Shane McGowan RIP (P8)

sky tot said:
Think Shane was a bit unlucky, his mum & dad decided to move over to Kent for a while . In that time Shane was born . They moved back to Ireland shortly after his birth .
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And they moved back to England when he was 7 according to his Wikipedia page.

None of this makes him any less of a brilliant artist - just always funny listening to old interviews and he sounds cockney which isn’t what people expect.
 
Johnny Mars Bar said:
Nick Cave performing in a church at a funeral is the most Nick Cave thing Nick Cave has ever done.
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He played his song "Into My Arms" at Michael Hutchence's funeral in 1997 but, if I recall correctly, he asked the TV network who were broadcasting the service live not to record the performance.
 
Johnny Mars Bar said:
I just shed a tear watching that. Beautiful and a perfect tribute to him with people dancing and being merry.

Lisa O’Neill is wonderful as well. Her new album is one of my favourite releases this year.
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The Pogues weren’t my kind of thing / music and only listened to a few tunes on this Bluemoon forum since his passing but like you, I had a tear in my eye listening and watching that. What a wonderful send off.
 
It was a great send off

Hopefully more people will discover what a wonderful songwriter he was. He was a hell of a lot more than the Christmas song and being a drunkard. A very intelligent and gifted writer.

One of my favourite pieces of work he did was a song he never recorded himself, but gave to Ronnie Drew, a song called The Dunes, about the famine in Ireland, when they would the bury the dead in the dunes because they didn't have the land to bury them properly. Written in the perspective of a survivor coming back the dunes as an adult. There's a great video of Ronnie Drew reciting it on YouTube





I walked today on the cold grey shore
Where I watched when I was much younger
When they built the dunes upon the sand
For the dead from the great hunger
For the dead from the great hunger

Although I was a doctor's son
I gazed in fear and wonder
As they perished from the raging plague
That came in with the great hunger
That came in with the great hunger

When I watched at the age of four
In eighteen forty seven
The mounds they built upon the shore
They seemed to point to heaven
They seemed to point to heaven

The wind and the rain, they worked their way
The dunes they are all uneven
The children kicked the sand around
And the bones they are revealed then
And the bones they are revealed then

My brothers and my sisters died
My mother only four and twenty
And I alone survived to see
The potatoes growing plenty
The potatoes growing plenty

As we died in vain, they stole our grain
To put upon their tables
The dieing covered the dead with sand
And danced while they were able
And danced while they were able

When the fiddler played we drank poteen
Then ate the last of the berries
Then knelt and said the rosary
'Round the mounds of dead we buried
'Round the mounds of dead we buried

I saw dark shadows rise up from the sand
And dance all around the dunes
They danced the rattling dance of the dead
To a set of mournful tunes
To a set of mournful tunes

A crack of lightning split the sky
The rain on the dunes it poured
I left them lying where I'd shot them down
The bailiff and the landlord
Then I went for a drink in Westport

I walked today on the cold grey shore
Where I watched when I was much younger
When they built the dunes upon the sand
For the dead from the great hunger
For the dead from the great hunger
 
west didsblue said:
I wonder how many of the crowd in Dublin today singing Dirty Old Town knew they were singing about Salford?
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I'd say most them did.
I've heard him sing it several times and he would mention beforehand the history of the song.
Are Salford lads paranoid?
The same question has been mentioned before on this thread.
 
Remember going to Benidorm on a stag and spending a night in the Shamrock. The Benidorm Rovers were playing (I think they were a resident band) and they played Fiesta. The place was absolutely bouncing. A great talent and a life lived!
 
mackenzie said:
The dancing was beautiful. And as a funeral should be. A celebration of life, with death always close
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The funeral was quite a wild one....

Johnny Depp and Gerry Adams doing a speech at the same funeral, what kind of surrealism is that? Then his wife talking about him taking acid and eating a beach boys record. Nick Cave doing a tune etc etc. And that's just the church service. Lord knows what the wake was like!!

But it's Shane MacGowan, so I guess it's only fitting that it was great and slightly wild.

His sisters speech was very nice though.
 
Xhavenjoe said:
I'd say most them did.
I've heard him sing it several times and he would mention beforehand the history of the song.
Are Salford lads paranoid?
The same question has been mentioned before on this thread.
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It’s one of those “ooooooh bet you didn’t know this” facts that everyone does actually know.
 
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