Hey it’s a new Pogues album.Well not quite but almost!!
A collection of Pogues non-album B-sides from the bands tenure on the famed Stiff Records label including greats like ‘A Rainy Night In Soho’ and ‘The Band Played Waltzing Matilda’, as well as lesser know greats like ‘Shanne Bradley’ (B-side to ‘Fairytale Of New York’), and a whole host of trad Irish Folk covers like The Irish Rover and Mountain Dew both featuring The Dubliners and ‘The Parting Glass’, ‘Whiskey You’re The Devil’, ‘Muirshin Durkin’ and ‘The Leaving Of Liverpool’ amongst others.
Pressed on vinyl for the first time exclusively for RSD 2023.
It doesn’t take a genius to work out that if you’re a record label and you want to sell records that to mine the vaults of the music you already own the rights to is a cheap and easy way to do it. It’s been seventeen years since The Pogues released an original studio album (and twenty-three since they did one with Shane at the helm) but the releases continue to trickle out with various live and greatest hits albums over the years. At least 2020 saw something with a bit of originality with the BBC Sessions 1984-86 Record Store Day release capturing The Pogues in their early days at their most energetic and vibrant. So is their much left to mine?
Well it seems not with the release of The Stiff Records B-Sides 1984-1987. Of course the music is immense and anything that gets you listening to The Pogues again is worthwhile but why is the whole Poguetry In Motion EP included, especially as it received its own Record Store Day release back in 2015. As far as I’m aware everything here has been released before though perhaps maybe not on vinyl. The sound quality is superb and at around fifty minutes I’m sure the decision to make this release a double vinyl wasn’t influenced by the chance to charge upwards of £50 for it. The album sleeve features a nice photo of the bhoys and ghirl but with what looks a lot like a photo shopped Andrew Ranken! Needless to say the music is fantastic and I bet there’s plenty bands who would love to have A let alone B-sides of this quality. From ‘The Band Played Waltzing Matilda’ that backed their debut single to the Irish Rover single of 1987 with the Dubliners it’s all incredible stuff so it is at least a great place to have these songs together… and of course the door is left ajar for a further collection of B-sides right through to Hell’s Ditch and the Shaneless years.
Record Store Day is now into it’s 16th year of promoting and celebrating independent music and record shops and now back to a single day again, April 22. More details from recordstoreday.com and recordstoreday.co.uk for a full list of exclusive, limited-run, RSD First releases with participating record stores in both the United States and the U.K.
Side A
1. ‘The Band Played Waltzing Matilda’ (Eric Bogle)
B-Side of ‘Dark Streets Of London’ (Stiff Records BUY 207, Originally Pogue Mahone PM-1)
2. ‘Repeal Of The Licensing Laws’ (Spider Stacy)
B-Side of ‘The Boys From The County Hell (Stiff Records BUY 212)
3. ‘The Parting Glass’ (Trad, Arr. Pogues)
B-Side of ‘Dirty Old Town (Stiff Records BUY 229)
4. ‘A Pistol For Paddy Garcia’ (Jem Finer)
B-Side of ‘Dirty Old Town’ (Stiff Records BUY 229)
Side B
1. ‘Whiskey You’re The Devil’ (Trad, Arr. Pogues)
B-Side of ‘A Pair Of Brown Eyes’ (Stiff Records BUYIT 220)
2. ‘Muirshin Durkin’ (Trad, Arr. Pogues)
B-Side of ‘A Pair Of Brown Eyes’ (Stiff Records BUYIT 220)
3. ‘The Wild Rover’ (Trad, Arr. Pogues)
B-Side of ‘Sally MacLennane’ (Stiff Records BUYIT 224)
4. ‘The Leaving Of Liverpool’ (Trad, Arr. Pogues)
B-Side of ‘Sally MacLennane’ (Stiff Records BUYIT 224)
Side C
1. London Girl (Shane MacGowan)
2. ‘A Rainy Night In Soho’ (Shane MacGowan)
3. ‘The Body Of An American’ (Shane MacGowan)
4. ‘Planxty Noel Hill’ (Jem Finer)
1-4 Poguetry In Motion EP (Stiff Records BUY 243)
Side D
1. ‘The Irish Rover’ (feat. The Dubliners) (Trad, Arr. The Dubliners, The Pogues)
The Pogues & The Dubliners – The Irish Rover (Stiff Records BUY 258)
2. ‘The Rare Ould Mountain Dew’ (feat. The Dubliners) (Trad, Arr. The Dubliners, The Pogues)
The Pogues & The Dubliners – The Irish Rover (Stiff Records BUY 258)
3. ‘The Battle March Medley’ (Terry Woods)
B-Side of ‘Fairytale Of New York’ (Pogue Mahone Records/Stiff Records NY 12)
4. ‘Shanne Bradley’ (Shane MacGowan)
B-Side of ‘Fairytale Of New York’ (Pogue Mahone Records/Stiff Records NY 12)
RSD (Record Store Day) exclusive release * Released 22/04/2023 * Catalogue Number 0190296503221 * Limited to 6500 copies on black and green marbled vinyl *
Available from Rough Trade * Banquet Records * Juno Records among others. Search on e-bay for availability and to price check.
