Pogues as gateway drug

Subject: Origins: Pogues as gateway drug
From: J-boy
Date: 09 Mar 14 - 01:11 AM

I have to admit that I knew fuck all about folk music til I heard The Pogues way back in 1986. If it wasn't for their influence I'd still be wandering the proverbial wilderness. That can't be a bad thing, yes?

Subject: RE: Origins: Pogues as gateway drug
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Mar 14 - 04:04 AM

Likewise, Lindisfarne for us 1970's teenagers...

Subject: RE: Origins: Pogues as gateway drug
From: Leadfingers
Date: 09 Mar 14 - 05:59 AM

I got into folk the 'new' traditional way - Inspired by The Hootenanny Show on BBC TV in 1964

Subject: RE: Origins: Pogues as gateway drug
From: eddie1
Date: 09 Mar 14 - 07:40 AM

For me - Lonnie Donegan!

Eddie

Subject: RE: Pogues as gateway drug
From: Severn
Date: 09 Mar 14 - 11:44 AM

I had a sister who was prewar and the rest of us were postwar. She listened to the likes of the. Weavers, Burl. Ives, Joe Glazer and Josh White along with Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry and whatever was on the hit parade, so I absorbed it and liked it from early childhood, quite a few years before I could start buying recordings of my own. She went through the Kingston Trio and The Limelighters and one day, brought home the first New Lost City Ramblers LP, which pushed me toward the real stuff. The local library had things like Jean Ritchie, Uncle Dave Macon, the Harry Smith Anthology to bring home. As soon as my eldest sister went to college, I had to go out and start buying records on my own and years and thousands of records, tapes and CDs later, Im still aquiring them. I have become The Librarian Incongruous of the Library Of Digress. The love of hard to find music fought me where to look and find it on the cheap by Nescessity

Subject: RE: Pogues as gateway drug
From: GUEST,gillymor
Date: 09 Mar 14 - 12:02 PM

J-Boy, least you started with the original and the best. There are so many Pogue wannabe bands out there the mind boggles. The Planxty black album is what got me hooked and led me to so much more including the Pogues. Enjoy the ride.

Subject: RE: Pogues as gateway drug
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 09 Mar 14 - 07:00 PM

I got into Steeleye Span in the early 1970s, closely followed by Pentangle; I might have turned into a folkie way back then if it hadn't been for the rival attractions of prog rock and, especially, punk. The angst and originality of punk blotted out any appeal that heartbroken milkmaids might have had, at least for the time being.

The real turning point, for me, came much later - in my 40s. My mother had a stroke when she was 84 and died a few months afterwards; she spent most of that time in a home, reasonably able-bodied but rather confused. We tried to make things nice for her in the home, surrounding her with things that she might like or that might recall her old life to her. When she died I was halfway through 'ripping' her copy of Shirley Collins' LP _Amaranth_, which I was intending to put on a CD so that she could listen to it in her room. I finished doing it before I realised that there wasn't much point any more.

I was rather seriously depressed for some time afterwards, and one of the effects was that I couldn't listen to music any more - except folk. Specifically, English traditional songs. More specifically, Shirley Collins. There must have been a good six months in which the music of Shirley Collins was the only music in which I could take clean, relaxed, uncomplicated pleasure - at a time when clean, relaxed, uncomplicated pleasure was a very rare thing in my life.

I'm not going to say that Shirley Collins saved my life, but her singing was very valuable to me in a very dark time. And some of the magic I heard in that music then is still there now; more to the point, I've been able to find some of the same quality in other artists: June Tabor, John Kelly, Peter Bellamy, Tony Rose, the Young 'Uns... And the journey goes on.

I guess I'd say it doesn't matter what pitches you up on the doorstep of folk, whether it's Steeleye or the Pogues or the Levellers or James Yorkston or Dylan or the Animals; it's all good.

Subject: RE: Pogues as gateway drug
From: GUEST,Brimbacombe
Date: 10 Mar 14 - 06:57 AM

I was brought up in a folk family, steeped in folk tradition from a young age, and knew far more about the Watersons and Nic Jones by my sixth birthday than I did about Zippy and Bungle. I loved the Pogues in the 80s and I love them still. They were never a gateway for me, just an innovative, interesting group unashamed to wear their folky roots on their sleeves. Nothing wrong with that at all. Certainly not a bad thing.

I would recommend James Fearnley's Here Comes Everyone book, which tells the story of the Pogues. If nothing else, it recognises the brilliance of Jem Finer in a way that hasn't quite been done satisfactorily.

Subject: RE: Pogues as gateway drug
From: J-boy
Date: 10 Mar 14 - 11:44 PM

Yeah. Shane gets the majority of the credit being frontman and all, but Jem and especially the late Phil Chevron should be given
their due.