Artist: Shane MacGowan
Genre(s):
Folk
Discography:
The Crock Of Gold
Year: 1997
Tracks: 17
The Snake
Year: 1994
Tracks: 12
A surpassing singer/songwriter and two-fisted gutter poet whose infamous sottish doings, stinky teeth and drug-fueled excesses often threatened to occult his reputation as a performer, Shane MacGowan was born on Christmas Day, 1957 in Kent, England. Within months, his home returned to their native Ireland, where he spent the first base respective eld of his life immersed in the traditional music of the Irish culture. When MacGowan was six, the family touched to London; in that location his talents as a writer gradually blossomed, and he won a number of poetry contests prior to his projection from schoolhouse at the age of 14 for ownership of drugs. In 1976, he attended his first base Sex Pistols concert, and quickly became a regular at local punk shows; he before long formed his possess band, the Nipple Erectors (renamed the Nips later on cathartic their 1978 debut single "King of the Bop"). Despite finding a mentor in the Jam's Paul Weller, the Nips were for the most part unsuccessful, and disbanded in late 1980; MacGowan so took a chore in a record storage, now and then filling in with his admirer Spider Stacy's stripe the Millwall Chainsaws.
When the Chainsaws shortly split up as well, MacGowan and Stacy formed the Pogues -- originally dubbed Pogue Mahone, Gaelic for "osculation my piece of tail" -- along with accordionist James Fearnley, bassist Cait O'Riordan, guitar player Jem Finer, and drummer Andrew Rankin. Hot-wiring traditional Irish music with the energy and passionateness of punk, the Pogues chop-chop developed into ane of the to the highest degree well-thought-of and colourful bands of their epoch, scoring a number of U.K. hits including "A Pair of Brown Eyes" and "Fairy story of New York" and recording such superb LPs as 1985's Elvis Costello-produced Rum, Sodomy and the Lash and 1988's If I Should Fall From Grace With God. However, as stories of MacGowan's voracious appetence for alcoholic drink and drugs swelled to mythological proportions, he grew increasingly undependable, often missing live performances (including a series of 1988 dates hatchway for Bob Dylan). By the fall of 1991, the other Pogues had eventually had enough, and he was dismissed from the band. As MacGowan's imbibition problem worsened, many feared for his life; apart from a 1992 duet with Nick Cave on "What a Wonderful World," he was largely silent for several years, making only the occasional bibulous concert or tv set appearance. In 1994, however, he silenced critics by pulling himself together to form a young band, the Popes; after making a fitting St. Patrick's Day debut carrying into action at a London taphouse, the mathematical group -- which likewise included guitar player Paul McGuinness, bassist Berni France, drummer Danny Pope, tenor banjoist Tom McAnimal, guitar player Kieran 'Mo' O'Hagan and whistle histrion Colm O'Maonlai -- entered the studio to commence recording their first LP, dubbed The Snake. "Haunted," a gorgeous duet with Sinead O'Connor, later became a minor hit; McGowan's followup, Lonesome Highway, appeared in 1997.
