the Pogues :: Thousands are Sailing
The thing about the Irish, other than the drinking, the singing, and the gorgeous redheads, is the way they reveal the nasty machinations of class in America. You don’t just become successful: someone else must fall. The Irish became white, the Irish became President, and the Irish became the green-plastic-hatted drunk racists of Chicago’s South Side Irish parade. The Pogues understood this mixture of pride and loathing; they formed in England, angry and raw from derision, merging the punk dream of class war with the blood soaked history of Irish music.
Not every Pogue’s song had the fortune of being written by Shane MacGowan; Pogues guitarist Phil Chevron wrote Thousands are Sailing, and sang it when I saw them live in 2007. Chevron’s lyrics and voice lack the dark irony of the Pogue’s famously Fucked Genius. Chevron also permits a dreadful rock-and-roll beat to enter midway through the opening refrain and never makes it leave. The rest, however, is heaven: tin whistle, mandolin, crystalline guitar, bodhran, dulcimer, and, I swear to you, red-headed angels weeping.
“Wherever we go, we celebrate the land that makes us refugees.” This line alone makes Thousands are Sailing the true Immigrant Song. The tempo and the lyrics move from sentimental ballad to indictment: “We dance to the music and we dance,” he snarls, telling us we’re fools. It’s through MacGowan’s voice that you feel the exhilaration of self-pity, the sentiment of venerating a homeland that hated you, the Irish quality of celebrating failure until success feels like a betrayal.
Thousands are Sailing
the Pogues (homepage)
posty said on monday, march 17th, 2008
joshua said on monday, march 17th, 2008
Happy St. Patrick’s Day my friends!
Your post reminds me of a line from a movie I saw once. (Can she remember which movie? Of course not!) It was something to the effect of:
An American sees a rich man with a big house up on a hill and thinks to himself, "Someday I’m going be that guy."
The Irishman sees the same and thinks, "Someday I’m going to get that bastard."
The context for the conversation may have been the comparative health of European socialism?
At any rate, here’s to being Irish! (Be rockin’ the green.)
xxo
tina