album of the day

Back, way, way back when I was a student, I shared a hall of residence corridor with (among others) my friend Dave who I ended up sharing a flat with several years later. Slightly confusing to share a flat with someone of the same name, though people usually got round that by calling him Big Dave (as he's taller than me) or, following certain further revelations about his private life, Big Gay Dave.

Anyway, we spent a lot of time during this particular academic year sitting around in Dave's room drinking tea, playing cribbage, and listening to one of his smallish collection of CDs. The one that got the most airplay was If I Should Fall From Grace With God by The Pogues. A great album, but if you hear it every day for 9 months, you can subsequently go a long long time before you feel the need to hear it again. In fact it wasn't until I was in the Virgin Megastore in central Bristol a couple of days ago and saw that they were flogging The Very Best Of The Pogues for £3.99 that I had an urge to hear some of these tunes again.

And, funnily enough, great though this compilation is, my main criticism is that it doesn't have enough songs from IISFFGWG, as I like to call it. Even-handedness is all very well, but the compilers have bent over backwards to be even-handed to, in particular, the slightly ropey (in comparison) later albums Peace And Love and Hell's Ditch at the expense of some essential songs like Bottle Of Smoke, Turkish Song Of The Damned, Thousands Are Sailing and The Broad Majestic Shannon. Great stuff for all that, though.

Speaking of The Broad Majestic Shannon reminds me of a great website which is an archive of misheard song lyrics. The one in this song is in the line towards the end of the song which goes:

Where we once watched the rowboats landing
By the broad majestic Shannon

The way Shane MacGowan sings it the word "rowboats" sounds like "robots", which puts a whole different slightly threatening science fiction alien invasion of earth slant on the whole thing. In his defence he was probably drunk at the time.