He immediately disagreed and said to them they had just taken apart what the Dubliners and reassembled it just a little differently. He continued that he thought a lot of punk was like that. Taking things apart and putting them back together, just differently. He cited the Dropkick Murphys as very Punk, with the truly loud roaring guitars that sound, especially on their early records, in my opinion sounding like a mashup of the Buzzcocks melody and Washington hardcore intensity.
Our enormous thanks to Ray Ball. He has already featured on these pages as the driving force behind The Fighting 69th and his new band Ravenswalk from Buffalo. One of the most prolific and diverse artists in the Celtic-Punk scene we are proud to have Raymond on board our team. Writer, artist, musician he is a credit to the American-Irish community and you can find a wealth of his material available at his 
As it’s Amy’s birthday the drinks are flowing and the bar is getting another makeover by way of London Celtic Punks stickers 
We are pleased to welcome Séan Cregan to our ‘roster’ of London Celtic Punks writers. Séan is a second-generation London-Irish boy through and through. Lived here all his days and has absolutely no interest in ever moving away. “A man who is tired of London is tired of life” said someone once. He is currently in the process of writing his autobiography of a life well lived. His previous works include 24/7 – Prison Poems From An Anti-Fascist still available from 
I continued studying and began my recording engineering company, he wanted to be the “Booking agent and promoter” of Life of Strife. He wanted me to call it like that because it used to be the name of his own record label back in the USA. I added the “productions” so let’s say that it was teamwork. Along with that, and thanks to him, I also met my partner in crime, my other half, the woman I am in love with, after calling Raskass to see if he knew about booking a last-minute gig for our first tour, even though, Matt and Diala knew each other while he was touring with Total Chaos.
Once again we asked the brilliant 
Our short series on the songs of Andy Nolan continues today with another five of Andy’s masterpieces. As a past member of Shane MacGowan And The Popes and Spider Stacy’s Vendettas he has a great musical legacy but it’s as accordion player and songwriter for London Irish musical tour-de-force The Bible Code Sundays that Andy’s songs have defined a generation. The words to these songs are now known and sung by fans across the world and their influence is immeasurable with many bands trying to capture the Bible Codes sound. No band since The Pogues have helped define what it is to be London Irish and it is a common feeling on watching The Bible Code Sundays that these songs speak directly to the heart of the listener and encompass the same feelings and much of the same upbringing and beliefs that we had too! As we said before Andy is also a talented screenwriter, artist, producer and author. He was born in Hammersmith, West London surrounded by immigrants from across the world and, of course, a more than healthy contingent from Ireland but as you can see here from his songs about Irish-America he knows the Irish diaspora very well. Among his many achievements are the short films 
menace in the chorus from his associates who wish to lure him to his death:
Fire Department of New York – but from the words of one son, a US marine, who finds himself behind enemy lines during the Iraq war. Just before he dies he recalls how he lost his father and brothers in 9/11 and longs to be back with his wife and children in his native Queens. No one has a monopoly on grief, but 9/11 hit New York’s Irish community hard. The Irish were the rock on which the FDNY and NYPD were built during their inception many years ago and sons traditionally followed their fathers and grandfathers into the ranks of the fire department and police – a tradition still prevalent to this day. When everyone else was running out of the Twin Towers, these guys along with their Italian, Puerto Rican and black American brothers were running in.
