Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your
contribution is not tax-deductible.)
PayPal Acct: 
Feedback: 
Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):
| [ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: [1] ] |
| Subject: News in Brief | |
|
Author: MacRua |
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
Date Posted: Wed, Jun 23 2004, 2:57:04 HAS she no Shane? It would appear so. Victoria Mary Clarke - spiritualist, babe and author - spent last week holidaying in Malta with her ex-boyfriend Shane MacGowan. She denied that a reconciliation was on the cards with the former Pogues demi-god. "We are not back together but we are having a good time anyway in Gozo," she told me. They visited churches and went to mass together on the famous old island in the middle of the Med. Still on the same island, Brad Pitt went on a particularly enjoyable drinking session with Peter O'Toole after shooting of the movie Troy had been wrapped. When the Maltese publican called time ladies and gentlemen - international movie stars even - Brad offered to buy the pub off him in order to continue the drinking session. Tragically, the offer was declined. Where was Shane when you need him? ---------------- The Popes July Sat 3 FolkFestival Na Fir Bolg, Vorselaar, Belgium Sat 10 Hammersmith & Fulham Irish Centre, Blacks Road, Hammersmith. Tel: 0208 563 8232 Sun 18 Respect Festival, Roundwood Park, Willesden, London Fri 30 Festival Big Top, Fleming Park, Leigh Road, Eastleigh, Hampshire (WITH SHANE) August Fri 30 Edinburgh Celtic Festival, The Corn Exchange, 11 Newmarket Road, Edinburgh Tel: 0131 477 3500 www.ece.uk.com www.ticketweb.co.uk £19.50-£22.50 (WITH SHANE) -------------- Kevin, I can imagine your disappointment and I feel very sorry for you. I have watched countless fans approaching Shane over the years and I found out that there are some things Shane really seems to hate when people approach him. Just to make sure, I do not want to defend Shane because there is no excuse for this sort of behaviour. It's just a "well meant advise" for the next time you want to say hello to him. 1. The MOST IMPORTANT thing is: Never approach him when he is in the middle of a conversation with other people. He really hates this!!! Better wait until the conversation has stopped or even better wait until he is on his own. 2. There is no problem telling him you are his fan and you would like an autograph BUT the more you will tell him how great he is the most you will make him feel uncomfortable. I have made this mistake myself in the early days by the way. 3. If you got his autograph Shane usually thinks you will leave now. If you don't want to leave because you want to have a chat with him you have to be honest with him. Just ask him if he is in the mood for a little chat. If he says "no" you better say "no problem, good luck" and leave. If he is in the mood the best thing to do is cheering him up and making him laugh. But AGAIN: Please do not praise him all the time!!!! Finally, you should always be aware of the fact that YOU do know many things about Shane because you are a fan but Shane is in a much more difficult situation because he does not know ANYTHING about you. Hope this will help you or some other fans next time you meet him. But if you followed these "rules" and he tells you to fuck off anyway you have obviously caught him in a terrible mood and it would have been no fun to talk with him anyway. ----------------- Thanks to Noel for finding this recent Irish Times article about The Radiators. My copy is a bit incomplete and difficult to read, but I thought you lot would like to see it anyhow. Apologies for the gaps and possible misreads, I hope Mr Chevron doesn't find himself too badly misrepresented. Here is what I have: Back to Basics. Philip Chevron once blazed a punk trail with The Radiators. And now they're back, he tells Tony Clayton-Lea. Never say never. Who would ever have thought that The Irish Times and Philip Chevron would be discussing the reformation of The Radiators From Space, the first Irish punk band and one that in 1979's Ghostown released possibly the most ambitious and shamefully overlooked album of Irish rock. Yet here we are, sitting alfresco in Dublin's Parliament Street, to an interruptive background of a blaring Wild Rover and several main-drag citizens. Synchronicity, muses Chevron, - it's a terrible thing, altogether. It wouldn't be the first time, however, that *** synchronicity has impinged on Chevron's life. Briefly, his career has ***stitched up by interweaving threads *** history, art, emigration, symmetry and **** personal discomfort - it would seem there is neither one without the other. Indeed, Chevron *** all his eloquent, *** thought processes and *** rock star clothes, comes across as the type of *** who would shrivel and wither without at least three of these emblematic tokens (?). But really, isn't almost *** years a ridiculously long time to wait to reform a punk band that wasn't even overly feted in their own ***? A band that left Ireland in the wake of general indifference and elitist ***? The vague answer to this question is more than likely. The clear-cut answer is somewhat more, well, direct. "The simple answer is that for the first time right here and now seemed the right time to do it," says Chevron, a slight, slim *** still embroiled in many aspects of the arts, but currently focussing on rehearsing with the reformed Radiators which includes original members Pete *** and Steve Averill, and new member and former Pogues bassist Cait O'Riordan). "Periodically, people asked us about coming back, but the co-ordinates never seemed to be in the right place at the right time. There had been other reasons to do it, also, but none of them felt good enough. And one of the main reasons why it feels good enough to do it now is that