genre, my Boston-filic tendencies, and a general attitude I dug.

This song is from The Gang's All Here, the band's second album, and the first to feature Al Barr on vocals. Barr's voice is rougher than original vocalist Mike McColgan (who left the band to become a firefighter--how much more Boston can you get?), but he's also got that raw emotionalism that I respond to in other vocalists I've discussed in this series in the past, like Dickie Betts and Joe Jackson. It makes a lot of their songs--which at turns paints pictures of living poor, political activism and strange, electrified recreations of classic Irish standards--more vital, breathing a battered life into them that many other Celt-Rock bands just can't get right.

The song itself is both a morality play and a tragedy--it addresses a young man who has allowed the easy avenues of crime to dictate his path...but because he refused to dig in and find 'the strength within,' he's now become part of 'The Devil's Brigade,' which are marching him toward a fate that will lead him lying in the gutter, shot or insensate. It's an unvarnished, loud, confrontational song that hides the poetry in its heart with an unsentimental sense of reality. Nowhere does the singer blame other ills--yes, he says, this world you're living in is pretty nasty, but you chose not to rely on yourself and rise above...and now whatever promise you had has been torn apart.

The band didn't make a video for this song...here's a performance from Al's first gig with the band....