On the Fourth Day of Greedy

What? No Robert Earl Keane this year? Here is both.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrX_bl5Nipk

Forgot this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p053GxJX5y8

A gift to my beloved Stinquers on the Christmas Morn:

http://youtu.be/Pv0hlbWpa1w

Only good things to you all this year- even Benedick- and especially Dodger, who knows why I call him out.

@Tommmcatt May Just Have Some MJ In His System As Well, So What?: Thanks, I love that song.

@Tommmcatt May Just Have Some MJ In His System As Well, So What?: Are these English people?

@Benedick: They are English subjects, certianly, though there was a time when calling them that might have lost you a few teeth. They are the Pouges, and Irish folk-punk band. There are similar bands ( Flogging Molly, anyone? ), but I don’t think anybody has quite captured their unique sound- or the amazing poetry of Shane McGowans lyrics- since they broke up.

@Tommmcatt May Just Have Some MJ In His System As Well, So What?: “The Pogues were founded in Kings Cross, a district of Central London, in 1982”.

News to me, too.

ADD: Well, this is getting fun…

MacGowan was born on Christmas Day in Pembury, Kent, England in 1957, to Irish parents. MacGowan spent his early childhood in Tipperary before his family moved back to England when he was six and a half.

Also, you missed their show at the O2 last week.

@nojo: I didn’t know any of that either… though the band did offically break up in 1996, the music had a celtic/irish slant, and MacGowan’s lyrics were defiantly pro-republican. It kinda fools you.

I guess Irish is a state of mind….

@Tommmcatt May Just Have Some MJ In His System As Well, So What?: Plenty of reunion tours since, some of which MacGowan has participated in.

Also, it may be that London Irish, like Boston Irish, are more Irish than the Irish.

@Tommmcatt May Just Have Some MJ In His System As Well, So What?: Guardian has an interesting article on the history of the song, which was reissued this year for its 25th anniversary.

@Mistress Cynica: Interesting.

By the way, sweetie, did you email me an article on fat burning tea? I have a feeling one of our email accounts has been hacked.

@Tommmcatt May Just Have Some MJ In His System As Well, So What?: No. Oh, dear. Thanks for the heads-up.

@Tommmcatt May Just Have Some MJ In His System As Well, So What?: @nojo: John Lydon is England-born Irish, as well. Elvis Costello, for that matter, was born Catholic.

I can’t cope with the oirish.

Apart from the begorragh and the bomb throwing and James Joyces’s dreadful prose (I except the last movement of The Dead) and Sean O’Casey’s atrocious plays (will someone explain to me what the hell The Playboy of the Western World is supposed to be about because je ne comprends pas) and the flailing of the legs of that dreadful Flagghtery man and the terrorist attacks on London financed by American Roman Catholics, I’m sure they’re all delightful.

@Benedick: What do you think of this? As a wee biscuit, my brothers and I were trundled off to school on St. Patty’s Day with a dash of orange on our bodies, upon the strong encouragement of our mum. As a kid, it felt like my first act of rebellion, a “kicking against the pricks” moment in elementary school not as disturbing as, say, smearing my potato-like lunch substance on the cafeteria wall. More like wearing a different colored Chuck Taylor on each foot – which I wouldn’t do until college.

I was in middle school before I was able to connect this with my distant Irish Protestant heritage, the Orangemen, and my mom’s subversive conservativism and not-so-hidden hatred of the papists.

But we all got the last laugh – three of us married Catholics, the other married a Muslim.