Cait O'Riordan became available." History has a funny way of playing tricks. Intermingled with Chevron's smash and *** and nurturing approach to art is a *** of avuncular characters within Irish *** : *** O'Kelly (in the mid-1970s a *** journalist who gravitated towards artist management and who sowed the seeds for the formation of The Radiators), Jackie Hayden (former CBS Records man in Ireland who produced The Radiators' early work), Eamon Carr (formerly of Horslips whose trad/rock concept albums helped shape Ghostown, and who was instrumental in getting The Radiators signed to London-based Chiswick Records). Added to this mix were Thin Lizzy's Phil Lynott (who gave the band a leg-up UK tour support slot) and James Joyce (whose disaffected spirit imbued Ghostown from start to finish). The band left Ireland for London in the autumn of 1977 and - although they had thought they might - never returned. Yet there, lying in the ruins of Camden Town, were second-generation Irish artisans such as Shane MacGowan and Cait O'Riordan. As the reputation of Ghostown increased amidst an admittedly select crowd of people, so the seeds of The Pogues grew. Within a few years, Chevron was playing alongside O'Riordan (who subsequently left the band to marry Elvis Costello). Now, O'Riordan brings her own history into The Radiators, the puzzle is the same but with pieces put back in a different order. As Chevron states, O'Riordan making herself available gave the band a new sense of purpose, a crucially important factor in the hoary continuing-from-where-we-left-off scenario. The artistic point of The Pogues reforming some years back, points out Chevron, was that they had - just about - survived to tell the tale. "It was hugely resonant to see Shane MacGowan singing The Old Main Drag at the then age of 47 - against all the odds. For me a lot of The Pogues' repertoire was about that, and therefore there was little point in adding to it. It was simply a celebration of the fact that we were still around, albeit with a little less hair and slightly larger paunches." The Radiators getting back is a different thing, Chevron contends. He admits the band had rarely connected directly with people's experiences, but the justification for the (core?) members getting back together again was to see if they could add to the narrative, the story. "And a lot of time had to elapse for that to happen. Given that we're a band who always existed to respond to what it was like to be Irish, there was a long period where there wasn't anything to say about that, frankly." But things have changed by which judicious comments must be made and certain social and political advances have to be made sense of. Chevron views Ireland as a concerned, probably agitated outsider, and says the development of Ireland over the past two decades has been "ghastly to watch." He splutters and curses at the very thought that many people would think such progress is "great, and sure, isn't everything grand?" Yet he's savvy enough to realise that The Radiators is no spurious cavalry charge advancing over Howth hill in order to tell the people of Ireland what ails them. "We never had illusions that we could make a difference - although there may have been once or twice where we helped change perceptions, but only in the right people." The question of freshly minted material and who exactly their audience is these days are of equal importance. Chevron, in his almost forensic manner, is resolving each as he goes along. "With regard to new material, we first of all had to stand up the old material and see how it fared, musically. The Radiators had an ambitious musical palate in the sense that we wanted to see how far we could ***** Chevron doesn’t have the faintest idea, and this is where the reunion might become unstuck. While he rightly says that the music - like Ghostown before it - will find its own admirers, the truth of the matter is that The Radiators' audience of the 1970s and 1980s was a narrow constituency comprising people with an [***innate?] facility for moving on to pastures new - not necessarily a trend-oriented crowd, but certainly a gathering that would question the creative validity of any given art form. Without a hint of derision, Chevron calls it the "arty crowd", the same that Sex Pistols and The Clash attracted in London and The Ramones, Blondie, and Talking Heads in New York. "I hope there will be enough of an audience to make the reunion worthwhile, and I hope we don't embarrass ourselves, either. It is a risk you take, and it's something I'm acutely aware of because The Pogues have very much a constituency. But The Radiators never were hip, so it's not possible for us to be retrospectively cool. There's always a chance that no one will want to see us, but that's a challenge we're willing to take." The creative risk-taker might just twig that something cool is going on, however. "Why not say you might like this, why don't you want to know about us? It's a little bit more than just a cerebral experience, you know. You should go and see **** [Picture caption] Philip Chevron: "You should go and see The Radiators not because your Irish rock history book tells you ... because we might just be a decent band." -------------------------------- Hana and Zuzana, Prague pernic@mybox.cz News from Prague: The gig took place as planned and was absolutely great! Shane appeared only half an hour later and played for one hour and a half. He was obviously relaxed, in a good mood, smiling a lot, full of energy. Visiting this forum for a while, we had come there prepared for literally everything, and the more terrific our surprise was. All those who are sceptical about Shane’s future should have seen him on Saturday! By they way, we guess that some of you – in Pogues’ T-shirts – actually might have been there, standing just next to us! This