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Extra.ie
05-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Extra.ie
40 years ago today: The Pogues released Rum Sodomy & The Lash
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Rum Sodomy & The Lash, we're diving into the Hot Press archives to bring you some special reflections on The Pogues' seminal second album… The Pogues had already started a ruckus with their debut Red Roses For Me, in which Shane MacGowan retooled Irish pub jukebox favourites and rambunctious trad in his own inimitable style. But the band's second album, produced by Elvis Costello, showcased the singer's extraordinary talents as a balladeer and songwriter. Songs like 'Sally MacLennane' and 'A Pair Of Brown Eyes' imbued Irish balladry with the grimy patina of the 20th-century London-Irish experience. 'The Sick Bed Of Cuchulainn' mixed mythology with dipsomania, while 'The Old Main Drag' chronicled the life and times of a homeless rent boy (later used to great effect over the closing credits of Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho). 'Shane has the gift, I believe him. He knows how to tell a story. They're a roaring, stumbling band. These are the dead-end kids for real. 'Shane's voice conveys so much. They play like soldiers on leave. The songs are epic. It's whimsical and blasphemous, seasick and sacrilegious. Wear it out and then get another one.' 'I came in half way through Rum Sodomy & the Lash so I have a peculiar relationship with it. As an album, it was really the point where all this expected greatness of Shane MacGowan as a songwriter came to fruition. Shane allowed his songwriting to define the record pretty much. That was an essential. 'With Costello producing, it was also interesting. You know he was producing the album while at the same time falling in love with The Pogues' bass player. So there was all that energy going on. It made for a positive environment. 'That's not to say there wasn't tension. Elvis's vision of what The Pogues should sound like wasn't always the same as The Pogues' vision. I think, though, why Elvis was right for the job at the time was because he recognised that the best way to do it was to record the band live with minimal production. His view was to get the performances out of the band. It's kind of extraordinarily under-produced in its sound, but that's exactly why. He didn't impose any production shit or gimmicks on it. He just got the right performances out of the band.'
Irish Independent
20-06-2025
- Politics
- Irish Independent
Letters: Some of the most profound aspects of Irishness are found far away from home
I've lived and worked in many places, and nowhere has that belief been more strongly confirmed than among the diaspora. In California, I met Irish-Americans with a better command of the Irish language than I ever had, who could dance reels and jigs as if born to it and were much better at Gaelic football than me. In Hawaii it was the same – people fiercely proud of their roots, even if their connection was two or three generations removed. While teaching in a Catholic school in London, I was struck by how much more connected to this heritage my pupils were than I felt myself. They knew their family townlands, said grace instinctively and sang rebel songs their parents had passed down. My London-Irish wife, whom I met in San Francisco, once shocked me by berating a woman on the Tube who had muttered something about 'drunken Irish on the train'. She showed more courage in that moment than I had ever displayed. And I'll never forget sitting on a boulevard in Buenos Aires wearing an Irish jersey, waiting for my wife to return from a salsa class. A woman walked past, saw the shirt, smiled and blew me a kiss. Mary Kenny is right: Irishness isn't a passport stamp. It's a cultural imprint, sometimes stronger abroad than at home. We may be a small nation, but wherever we go, we leave a presence – proud, persistent and unmistakably our own. Enda Cullen, Tullysaran Road, Armagh Explain all the arrests if Trump, Vance and Rubio are free-speech absolutists Ian O'Doherty ('Mam and Dad are arguing again, and we are the fearful child torn between the two', June 18) explores the different interpretations of 'free speech' in the EU and US and the possible economic implications for Ireland. He portrays Ireland and the EU as stuffy nanny states, duty-bound and hell-bent on protecting citizens from harmful or hateful speech. ADVERTISEMENT Meanwhile, the US is depicted as some divine, freedom-loving cowboy who doesn't mince his words and loves to shoot from the hip. Indeed, O'Doherty