Pogue Mahone, Captain Ralf Dellhofen [unputdownable books txt] 📗

Just Look Them Straight in the Eye & Say Poguemahone!

It was in the year 1989. I had taken a glimpse on the first The Pogues LP´s owned by my older brother. He was a punk, i was a wave-punk. And so everything was fitting perfectly.

 

I liked all of the first Pogues LP´s. The band was founded at the beginning of the 80th by Peter "Spider" Stacy, Jem Finer and Shane MacGowan. And because my brother spent his money to buy the LP´s, i wasn´t forced to do that myself. He sometimes had stolen away LP´s from me and it was oddly enough, that he lost somehow some of his LP´s, i have taken away from him, in return. That´s what i call »retribution«.

 

I bought my first own The Pogues album, »peace and love«. I defended that album against my junkie-brother with my life. There was nothing with »peace and love« at that point!

 

Back in the late 80th Enya warbled her songs like an angel into the christmas heaven. And The Pogues were in contention of the best christmas song, with their »fairytale of new york«. The Irish are well known to be shrewd heads, concerning business, because of a constant poverty in the course of the centuries. Why not!

 

Some years later i still liked and listened to the music of The Pogues, because their music fitted perfectly to me. Enya was still sweet, but her music started to bore me. Nonetheless i defended her in my heart.

In 2001 i started to exchange letters with my friend, Gregory McCormick, Itchy of the band Shock Therapy. He was incarcerated in a michigan prison and i helped him to stay alive. We wrote to each other also about books and music. He had a lot of time to write, and my heart was open for a friend who needed to write. I wrote him, that i like Enya, somehow. And that i love The Pogues.

Gregory was a punkrock musician and well known to goth and the rest of the musicians world. Gregory liked Shane. He already met him backstage. Shane was to drunken, the evening they met, to talk much with him. Then Gregory sent me some handwritten lyrics of The Pogues song »streams of whiskey« enclosed in his prison letter, and painted a bottle of Bushmills for me.

 

Gregory didn´t liked Enya that much. He has spent a lot of time in Ireland, His grandpa was born in Ireland and Gregory was an American-Irish. He wrote me, that he is giving a flying shit about Enya. He would prefer a real punkrock girl. For him, Enya was something like »idyllic world music trash«. He offered me a deal. If i would be able to send him Björk, Jennifer Tilly or Milla Jovovich to prison, i could keep Enya. We was playing a kind of »happy families/quartett« game, with celebrity girls.

 

He suggested, that i could show Enya my »one eyed trouser python«. First i was a little bit upset about these words, but i started to find it funny after a while. What more could i do?

 

Some month after his release from prison, Gregory unfortunately died, but the memories live on, in more than 600 pages of prison letters, his handwritten prison diary and more than 80 paintings, he sent to me. And our love to The Pogues remain.

 

I needed seven years to free him from the prison, and wasted a lot of money for two bad working attorneys.

 

At that time before he died, in the beginning of the year 2000, i got unexpected help of Ingrid Knetsch, a close friend of Shane MacGowan and the band The Pogues. Ingrid is managing the official Shane MacGowan website. She helped Shane with an online-petition against an ex-management, Shane was in trouble with. I didn´t even know, what a petition is good for. I associated it with something political. And i was far away from being very political. I was more like a »radical left-wing« punk, who was able to open up a bottle of beer with the teeth and to puke on the roof of my apartment. I signed Ingrid´s petition to help Shane and Ingrid helped me to start my first own petition to help Gregory.

I sat there in my little apartment underneath the roof up to ten hours a day, six days a week, to help my friend go free from the michigan prison hell-hole. I was in great need of any help i could possibly get. Gregory and i were quite alone and forgotten very often. I never creeped in somebodies ass before, but i learned to do that for Gregory.

 

I was more than proud to see, that some of the members of The Pogues signed my petition to free Gregory too. And i was deeply grateful for Ingrid´s help.

 

I already wrote with Peter "Spider" Stacy in social networks like facebook and myspace. I never have had any contact with Shane, but i was happy to hear or read, that he is, at least, still alive.

 

Shane is companioned with two of the most sensitive personalities on earth, which care for him, their way. Sinéad O´Connor and Johnny Depp. Sinéad can be pretty awful to a lot of people outside of her world. But it is her own right to do so. Human beings, with an own opinion and view on the things in life, who open up their mouth loudly, so everybody in the fucking, rotten world can hear them, human beings with an excessive sensibility, are mostly uncomfortable and a target for attacks of other so called human beings. She always worried about Shane´s health condition. But hey, is it wrong to take care for a friend?

 

You can find new "friends" on each corner of the streets and celebrate a party with as much people as you like. but which of your friends will stay on your side, once the party is over? who is on your side, when you are feeling bad and lonely?