was the first time we saw Shane performing live, so we have nothing to compare the gig with… maybe some of you who happened to be there could do that? The gig was a part of an open-air festival of world / ethnic music and took place on a meadow on a island in midst of Vltava River. The atmosphere was warm and friendly, very relaxed, with lots of nonconformist people around, a mix of various generations. Shane played all his good old numbers (except Fairytale), including Dirty Old Town, IISFFGWG, Streams Of Whiskey, Donegal Express, Pair Of Brown Eyes, Broad Majestic Shannon, Rainy Night in Soho... Well, while Shane was absolutely great, the Popes resembled wax puppets. In Czech, we have the word „kutalka“ for this. It’s impossible to translate to English but it refers to a group of amateur musicians that play mostly at weddings or funerals, those who are not that much enthusiastic about music, for whom playing is more a matter of a rather boring routine than a hobby. On top of that, no tin whistle, no accordion, guitar that lacks spice… Shane’s songs deserve better. Pogues, come back! We’ve visited this Forum for some time already but this is the first time we post here except for signing the petition. (By the way, after meeting Mr. Cashman and Popes we only regret that we can’t sign once more – and in capital letters!) Long live Shane! ------------------------- rene hi just got back from prague this morning and it was fantastic indeed. though the beginning was quite sad in my eyes, shane always announced the wrong songs and mcguinness had to correct him, he seemed pretty drunk and the audience just stood and stared, i think for many of them it was the first time they saw shane and it was quite a change of course after some carribean merengue music before. the longer the concert lasted the better shane became. i saw him 3 times before in the last two years and he never gave a longer and more energetic and joyful performance. encore was among others the beautiful angel of death, cashman did not appear on tin whistle. what i´m sad about is as mentioned many times before the lack of some instruments (what the hell do you need 2 banjos for??) and the lack of interest and power of some certain bandmembers. these great songs deserve more spirit but that sould be up to shane, it´s his band. all the best to you all from austria come hell or high water, long live shane ----------------- Zuzana pernic@mybox.cz Review of the Prague gig, translated from MF DNES daily (the most widely read Czech serious daily), 14th June 2004: „Respect Festival Marked With Contrasts“ by Jaroslav Riedel: „(…) Shane MacGowan, the biggest star of the Respect Festival, was a bit disoriented. When he staggered on the stage, he didn’t even know in which country he was and, even worse, at times he obviously had no idea which song he was singing. Since only unitelligible mumbling and inarticulate shouts spilled from his toothless mouth, it didn’t matter anyway. As the concert progressed, the music got better; MacGowan learned from his more sober partners from The Popes where he was (obviously he was genuinely surprised) and from time to time he emitted sounds which – with a little good will – resembled singing. There were a few rather good moments during the show (such as Dirty Old Town or Streams of Whiskey), but otherwise the performance came up to general expectations. The saddest thing is that MacGowan currently draws public attention more for his notorious alcoholism than for the dim remains of his once unique talent. If he had arrived sober, it would probably have been a disappointment – at least for the bunch of fans closest to the stage that hedonistically spilled beer over one another. From all the musicians who performed on Saturday, MacGowan met with the greatest success, he had to give a long encore. However, the question arises whether this was a success for the Respect Festival as well.“ Well, not everybody is Shane’s fan… There’s no accounting for taste. To Oliver: Yes, you understood it right. (He later corrected himself to Czechoslovakia :-))) ) He’s not the first star to whom that happened – a country so small is probably hard to register when crossing the borders. http://www.freemusic.cz/clanky/3196.html http://images.freemusic.cz/koncerty/respect2004macgowan/12.jpg ------------ c I ran into shane last night at a gig, in the darkest corner of the bar there he was with his shades on dripping in attractive women. A complete absence of molars and wild jumpy eyes seems to have done nothing to diminish the man’s sex appeal! Anyhow regarding the Pogues reunion, if anyone out there still has any doubts, Shane himself has none. “We’re doing it, definitely, yeah I’m in!” So book holidays, book hotels, book flights, the singer is definitely in. Of course he’s far too rock ‘n’ roll to know whether the London gigs are at the audience-friendly Brixton Academy or some oppressive arena. “They’ll just point me at the stage on the night, Krssshh!” I had his new football charity single, which he attempted to buy off me, having not seen it yet. We failed to reach a deal (sign over the royalties to Fairytale Of NY, Shane, and it’s yours!) So he pulled it to pieces looking for a photo of himself (there isn’t one) and scrawled illegible poguetry all over it … Now the song isn’t going to trouble any Shane greatest hits cds, sure enough, but the man himself seems – if this can be said about Shane MacGowan – to be very well indeed. Cheers [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
| Subject | Author | Date |
| Re: News in Brief | McGregor | Thu, Jun 24 2004, 5:05:44 |
|
Forum timezone: GMT-8 VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB: Before posting please read our privacy policy. VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems. Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved. |