18th of December: Ode to Shane MacGowan
Dear readers, So what does 18th of December mean to you? Yes, you. Is it your birthday, or that of a loved one or friend? Do you know someone that died that day? Is it a significant day in your relationship? Did you meet someone, marry someone, divorce someone, or dare I say it, murder someone? Maybe it’s the date of a Christmas nativity. Maybe you smashed it, maybe you buggered it and it gives you childhood trauma. Damn it. Tell me what it means to you, the 18th of December. It’s a random date in the 365 of them in a year to throw at you, I know. It’s 7 days before Santa Claus comes to make or break the festive season. Either that’s going through your mind, or God knows what else, but I doubt the date means that much. Com’on, you eejit. Where’re you going with this? Well, reader, yes, 18th December is very dear to me. It is actually the night that the Pogues used to come to Birmingham, for what I think was the best part of a decade, to perform their Christmas concerts. For the lack of a better term to adequately express my emotion, it moved me to my very core. I jigged in the mosh pit with the rest of the fraggles and psychopaths, glasses of beer and piss thrown in the air, while everyone sang along to Shane MacGowan’s growl. I’d arrive home with a strong whiff of the worse side of human life. I cared not, though, despite the looks and giggles from family members. I saw them in three different years: 2001, 2009 and 2010, always on the 18th. I can’t remember the name of the venues. I can’t remember how many months in advance I bought the tickets. But I remember counting down the days to the night of the concert, like foreplay before the climax, and the thrill was always worth it, especially to hear the Fairytale of New York at the end. The Pogues – which means the kisses in gaelic – shortened from Poguemahone, which means kiss my arse. They were punk and folk and they were explosive on stage, just as much as their melodies and lyrics. They formed in the 80s and went on into the 90s, but without their frontman and main songwriter, Shane MacGowan, after he was fired for drug and drink dependency. Yet the band regrouped in the 2000s to do the aforementioned Christmas concerts. I can’t remember the whole story of how the band formed, but they were a wonderful mix of talented of Irish and English musicians. They wrote of Ireland and London and love and politics with such furious devotion…it wet-fish slapped me into understanding the power of music and literature at such a young age, and brought so much inspiration into my own attempts in the creative arts. I doubt I will ever see them live again. It definitely won’t be with Shane MacGowan. He passed away on 30th November of this year. The Gods insisted he be born on Christmas Day of 1957, and creative Gods helped him co-write probably the most iconic Christmas song in the English language, the song I mentioned in the previous paragraphs, the Fairytale of New York. Ironically, the song became something of a poison chalice in the eyes of Shane. He apparently came to loathe it, and you can understand why when everyone is singing it every Christmas. For the millions, it became their favourite Christmas song. Without doubt, it became mine. The broadway melody mixed with melancholic lyrics, focusing on lost dreams, lost hope, and a toxic relationship. Saying that, it’s not my favourite Pogues song, although it was the first I heard of theirs when my mum and dad used to play it at Christmas when I was young. I really got into Pogues in my teenage years and early 20s and they became a constant in my life, wired into my brain and became part of who I am, as idolism has the power of doing. It was the punk and hedonism that attracted me, the rebellion and storytelling, the lyrics that would suckerpunch my imagination and emotions and make me jump or jig or reflect. I put him up there with the best for his storytelling: James Joyce, Brendan Behan, and Roddy Doyle. But melodies…the damn melodies. I went through a period of trying to get my hands on every piece of merch available before the internet became a thing…the posters, tshirts, and every book ever written about him. I loved the man. I just didn’t get a chance to meet him. I feel more than blessed to have seen him live though. The day he died wasn’t much of a shock, sadly. I don’t want to repeat what millions have said about him “living close to edge that it is a surprise he made it to 65”. His hedonistic ways could be seen in his disheveled hair and disjointed teeth. However, I’d been following him on social media in the previous months of his final day, and I had witnessed he was in acutely bad health. Pneumonia beat him in the final round. Now he’s up there dancing and singing with Kirsty McColl. He was more than his hedonistic lifestyle. He was a romantic, a rebel, a poet, as well as being spiritual, with a fierce sense of humour, quite shy and eloquent. He wrote about dabbling in drugs and prostitution in his early years in London, as well as having part of his ear bitten off at a concert. The absurdities and madness followed him. I can only take what I know of him through documentaries and literature. There was more to him than his rep. He wanted to make Irish music popular, and he certainly did that. The Thatcher government knew of his popularity and saw it as a threat, banning a couple of his songs. He threw everything at