Counter-Currents
1,503 words 
Cram as much pleasure as you can into your life and rail against the pain that you have to suffer as a result.
-Shane MacGowan.
Stay on the other side of the road
Because you can never tell.
We’ve the thirst of a gang of devils,
We’re the boys from the County Hell.
-The Pogues, Boys from the County Hell
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3 comments
My own introduction to the Pogues was a CD copy of If I Should Fall from Grace with God, down at my local library sometime around 1990, which I listened to constantly and loved; but I have to agree with you that their best is Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash.
“…and the fact that the medical establishment has viewed it as a disease rather than a result of personal agency and weakness for years does not ultimately help the alcoholic.”
I couldn’t agree more, and suspect there are many impressionable young men’s lives that have been irreparably damaged following MacGowan’s drunken example, believing that his admirable creativity and vigor were impossible without substance abuse.
What a great article.
Talent is a heavy burden. A person like McGowan speaks to some part of the White soul that transcends time and space. He had a muse and it wasn’t booze, but, in the end, a muse can be too much. He was a sacred fool who spoke the truth.
Live, The Pogues were nothing short of sensational, an anarchic, drunken beggar’s opera…
This is the kind of thing people typically say of the Pogues. I saw them in late 1986 at the Hammersmith Palais. Pretty lifeless, I thought. Maybe it was just a bad night, but I never bothered going to see them again.
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