Is there a good reason why I’ve never heard their version of Fairytale of New York? Is hearing it worth the acquisition of a compilation CD with nothing else I care about?
I assume you mean the Pogues? I have the Essential Pogues (as well as one other of their CDs). Fairytale of NY is one of my favorite songs. If you get the Essential Pogues you also get Lorelei, Sunny Side of the Street and Thousands are Sailing - all great songs. Give them a try…
Eric
That version I have. The popes was a band Shane formed after being fired from the Pogues. I hadn’t known he’d recorded it with them, although if i was him, I would have.
I didn’t know that. I’ve not kept up with Shane since he split from the Pogues. What did the Popes sound like? I can’t imagine Shane McGowan sounding any different no matter who the backing band was…
Eric
Unspectacular.
I think everyone was expecting McGowan’s “rock’n’roll paddy” concept to converge to something more punk rock, but in the end the Popes evolved into something more like American country music. And not the bluegrass variety, but the annoying CMT “Big Ticket” kind. It’s all hillbilly rock, hillbilly roll, ah’m just a city boy with a hillbilly soul.
There was a band from the Chicagoland area called the Tossers, which really seemed to pick up where Shane left off. Some of their self-produced albums, like “We’ll Never be Sober Again” or “The Pint of No Return” are exactly what I imagined the Pogues would become. They repackaged some of that stuff in an album called Communication and Conviction, but a lot of their more recent stuff is meh. Great live, tho. I never realized how lucky I was in grad school, living a block down the road from Otto’s in DeKalb, IL, where these dudes would play on a semi-regular basis.
If you can find Never be Sober Again, get it; it’s one of the best paddy-punk albums ever made.
I have never heard the Popes version of Fairytale but if it is anything like the rest of their stuff I don’t want to.
Awful band altogether.
Some years back my now ex-brother in law had a few albums by a bunch of second generation Irish types who rapped in a style that could be called, with a nod and wink to Caj, as Paddy Rap.
Very funny stuff, 'though I’m sure they were serious about it.
One line I always remembered was..
Gimme my boiled bacon and cabbage,
I’ll go out and do some damage..
There was also various references to songs made popular by the Dubs and the Clancys…good crack all around.
I cannot, however, remember their name.
Slan,
D. 
With titles like that, they’re either writing bad pastiche or subtlety-free parody. Shane McGowan wrote songs about other things, which had a lot of booze in them because Shane had a lot of booze in him. His songs aren’t about booze, however.
Whereas, imitation Pogues miss all the other substance and only see the booze, so they write songs about booze. Their real antecedants aren’t the Pogues at all, but vaudeville-era ‘paddywhack’ stage irishmen, shouting 'Begorrah!" and waving a ‘thundering big shillelagh’ around. Every last one of them sucks.
Very true Si…
Shane McGowan is one of the finest songwriters of his, or any other, generation.
All the wannabe Pogues saw was the hard drinking man and ignored his brilliance as a songwriter.
Once McGowan left/ jumped/ or was pushed the Pogues became a Shane McGowan tribute band and traded on his songs.
Slan,
D.
You are quite literally judging a book by its cover. The Tossers didn’t write about booze any more than the Pogues did. Most of their songs are about working-class life in Chicago.
Indeed, their more recent work is plagued by excessive seriousness. The Long Dim Road was a very good album, but with songs like “The Ballad of UN and Nato” you really don’t expect anything sing-song and lighthearted.
Actually, my beef with Pogues also-rans is not zillions of songs about booze; it’s the embarrassing identity politics that happens when some band of nth-generation Irish Americans decide they’re outraged by the penal laws and then write a bunch of angry music about how oppressed they think they are because it says so on a genealogical chart. Songs about booze I can handle.
A link or two would come in handy so that the book could be judged by the cover.
Shane opened a door, bit like Dylan…a lot walked in but nobody could live up to that standard.
Identity politics…that’s a new one on me…nice phrase though.
Slan,
D. 
Not so; I am judging a band by your representation of same. If the picture I have is faulty, you know know whom to blame.
Balderdash. Your brilliant analysis quite literally begins, “with titles like that…” And then it ends.