from 1832, thousands of Irishmen jumped into the swamps & dug in a straight line towards the lake. Many of them had been tricked by cotton brokers back in Liverpool that they were being transported to Philadelphia, Boston or New York which by now were already overflowing with poor Irish immigrants. Yellow fever and unforgiving heat ravaged workers in the swamps of Louisiana therefore the loss of black slaves doing such work was judged too expensive. As a result most of the work was carried out by Irish laborers who could easily be replaced at no cost with more and more now arriving by the boatload on a daily basis. Many were buried without a grave marker in the levee and roadway-fill beside the canal itself.
The melody instrumental throughout the song is taken from ‘My Lagan Love’ – an old traditional Irish song and I wanted the finished version to have that ‘She Sells Sanctuary’ vibe by The Cult – full of swagger and attitude!
from Ballymote, County Sligo who witnessed at first hand the plight of his own people in a very hostile and anti-Irish city of Glasgow. All soup kitchens in the city at the time were established by the Church of Scotland and in order to receive a meal there, the newly arrived, hungry Irish Catholics were ordered to denounce their own faith and convert to Protestantism before receiving it. Brother Walfrid, along with a group of fellow Irishmen including John McLaughlin, John Glass, John O’Hara and Willie Maley (and with the help of Hibernian FC who had already similarly been established in Edinburgh by Irish immigrants) immediately stepped in and formed a charitable football club in St. Mary’s Church in the Calton to stop this cruel exploitation of Irish refugees –
Heavyweight Champion of the World back in 1935. The man he beat, Max Baer and nicknamed ‘The Killer’, had already killed Frankie Campbell in the ring while the mauling he dished out to Ernie Schaaf would contribute to his death five months later. Braddock was born in the Irish slum of Hells Kitchen, NYC until his family moved to Bergen, New Jersey. He came from a long line of fiercely tough Irish American boxers who at one stage ruled supreme in the early days of the noble art – John L Sullivan, Gene Tunney, Billy Conn, ‘Philadelphia’ Jack O’Brien, ‘Gentleman’ Jim Corbett, Tommy Loughran, ‘Terrible’ Terry McGovern and Jack Dempsey to name but a few. Forever the people’s champion but a huge underdog nonetheless, Braddock spectacularly beat Baer in a bruising 15 round battle to become the Heavyweight Champion of the World. He held onto the crown until he was beaten by a young Joe Louis in 1937.
The book is a curiosity, with Pyke and Hewitt ably capturing the essence of The Pogues, a band that straddled tradition and iconoclasm, sartorial decorum and drunken disorder, gregarious sociability and taciturn sensitivity. It also marks the moment where the group turned to the US, of which ‘Fairytale Of New York’ was also a product. The band soon realised there was a huge diaspora (and non-diaspora) following Stateside to play to and nowadays, with appearances on countless soundtracks, including, most famously The Wire, The Pogues are arguably more synonymous with Irish America than the London Irish. Unfortunately there was not to be much more of it. The Pogues and Shane would be together for only one more album, 1990’s Hell’s Ditch. Shane’s drinking, already the stuff of contemporary lore, was making him increasingly unreliable and at times incapable of performing. The end came in September 1991 during a tour of Japan when the rest of the band sacked him. Neither party ever performed as well again (though it can be argued the quality of The Pogues’ own music had begun to fall off after the peak of 1988’s If I Should Fall from Grace with God). The Pogues, now fronted by long-time number two Spider Stacy, released two anemically directionless albums in the 1990’s but continued to successfully tour in the States.
