Fact #170986
When:
Short story:
Ranting Irish folk group The Pogues play their first gig together.
Full article:
Spider Stacy (The Pogues) : I met Shane MacGowan standing in the urinal at the Roundhouse during a Ramones gig. He was talking about his fanzine, Bondage. I had been in a band called The New Bastards, who were the successors to The Bastards. I was the drummer, and I can't play drums to save my fucking life. By this time I had a band called The Millwall Chainsaws. I'd seen Shane on that famous front cover of Sounds, "Is this the face of '77?", and of course there'd been the ear lobe biting incident. He sort of shouted at me, "Are you having a good time?" So I went, "Er... yes, thank you.Ah, that's what it's all about then, isn't it?" he said, and then he disappeared.
Later on some friends of mine moved into a house where Shane was living in Burton Street in Bloomsbury, and I wound up moving in there as well. One day we were visiting a friend of ours called Cath Cinnamon, and Shane just picked up her acoustic guitar and started doing Paddy On The Railway really, really fast. It seemed like a brilliant idea, so obvious - doing Irish songs really quickly, and punked up. So we got this band together and played one gig as The New Republicans, but it was about 18 months before we did our first gig as Pogue Mahone, in October '82. Myself and Shane had been running through band names and Pogues Mahone - kiss my arse - just seemed to jump out. I think it was a phrase I'd picked up from Shane - that shows the sort of company I was keeping.
We got called all sorts of things. "Leprechaunabilly," that was Time Out, I think, or "The Dubliners on speed." I was playing the tin whistle, and whacking myself on the head and knee with the beer tray - that was another one of Shane's brilliant ideas - the combination of knee and skull blows, but it was really fucking painful. I gave up the beer tray eventually because I've got this allergy to certain types of metal. You're whacking yourself on the head with a dirty beer tray, and sweating, and I just had all these pimples on my forehead, not very appealing at all. Some beer trays were all right, they were quite thin and had quite good resonance, but others were just big chunks of metal. You hit yourself and suddenly it's next Wednesday.
At the first gig we ever did in Glasgow, we could see people going up to the bar and getting a pint of whatever and a tray, and just smashing each other round the head. Some of them couldn't get trays and all they had were these little metal ashtrays. BANG! - you know. Absolute mayhem.
(Source : not known)
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Later on some friends of mine moved into a house where Shane was living in Burton Street in Bloomsbury, and I wound up moving in there as well. One day we were visiting a friend of ours called Cath Cinnamon, and Shane just picked up her acoustic guitar and started doing Paddy On The Railway really, really fast. It seemed like a brilliant idea, so obvious - doing Irish songs really quickly, and punked up. So we got this band together and played one gig as The New Republicans, but it was about 18 months before we did our first gig as Pogue Mahone, in October '82. Myself and Shane had been running through band names and Pogues Mahone - kiss my arse - just seemed to jump out. I think it was a phrase I'd picked up from Shane - that shows the sort of company I was keeping.
We got called all sorts of things. "Leprechaunabilly," that was Time Out, I think, or "The Dubliners on speed." I was playing the tin whistle, and whacking myself on the head and knee with the beer tray - that was another one of Shane's brilliant ideas - the combination of knee and skull blows, but it was really fucking painful. I gave up the beer tray eventually because I've got this allergy to certain types of metal. You're whacking yourself on the head with a dirty beer tray, and sweating, and I just had all these pimples on my forehead, not very appealing at all. Some beer trays were all right, they were quite thin and had quite good resonance, but others were just big chunks of metal. You hit yourself and suddenly it's next Wednesday.
At the first gig we ever did in Glasgow, we could see people going up to the bar and getting a pint of whatever and a tray, and just smashing each other round the head. Some of them couldn't get trays and all they had were these little metal ashtrays. BANG! - you know. Absolute mayhem.
(Source : not known)