Billy Bragg, Shane MacGowan and me

It's a story I've told often, but never here, but today there's reason to.

This weekend, the Pogues, the famed Irish/punk/rock band returns again to New York City and on Sunday, the midpoint of a three-night stand at the Roseland, Billy Bragg opens the show.

For me, the connection between Billy Bragg and the Pogues in inextricable. In a way, if it weren't for the Pogues and Billy Bragg, I might not have been doing my radio show for the past 23 years.

In 1984, I was invited by my friend John O'Neill to accompany him to a mutual friend's wedding in Bacup, England. We landed in London on September 3o, and scanning the local papers, I found that Elvis Costello was playing at the Hammersmith Palais on the next day, October 1. We got tickets, and the next night, after a fish and chips dinner, went to the show. The Men They Couldn't Hang, opened with a combination of country and western/folk and punk mixed roughly together. Then a group of young men, and one young women, all dressed in cheap suits and fedoras, ambled onto the stage and began to play the most enchanting mix of traditional Irish and ragged punk on acoustic instruments. The drummer stood with a snare and a kick drum, and the crowd sang along and pogoed. I asked the kid next to me who the band was. He said, "The Pogues. They used to be called Pogue Mahone until the BBC nicked the name because they found out it meant 'kiss my arse' in Irish." I was entranced, and while Elvis was great that night, I went away wanting more of the Pogues. I picked up their debut LP, "Red Roses For Me," which had just been released, and guess that I was one of the first people in America with the record.

A few days later, we made a long, late-night drive from London to Bacup, in the North of England. On the way, we listened to John Peel on the radio. Peel played a lot of new, and unrecognized music, and then introduced a new song from someone named Billy Bragg. He played "This Guitar Says Sorry," and from the moment the Bo Diddley rhythm played on a single reverby electric guitar leading to a ragged voice with a thick urban London accent, I was completely intrigued. I found Bragg's debut LP in a small record shop, and after reading a story about Bragg in one of the music inkies, I left England a confirmed fan.

Back in the US I searched for new Bragg and Pogues music as it was being released, and found most of my needs made at the late, great Hartford record store, Capitol Records. But in visiting the small folk record shop at the Speediest Printer in Town I found that proprietor Bill Domler had never heard of the Pogues or Bragg. He invited me onto his Monday morning folk radio show at WWUH to play some of the music, and then invited me to a training session to be a show host myself.

I missed Bragg's debut in the US when he opened for Echo and the Bunnymen (with a stop in Hartford at the Agora), but I did catch him on his first solo tour at an Iron Horse sponsored show, (which I think was in Sunderland, Mass). At that show, I did my first radio interview for WWUH with Billy Bragg.

In 1985, I attempted to promote a show with Billy Bragg at Hartford's Mad Murphy's with Paul LeMay. When Bragg had the opportunity to tour the US with The Smiths, his manager Peter Jenner called to ask if he could beg out of the date. We let him go with the promise that he would return one day (he's not played Hartford since). And I got to see the Smiths/Bragg show at the Orpheum in Boston.

Since then, I've been to many Bragg and Pogues shows, and if you're a listener, you know that I still play their music frequently on the air. As I've said, I've met Bragg several times, and joined the Pogues backstage at Toad's in New Haven after interviewing Jem Finer, and spending the evening drinking beer with Terry Woods.

But Sunday will be the first time that the show pairing will actually rekindle my discovery of this music so many years ago.

Bragg has a new album out, Mr. Love and Justice (my copy just arrived in the mail yesterday), and the Pogues are coasting on reputation, but I'm looking forward to a night of lusty reverie.