This is the song that changed everything for me! I wrote this in the mid 00’s and by the reactions I got performing it in folk clubs, I knew I had to start taking my song writing more seriously and do some proper recordings of my songs. Growing up in London when it wasn’t great being Irish and narrowly escaping two IRA bombings- first in Selfridges 1974 and then the Wimpy Bar in 1981. I lived a mile from Marble Arch and so Oxford Street was where my mate Sean and I would go to play out on a Saturday. On both of the above occasions, we had got home to see the devastation on the News! Not only had we walked passed the Wimpy Bar on that day, but we had actually been inside Selfridges, just before we got the bus home. I could never relate the lovely kind Irish people that I had met and was related too, with the kind of people that could commit these acts of cruel violence. As I got older I started to understand it a little better and was finally able to articulate how I felt about it in a song. I have to credit my Sister Anne for verse three. When she was visiting a friend in Ulster at the height of the Troubles, she was advised if anyone asked her religion she was just to reply ‘I’m not one of them’ in order to stay safe and neutral.
Originally called ‘Sadder Than Asda’ was written in the mid 90’s when I was on a painting and drawing course to get an extra £10 benefit on my giro. To get out of the studio on the outskirts of Norwich and get a bit of lunch, we’d visit a huge Asda superstore opposite. I had also started working on music with a band and we were considering names for the band. While chatting with my fellow Art students and shopping in Asda, one of my friends suggested that I should call the band Fountain Head after the cheap fizzy water sold in Asda. I put it to the band and they loved it, so that’s what we were called for our 2 year existance. When I wanted an interesting title for a song I’d written and I played the tearjerker to them some one suggested ‘Sadder Than Asda’, and like the band name, it stuck until I recorded and renamed it ‘You’re Not Here’ in 2017. Originally, recorded on a 12 string acoustic guitar that was removed completely when Kerry Selwin sprinkled her magic on the ivories. I spent a bit of time making this little video for it which is filmed in Balham, South West London where my parents rented a flat and lived for 20 years until my dad died. The shots of me watching TV and sitting by the window were done just before the TV and furniture were sold and the flat was handed back to the landlord.
1. 
years so it just makes it all the more clear how much we all miss Waldo and his fantastic 
Back then, the general line on The Pogues was that they played punked-up, sped-up versions of Irish traditional music. Actually, on their first album (Red Roses For Me), I suppose that’s not too inaccurate. I never got especially hot and bothered about Red Roses, which was hard to find and I never heard until its 1988 re-release. Despite their boundless energy and good humor (especially Down In The Ground Where The Dead Men Go, which worked excellently for clearing out parties), it now sounds like demos for what would come later. By Rum, Sodomy And The Lash and the Poguetry In Motion EP, they’d found their true voice. The band had gelled into an endlessly inventive ensemble that could find each songs unique qualities and then make the most of them. MacGowan had turned into a brilliant, plainspoken songwriter and possibly even more brilliant singer, using his ragged voice and slurred phrasing as an instrument to express himself, much as any great blues or, yes, soul singer would. By If I Should Fall From Grace With God, they were even better; MacGowan’s writing became almost mythic, the band’s delivery almost cinematic in its sweep, building each number into a work of great drama and power; the sort of rare album without a single forgettable track.
Things went from bad to worse, as MacGowan simply went AWOL from the band’s US tour with Bob Dylan that fall. A Rolling Stone piece described MacGowan as a down-and-out drunk whose legendary habits had caught up with him. The Pogues seemed to fade from the scene.
Finally, 1995 brought The Snake, MacGowan’s first solo album with his new band, the vengefully named Popes. While there was much to like about The Snake, it lacked the greatness of his old band. The Popes could imitate The Pogues, but not duplicate them. Great bands depend on gestalt. The Popes simply lacked the kind of imagination and ambition to turn simple songs into full-blown epics (and The Pogues needed MacGowan’s inspiration to produce great work). Also the switching from straight rock rocked-up Pogues imitations was jarring and gave the album an inconsistent feel. Still, MacGowan remained a popular figure in the UK. As the Pogues quietly folded, he released Crock Of Gold in 1998.
The Howl Of The Underclasses is not all what I was expecting and I was very pleasantly surprised and they are now at the top of my list of bands to catch live. Capturing perfectly the filth, smoke and destitution of the city their was no happy ending for many in Victorian London but with a soundtrack of The Filthy Spectacula and an endless supply of Gin and Rum it would ease the pain a wee bit!
