The Holy Grail

Mimicing vs. Joining

When The Pogues invented (and simultaneously perfected) folk punk in the 1980s, they set up a certain dynamic that has stuck with every folk punk band ever since. The question is: how serious are you about becoming part of a genuine folk tradition? Do you want to just make a bunch of noise, or do you want your songs to live on as folk songs?

This is an extremely demanding thing to try to do. Since you're a punk band, you have to sort of thumb your nose at certain traditional expectations, making things louder and more abrasive than they otherwise would be. However, if you are to retain any respect for the traditions you're drawing on, you also have to be making stuff that recognizably descends from the music you love.

After a few years of being snubbed by folk traditionalists, The Pogues were very quickly recognized as writing and performing songs that could have been sung by the Dubliners or Brendan Behan. And when The Dubs and The Pogues finally collaborated, or when Christy Moore started to sing Fairytale of NY, this was a giant signal to the Irish folk world: sometimes the rebel kids know what they're doing, and sometimes their superficial abrasiveness can mask a real commitment to the beauty and power of folk music. It is hard to argue that anyone added more to the Irish folk tradition in the 1980s than the Pogues did, even as they did so much more.

MacGowan and Ronnie Drew

And so this is the Holy Grail at the end of that line: actually having your songs played and sung in pubs and clubs after you are done. For McGowan et. al, this is a guarantee. But as good as many other folk punk bands are, indeed as brilliant as some of them are, they may not be able to hope for this. But it remains an elusive dream.

Which is why I have been shocked to receive videos from various friends in the sea shanty community of people at festivals and pubs and clubs singing our original songs. Here, for example, is something that the guys from the Longest Johns sent me a couple of weeks ago, a recording they took at the monthly Bristol shanty sing:

Of course I have no illusions here, there is almost no way Bay of Suvla (or Jolie Rouge or Roll Northumbria or whatever) will be sung in pubs in 50 years. And certainly no-one like Christy Moore will ever be singing anything of ours. But for this random bunch of idiots to be able to make something that joins the folk traditions they love, in one of their favourite cities, even in this very small way? That’s just better than anything you could ever ask for.

…

Well, ok, a pet Stegosaurus that eats your enemies, shoots laser beams from its eyes and pisses Murphy’s Stout at 52 Fahrenheit… that would be better. Having your original songs sung at folk gatherings is better than anything you could ask for except for that.

“ANOTHER PINT, MASTER????”