 

Johnny Depp helped Shane to stay youthful, while Shane helped Johnny how to curse and swear. And to be wild. Shane created the Pirate in Johnny Depp!

But The Pogues are not only Shane MacGowan, they have a more or less fix formation of musicians. Each of these musicians came into The Pogues at the beginning of the 80th. Some of them earlier, some of them later and completed the lineup. Each of these musicians has or have had own musical projects. Shane has his Nips, where James Fearnley was sometimes involved, Spider Stacy had The New Republicans (the former Millwall Chainsaws), Phil his Radiators from Space. And Darryl, Cait and Andrew are still on tour with their own projects, too.

 

There was also an allegation in the beginning of the press release, that The Pogues wasn´t even able to play their instruments, when they started the band. What a bullshit!

 

There was trouble sometimes, within the band, mostly because of Shane´s alcohol and drug addiction. I cannot judge him much for that, i was on alcohol (Gin, Absinth, Rum and Beer) for many many years. Some people simply like to drink alcohol, but they don´t think, that they are addicted to it. But Shane and the band found together again and again. That´s what i call »a real friendship«!

 

Some years, after my friend Gregory has passed away, i read an interview, Enya was giving to a magazine. She shared a joke and said, that she "prefer more the music of The Police than the funny drinking songs of The Pogues"!

 

That statement of my »princess« was a straight punch into my face! After i had broken all of Enya´s boring CD´s into little pieces, i threw it into the garbage, to make sure, that my romantically minded neighbor couldn´t use it in her CD-player. Didn´t she know, what she was talking about? Did she ever understand the music of The Pogues? It seems, that her sister, Máire, has known The Pogues far better! "Funny drinking songs"! The music of The Pogues is much more, than only "funny drinking songs". Their music is much more versatile and complex, than any of Enya´s compositions ever will be.

She is sitting in her castle, with her victorian dresses and isn´t able, mentally, to come back from her »breakfast at tiffanys«. Every year, right at christmas times, her producer, Nicky, release a best of album, with always the same synthesizer-chorale, and that´s all. She better should have stayed in Clannad!

 

The Pogues songs have so much more to offer to the audience. It is true, that Shane wrote most of the songs, but also Spider´s »Tuesday Morning« is, in my opinion, one of the best lovesongs i have ever heard. And the lyrical changes of the refrain, at the end of the song, is terrific. »Fairytale of New York« is still one of the best christmas songs around the globe, 30th years after its release. The song is straight and honest, hard and romantically, just like Shane´s spirit. It is no lovesong for the romantically contaminated dreamers, which only want to see and believe in an idyllic world, without seeing the problems behind it all.

 

Phil Chevron has done a real great job and honored all Irish people, especially the Irish emigrants who tried to find their luck in the United States, with his song »Thousands are Sailing« and »Misty Morning« is one of Jem Finer´s piece of art.

 

The songs of The Pogues are far away from being only »funny drinking songs«. Even people, which are not one hundred percent familiar into the english language will recognize, how damned poetically the lyrics are. They have punk, they have folk, they are irish-pirate-shanty, mexican-polka, romantically, wild, funny and rebellious. And these are only the first few things, which comes to my mind.

 

I will buy me no Pogues-CD for christmas this year, because i already have all of their albums anyway. The »Ultimate Collection« is running in my car on repeat since years, every day. I cannot get enough of it. Only sometimes i hear Enya in my car, but only for a couple of minutes, and only »Caribbean Blue« and »Orinoco Flow«. But i have to do it secretly, or else Gregory´s ghost will melt away the CD with the power of his spiritual anger and hate. Or Sinéad´s karma will beat the shit out of me.

 

Shane´s mother died on new years day, nearly one year ago. She was a sweet old soul and died in a car crash. She cannot be so proud with god, but with her son and Jem Finer, and their immortal christmas song.

 

I was traumatized the day, when my friend Gregory died, and i am still. It would break my heart to hear, that Shane probably would die prematurely, after Kirsty MacColl and Phil Chevron passed away far to young. I already lost Ronnie Drew, Barney McKenna and Eamonn Campbell. I don´t want to lose more friends!

 

This year, my junkie-brother and his girlfriend planned to visit a Sting-concert. He was too lazy to travel to the concert by train and so he asked me, if i would like to join them. His kind of deal was, to have me driving him to the concert hall with my car, and he would pay me a ticket for the Sting-concert. I have declined the deal with thanks!

 

Maybe i would like to visit Shane at the Boogaloo or to say »Hello« to Spider Stacy, but as far as i know, he is living in the United States by now. And i would like to lay down some flowers onto the bed of Kirsty, Phil, Ronnie, Barney, Eamonn and Brendan Behan.

And maybe, on that occasion, i would visit Enya. I would step in front of her castle moat, would lure her to the balustrade of the balkony with my heavenly voice, and