Well that’s the lyrical content dealt with. Musically it can be summed up very briefly as beautifully sparse, classy and clever arrangements with fantastic performances and musicianship by all concerned.
time fiddle player into their sound so if you’re interested then get in touch with them. The song is played at a slowish pace with touches of Eastern Europe and the sound is layered upon sound making this my favourite track from the album. A real slow burner of a song that builds and builds into something grand before slowing right down again. Next up is a re-recorded version of ‘Create’ from the 7″. This song has appeared in several forms but every time they take it away and fiddle with it it comes back better than before. The ska beat is back but not of the happy, giddy sort that gets on your wick! ‘No Thanks’ has a certain Anarcho-Punk influence and the, as ever, interesting lyrics speak of the selfishness of man I think.
The Nasty, Brutal And Short EP kicks off with the first of the original numbers ‘Just One Of Those Things’ and its a slow swirling number with fiddle and accordion leading the way while Hugh sings of lost love. He’s got a great voice and the Dublin accent now also has a wee bit of a Cockney twang about it! Next up is one of the best songs ever about the Irish on this side of the Irish sea. Written by Ewan MacColl (no stranger at all to these pages!) and made massively popular among the Irish diaspora chiefly by The Dubliners and then The Wolfe Tones. The song tells of the comical goings on among a gang of Irishmen digging the road up in Glasgow and laying the ‘Hot Asphalt’. Somewhere along the way a policeman falls in a pot of boiling asphalt and the gang cover up his death! Played in the same style as the Dubs the song is quick and catchy and dare I say it as almost as good a version as I have heard but for the best version of all time then check out New York cities 1916 and their version 
1. THE LAGAN- Let’s Do It Again
1. MARYS LANE- Wild Unknown 
A home grown band now hailing from the smugglers dens along the East Suffolk coastline of ye Olde Ipswich Towne they have come. With two critically acclaimed album’s behind them, 2011’s self-titled debut album on their own Rumrunner Records label and the follow up, 2013’s Seven Seas Of Sin they have been labelled quite appropriately as ‘Motorhead meets The Pogues’! A regular feature on the UK’s punk circuit and with regular headline appearances they are rapidly becoming one of this island’s better known punk bands. Similar in style to Pirate Copy from Kernow, who we featured in Part One of our Round-Up’s, in that while they have no Celtic instrumentation they do play in that style that is probably best known as Pirate-Punk that crosses into Celtic-Punk quite easily. So has the five year wait since the release of Seven Seas Of Sin been kind to them? Well you bet you last doubloon it has!!
We end Part Two with easily the most blatant Celtic of our releases today, the fourth album from Irish Stew Of Sindidun. Born in Belgrade, Serbia back in 2003 it’s been six years since their last album, New Tomorrow, was released so it’s been quite a long wait but worth it! On City Of Grigs they have never sounded so Irish! With ten songs and three traditional Irish covers, ‘Paddy’s Lamentation’, ‘Step It Out Mary’ and ‘Down By The Glenside’, that are well chosen and show the bands connection with Irish music goes well beyond that of just a covers band. These songs topics feature the three most important subjects in Irish music, emigration, rebellion and romantic tragedy! It’s indeed a shame we don’t more folk like Sindidun vocalist Bojan Petrovic back at home when he explains
Greetings From Another Land was recorded many miles from London at the Rockfield Studios in Monmouth, Cymru. The studio has in the past played host to such legends as Oasis, Joe Strummer, The Stone Rose’s and Queen. In fact it’s was here where Freddy Mercury wrote the epic song ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’! The EP kicks off with the rousing title-track ‘Greetings From Another Land’ where Mick’s voice sits snugly between fellow London-Irishmen Johnny Rotten and Shane MacGowan but still completely tuneful! The song takes the form of a message from one generation to the next about their experiences and the struggles they faced in emigrating to these shores.