brands Trump loyalists Marco Rubio and JD Vance as 'free-speech absolutists'. Lest we forget, Rubio once dubbed Trump a 'con-artist' while Vance compared Trump with Hitler. Both men recently supported the arrest and detention of Columbia University students protesting against the indiscriminate Israeli campaign carried out across Gaza in response to the horrific Hamas attack of October 7. These guys are free-speech absolutists all right – especially when they are talking out of both sides of their mouths. Paddy Sharkey, Hollywood, Co Wicklow Israel-US food aid centres are death traps for the civilians of Palestine The Israel-US Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) was first registered last February, and its few food aid centres set up on May 26 in Gaza are described as death traps overseen by Israel's military and armed contractors. Last week, Jens Laerke, the UN spokesperson for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said the GHF 'is not delivering supplies safely to those in need' and the GHF was a 'failure' from a humanitarian point of view. Exhausted Palestinians who walk off the correct route to the GHF aid centres or linger too long in despair after aid runs out are shot at and killed daily. Tanks are also used to fire at civilians. These are supposed to be warning shots. The banning of international media from Gaza by Israel since the war began in October 2023 is a key factor as to why the war is so extreme. If, for example, the UK's Channel 4 News or US CBS News were in Gaza reporting on the war, it would have had a quicker impact on governments calling on Israel to end the targeting of civilians in the most miserable war of the 21st century. Experienced aid agencies run by the UN, UK and others have been more restricted in Gaza since last March. There are requests for the UN to be allowed fully back in to deliver aid safely. Israel has as much a right as any country to ensure its security, but daily, casual killings by the IDF of civilians in Gaza is truly reprehensible. I hope Hamas will release the remaining hostages they took into Gaza in October 2023. They, too, endure terrible conditions. Mary Sullivan, College Road, Co Cork If Kneecap member can be charged, why not those flying the UVF's flag? Hezbollah is a proscribed organisation, and Mo Chara of Kneecap was recently before Westminster Magistrates' Court charged with displaying a Hezbollah flag. The UVF is also an illegal organisation, but for years I have witnessed UVF flags in Armagh, fluttering on poles. UK law extends to the North of Ireland, and surely there is a contradiction in the application of the rules. Sheila Ward, Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan Vandalism unacceptable, but Micheál Martin's point simply does not hold water Taoiseach Micheál Martin has referred to the smearing of his constituency office with red paint as 'undemocratic'. Wilful damage to any property is unacceptable. Those who carry out such acts of vandalism should remember repair costs will eventually be borne by the taxpayer. However, many might say the Taoiseach is not following the wishes of the people by until now failing/refusing to enact the Occupied Territories Bill as approved by the Oireachtas. Michael Moriarty, Rochestown, Co Cork A strike on Iran's nuclear facility would be a disaster for everyone in the region US president Donald Trump may or may not join the Israeli military action in Iran by sending a 30,000- pound bomb to destroy Iran's nuclear facility under a mountain. Have any of the 'leaders' of the US or Israel considered the deadly effects of a strike on the uranium stocks in Iran, including the US assets, and the millions of innocent people in the Middle East? James J Ryan, Co Limerick
Times
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
The Pogues on life after Shane: ‘He wasn't always drunk. He worked hard'
It is hard to imagine the Pogues without Shane MacGowan. The writer of such lachrymose classics as A Pair of Brown Eyes, Sally MacLennane and, with Jem Finer, the seasonal standard Fairytale of New York embodied the spirit of the London-Irish band: the wildness, the booziness, the literary and poetic intent underlying it all. Yet here I am in my office in London Bridge with Finer and Spider Stacy, who founded the Pogues with MacGowan in 1982 and have resolved, in the wake of the singer's death in 2023, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of their classic album Rum Sodomy and the Lash with a global tour. Nobody could take the place of MacGowan, so Finer and Stacy have enlisted various singers from a
