The Sunnyside Of The Day By Nicholas Boldock

First things first: I've had a really shit day. Having been in negotiations with a certain Hull-based company regarding possible employment, today it all went tits up as they pulled the plug and informed me that, after three meetings with various luminaries from the firm, my services would not be required after all.

Bugger. Despondent and not a little pissed off, I came home tonight and sought solace in a menthol cigarette and a bottle of budget red. It took the edge off my melancholy but didn't quite bring me back to my barn-dancing best so I did the only thing I could think of to cheer myself up - yes, you guessed it - I bought tickets to see The Pogues in concert.

Okay, if I'm being truthful, it wasn't entirely an impulse buy - the decision to buy them sometime soon had been made a couple of weeks ago - but nonetheless taking the plunge and actually buying them was just the ticket, if you'll pardon the irresistible pun. On to www.ticketmaster.co.uk I went, Visa card in hand, and ten minutes later, the deed was done. I now await delivery of four tickets for the Pogues - plus the Saw Doctors - at Manchester Arena , Saturday December 18th, 2004. I had the good sense to persuade some friends to come along too, lucky people that they are.

Genuine legends are few and far between. I've seen some already - Bowie at Glastonbury 2000, Dylan at Sheffield Arena last year - but Shane MacGowan and the gang remain unseen at the moment. Neil Young too - but it would help if the hoary old goat ever ventured to the UK these days, which he doesn't. (If you're reading this, Neil.. nah.. what's the chances?).

Back in my student days I shared a house with (among others) a good friend by the name of John Sweeney, whom I have regrettably lost contact with long since. He was a big Pogues fan, I wasn't, not because I didn't like them, but rather because I just hadn't heard much of their material. At some point during my stay in the badlands of Liverpool, Shane MacGowan played a gig there (I forget the venue - the Royal Court?) with his new band The Popes. I never went because it didn't interest me. What a fool.

The only real experience I had of the Pogues' songs back then was singing Sally MacLennane with John, pissed up and staggering our way across Liverpool city centre one night at about midnight. Great fun it was. But I never took the time to listen to the Pogues properly.

A year or two later, back in Hull, I picked up a second-hand copy of the brilliant Rum, Sodomy and the Lash LP from a record shop on Holderness Road - the second-shop that used to be where the Home Bargain shop is now. I paid the princely sum of £2.00 for it. Without the influence of my mate John, I would probably not have looked twice at it as I rifled through the record racks. If you haven't heard Rum, Sodomy and the Lash then you are truly deprived. I'd never heard anything like it.

A bastard hybrid of Celtic folk and spiky punk, it rocks like nothing on Earth. It is an album chock-full of absolute classics - The Old Main Drag, A Pair Of Brown Eyes, a jaw-droppingly brilliant version of Eric Bogle's And The Band Waltzing Matilda .. a true behemoth of an album. For me it ranks in the top 5 albums of all time. Want to know the other four? Shit, that's another article.. remind me sometime..

Vinyl is a good deal more durable than the record company executives would have you believe, as they slap another £15 price sticker on their latest Enhanced CD release. Good job too, as that life-changing Pogues album has been played and played and played since it fell into my clutches. I still play it regularly now.

Like many before and after me, that first venture into the world of the Pogues was a slippery slope. Barely a week goes by where I don't listen to one or other of their tracks. I've grabbed a few rarities on MP3 as well - the Irish World Cup song Jack's Heroes; the live Late Late Show version of Spancill Hill with Christy Moore; a rollicking early acoustic version of the folk standard The Wild Rover.. there is a rich mine of Pogues/MacGowan material out there for those who need it.. So, looking forward, I'm soon going to move to the next stage of my adoration of the Pogues and see them live.. by God I can hardly wait.. I don't know what they'll play. I don't know if Shane will be sober (I doubt it). I don't know where the bloody hell Manchester Arena is, other than in Manchester. What I do know is, if on December 18th I am having another shit day for one reason or another, it won't matter a jot when the Pogues come on stage. No, nay, never. ©  Nicholas Boldock, 2004.

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