They follow this up with ‘The Ballad Of John Joyce’, a song about vocalist Mick’s Grandad John Joyce from Connemara. Arriving in England from the Gaeltacht (where only Irish was spoken) with no English he got a job working down the coal mines in Wales, then to London and starting work and raising a family. It’s down to such legends in our lives that we are Irish. Here The Craicheads give it some Country’n’Irish with a snappy, catchy tune with Ben’s fantastic fiddle and tin-whistle moving it along nicely. It’s hard to imagine what he must have gone through to leave the green fields of home to go to work two miles underground. It literally must have seemed like another planet. On ‘Larry’s Song’ Mick tells the story of a man he worked with many moons ago. Like many of these long gone Irish over here, they all had a story to tell. A great hurler from Gort, Co Galway he helped the young Mick figure out what life was all about. His advice be sure to chase your dreams is truly good advice. The slowest song here though not quite a ballad but some lovely Irish folk played under Mick’s voice who proves he can still hit the notes when needed. A beautiful song with a strong and positive message. Class.
We’re rolling up to the end and the curtain comes down on Greetings From Another Land with ‘Leave Me Alone’ and The Craicheads go out in style with a knockabout Poguesy Celtic-Punk number. Telling the story of a man looking for a bit of peace and quiet away from it all down the boozer who won’t be left alone. Yeah there is still a trace of country still in there but its fast and furious and a great way to end things. Four new songs that are knocked out with power, passion and pride and it would be criminal if The Craicheads were confined to the pubs of London town. We will keep you posted as to when the full length album will be delivered but we must never forget that we built the roads, schools, hospitals (and staffed them too), tubes and plenty more besides in London and we have a not too shabby musical legacy to be proud of as well.
Their umpteenth UK tour begins a week today on Sunday 2nd December in good auld London town at the Shepherds Bush Empire and we get to do it all again the following day except this time with London Irish Celtic-Punk band The Lagan opening the show. Following London the tour heads to Scotland and Glasgow before coming back to England and Newcastle, Bristol, Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham, Oxford, before the final night in Bournemouth with Black Water County in tow. Back in the summer tour sponsors Fireball organised Fuelling The Fire in north London, a fantastic play-off for nine bands (including the best Celtic-Punk bands of the South of England) and the prize for the three bands chosen was to open shows on the tour in Bournemouth, Bristol and London. In the end Black Water County, The Run-Up and, London’s very own, The Lagan won, but with commiserations to Mick O’Toole who we thought were robbed and to further rub salt into the wound their van broke down on the way home to Swindon! Similar ‘play-offs’ were held around the country for all the gigs on the tour giving some unknown bands a great chance to showcase themselves. Well done to Fireball! Tickets for dates on the tour are unbelievably cheap. Remarkably only £15 for all the dates. The last time I paid £15 for a gig at the Shepherds Bush Empire must be well over a decade ago! Fireball will be offering special drink promotions on the night too so your wallet won’t feel the strain too much. Be warned though a couple of dates have already sold out so hurry and get your tickets as soon as you can!
before Tim joins in with an instrument you may not know until you hear it, the melodica. It’s a wind instrument with a small keyboard on top that you blow into that makes a sound pitched somewhere between a harmonica and a clarinet. The song itself is pretty damn catchy and Tim’s laid back vocals fit perfectly (they are The Disinclined after all) as the song builds while the lads still manage to sound super laid back about it all. On the other song, ‘Create’, two versions have appeared with this one re-mixed with fiddle and is far superior. Beginning with a ska beat but not of the happy, giddy sort that can get on your wick, or mine anyway! As you can imagine from a band that manages to squeeze the line
Ireland has no shortage of talented singer-songwriters, and never has had to be honest, and among the most talented the name James McGrath is up at the top of the list. Hailing from Nenagh in the north of Tipp James has a voice that has been compared to both Neil Young and Eddie Vedder and the songwriting skills of the legendary Shane MacGowan. Live At The Shed is his third EP release and showcases James live at Shed Studios in the once heavily Irish enclave of Enfield in north London. Just him and his guitar and no knobs twiddled or fiddled about with to change anything. James exciting and passionate live performance transfers onto this recording so well and his warmth shines through. He has already tasted success at home in Ireland when his track ‘8 Cans’ from The Cans EP hit the #1 spot in last years Irish Download charts.
James has released a fine EP and his humour, passion and sincerity shine through and if like me you can’t wait to see him live in concert we will get our chance in just a couple of weeks at the EP’s official launch night at The Swallow Bar in Uxbridge. James favourite venue a packed, fun, lively night is in store and to top it all off it’s free entry as well. He takes the stage at 9pm and you can find the FB event 
