In The Pogues’ breakthrough 1988 single “Fairytale of New York” (download), songwriter Shane MacGowan and guest vocalist Kirsty MacColl portray a codependent couple. He’s an aging alcoholic, gone beyond repentance, no longer even able to summon up an insincere promise to change. Her devotion to him has destroyed her patience, ruined her health; his devotion to the bottle has left him full of resentment and self-pity.

But they’ll get back together, as they always do, and the dance of love and hate will go on. They’ll remember the good times, before it all went south, and cling to each other in mutual self-delusion. MacGowan’s genius is in showing us how willing these people are to let themselves be deluded. It’s a brilliant, harrowing bit of songwriting. And, whether MacGowan intended it so or not, it’s a brutally honest summation of the group dynamic of the Pogues.

Origins

What you think you know about The Pogues is mostly right. Irish by ethnicity if not by birth, the name from the Gaelic pogue mahone (”kiss my ass”). Folky tunes played at punk velocity, by turns sentimental and profane. Lots of heavy drinking. Lead singer possessed of the most heinous set of gnashers in all Christendom. All correct — but missing a little context.

In Julien Temple’s Sex Pistols doc The Filth and the Fury, you can see Shane MacGowan hamming it up in the archival footage; and, like seemingly everybody else who saw the Pistols in their heyday, he went out and started his own band straightaway. After a stab at fame with his punkabilly outfit the Nipple Erectors, MacGowan hit upon an idea as simple as it was audacious — to apply punk’s DIY, anyone-can-do-it aesthetic to Anglo-Irish folksong, a musical form that valued scholarship and tradition.

MacGowan quickly recruited his sometimes housemates Jem Finer (banjo and guitar) and Peter “Spider” Stacy (vocals, tin whistle) into his new, folk-informed project. James Fearnley, briefly guitarist for the Nipple Erectors, was drafted to play accordion — an instrument he’d never touched — on the grounds that he’d taken piano lessons when he was young. Bassist Cait O’Riordan, only 17 at the time, had met MacGowan when the latter was working at a record shop. Drummer Andrew Ranken, who’d been fronting an R&B big band, was last to join the line-up. The new band, Pogue Mahone, played their first gig in late 1982, and spent the next year or two playing shows, pissing off folk purists and punks alike, and slowly building a following. (more…)

Greetings from the bottom of my glass of bourbon! Okay, my vacation wasn’t a complete alcoholiday, but I have to admit to a few hazy nights in Hawai’i. So, to help me out of my time zone/hangover stupor, our good friend Jack Feerick is going to continue mixing some tunage for you this week. So here we go with an Avatar- inspired mix to celebrate the return of this imaginative series.

–Ted

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One of my favorite animated shows of recent years is wrapping up its run this month — to surprisingly little fanfare. Avatar: The Last Airbender –known overseas as Avatar: the Legend of Aang — is miles removed from the anarchic humor of its Nickelodeon channel mates, Spongebob Squarepants or The Fairly OddParents. I’ll let the trailer below make the case:

Avatar is an ambitious exercise in long-form storytelling and character development, an action-fantasy epic on a massive canvas, unfolding over three meticulously-planned seasons. With a broad cast of characters and cultures, the series is by turns funny, rousing, and tragic, and always a triumph of design—something like a Zhang Yimou wuxia picture as reimagined by Hayao Miyazaki.

“The Earth, the Air, the Fire, the Water” Libana (more…)

Hey, Mix Six fans! I’m on a much needed vacation this week, so Jack Feerick is going to be in charge of the mixing duties for a couple of weeks. This mix is a tail tale of the complex nature of love and loss — with a very cute creature in the center of the narrative. So, click the link to the tunes, read on, and I’ll meet you back here in a couple of weeks. Take it away, Jack! –Ted

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…or, “I Got 99 Problems But a Bitch Ain’t One.”

This is the bitch in question:

The name they gave her at the shelter was Katya. When we adopted her in May, they told us she was about two years old.

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Once again kids, yours truly is handing over the mixing duties to Jack Feerick — who brought us a mix that “gave the drummer some.” This week’s mix celebrates a season that, at least for me in the Bay Area, lasts from May to October. I’m talking about summer, and all the good (and not-so-good) things that go with it. See ya next week!

–Ted (AKA Py Korry)

DOWNLOAD THE FULL MIX HERE

There’s a website I like, called One-Minute Vacation. The content is simple enough—an ever-growing collection of digital field recordings donated by the site users themselves—but even more than the clips themselves I love the idea; that sound alone, even out of context, can transport us, can take our heads somewhere else in space and time.

It’s not just ambient sound that does this. We’ve all got our personal pantheon of “summer songs,” and it’s about this time that the blogs and the corporate sites start running polls about our favorites. (Not so long ago, it would have been the radio stations doing that.) But what’s a “summer song,” anyway? Is it a song that sounds best when you hear it in the summertime? Or is it a song that, whatever time of year you hear it, reminds you of summer? Or is it a little of both?

Try this; download this mix, and wait a while. Wait until winter comes to your hemisphere, for a day when the sky is the color of slate and the wind is rattling around your windows. Then listen. Close your eyes, as appropriate; where do you end up?

Open on the sound of the Campo del Principe in Granada, Spain, on a sunny day in May. You’ve got the morning free and you’re meeting your best friend at the café across from the park. She’s got a table on the terrace; the day is already hot, and she’s already ordered you iced coffee, sweet and creamy. (more…)

Hiya kids! This week I have a guest DJ mixin’ it up for you. Jack Feerick wrote a great Popdose Guide to Traffic and, unsatisfied with lack of music love drummers usually get, has put together an eclectic Mix Six featuring some very imaginative rhythms. Before we get started, an obligatory drummer joke:

A man walks into a shop and says to the shop assistant: “Excuse me, I’d like to buy a guitar pick, and some strings.”

The shop assistant looks uncomprehendingly at his customer, and says “Pardon?”

“I’d like a guitar pick please, and some strings.”

The shop assistant thinks on this for a while, and then turns to his customer and says “You’re a drummer, aren’t you?”

“Yeah! How did you know, man?”

“This is a fish and chip shop.”

And now, on with the show! Take it away, Jack.

–Py Korry

DOWNLOAD THE FULL MIX HERE

I’ve played with a lot of drummers, and they’ve all had a drum key — but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one actually using it. Good tuning, though, can turn a well-played drum part into not just a hook, but a melodic hook. To wit, here are six tunes where the drums sing.

A note: I’m disqualifying Phil Collins from this list, because (a) everybody hates Phil Collins, and (b) despite his considerable flaws as a songwriter, personality, and human being, he is an absolute ace at making the drums sing. And, truth be told, his hateful earworms would utterly dominate this list if steps are not taken to prevent it. I’ll do my best, but I can’t promise I will be completely successful.

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This story I’m telling, it starts in the middle. But this is a story that loops and circles in on itself, like a cloverleaf roadway; you’ve got to start where you are, and go forward to the beginning.

Imagine you’re Steve Winwood. As the Sixties turn into the Seventies, you’ve already made your bones with the Spencer Davis Group, formed Traffic and broken it up (twice), and headlined the supergroups Blind Faith and Ginger Baker’s Air Force. Now you’re in the studio, laying down tracks for what is supposed to be your first solo album.

And you are twenty-two years old.

Faced with a head-on plunge into rock superstardom and its pressures, and with the druggy chaos of Blind Faith still a fresh memory, perhaps it’s not surprising that you shy away. You retreat back to old collaborations, and even older musics — absorbing the sounds of English folksong and ’50s cool jazz. Moving forward, you loop back to where you started; Steve Winwood’s solo career goes on hold, and Traffic is reborn once more.

You know what? Let’s skip ahead to the beginning.

Origins and Early Singles

It was American producer Jimmy Miller who brought the members of Traffic together — and who defined the sound to which they would hew even after his departure — in sessions for Winwood’s first band, the Spencer Davis Group. Miller remixed the SDG’s “Gimme Some Loving” for American radio, bringing in journeyman musicians Jim Capaldi, Chris Wood, and Dave Mason (who had been the SDG’s road manager) to add percussion and vocal overdubs. The remix cracked the US Billboard top ten, and Miller took the three into the studio with the Davis Group to record the follow-up, “I’m A Man” (download). The elements of Traffic’s sound are all in place; predominant keyboards, gang vocals, and kitchen-sink percussion bubbling through a deep, layered stereo mix.

Leaving Davis in 1967, at nineteen, Winwood threw his lot in with Capaldi, Wood, and Mason — turning the winning sound of late-period Spencer Davis Group towards more psychedelic rock-oriented material. Three lead singers, four songwriters, all proficient in multiple instruments — with an embarrassment of riches, the new group, dubbed Traffic, began a period of intense collaboration, decamping from London to an isolated cottage in Berkshire where they would live, write, and play together. (more…)