A boy cries out for his mama, before he dies for his home

Red and black balloons blow across the wide lawns where collapsed folding chairs are piled ready for transport beneath the sweep of the enormous tents that had been set up for Wesleyan's graduation, and of course, for Barack Obama's visit (lots of good stuff on Wesleying this morning regarding the event).

This is the day when my neighborhoods shifts rhythms to the summer mode. With five houses on my block completely empty for the summer, the neighborhood would be something of a quiet ghost town if it weren't for the hoodlums who traverse the street at all hours shouting into cell phones as if the cells were tin cans attached with a taut string.

This morning we'll head down to the Memorial Day Parade where I, for one, will consider how readily our leaders dispose of the plentiful bodies of our patriotic young men and women. The dead are our country's heroes. The families pay the most horrible price. Our leaders are culpable. As Phil Och's sang, "It's always the old who lead us to the war. It's always the young who fall."

Michael Roth's words from yesterday's commencement echo large:

"You will hear people tell you that the greatest protection against violence is surveillance, that greater security is developed with higher fences to keep out the foreigners, or that we must project violence on distant shores to keep our homes safe. DO NOT BELIEVE THESE MESSAGES. Please remember that your education stands in opposition to non-sense and cruelty; please recall your capacity to create when others around you call for destruction."

For my part, the thought of God Bless America, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, or the National Anthem, while the easy choices for the day, are the least appropriate.

Here's what I'll listen to, and I invite you to join me:

Phil Ochs, I Ain't A' Marchin' Anymore

Billy Bragg, Everywhere (written by Greg Trooper and Syd Griffith)



Eric Bogle, The Green Field's of France (No Man's Land)



The Pogues, The Band Played Waltzin' Matilda (written by Eric Bogle, but turned into a classic by the Pogues)



Dan Bern, After the Parade

Mark Erelli, Volunteers

The waning days of genius

My son Colin put me onto this interview with Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan on the Henry Rollins show. MacGowan, who has modeled his career on his idol Brendan Behan, still shows a glimmer of the rare intelligence, and creative genius that once shown brightly through the haze of alcohol. There's also a performance of The Irish Rover at the Henry Rollins site, here. Reviled MacGowan handler, Joey Cashman, on pennywhistle.

A thought about Irish cliches on St. Paddy's day

The good news is that Shane MacGowan showed up this year when I went to see the show last night at Roseland in NYC. (In other good news, Billy Bragg's opening set was tight, sparkling and enjoyable - particularly his duet with Kate Nash). Though he was intoxicated, and fell heavily to the stage after spinning between Philip Chevron and Jem Finer, Shane MacGowan seemed healthier than on many occasions in the past, and he still is able to find the lyrics to every song he sings somewhere in that pickled brain.

Which leads me to thoughts on the Irish cliche. For years, the Irish have had to overcome the "stage Irish" image that has been prevalent since the 17th century - poor, drunken, happy, poetic, drunken, funny, musical, maudlin, drunken, lovable, gullible, unreliable, drunken... In this century, the roles of Barry Fitzgerald in a plenitude of films was that of the irascible tipsy Irishmen.

In fact, in their prime, the Pogues were often accused of reviving the stereotype of the drunken Irishman as Shane MacGowan lurched about the stage, and vomited during interviews. They dismissed the idea readily, and with good cause. They were reviving Irish traditionalism, combined with a sharp-edged punkiness, but MacGowan's grasp of literature (Irish and otherwise), Celtic myth, and modern politics, made his songs amazingly dangerous tinctures of poetry and populism.

That's changed.

Last night may well have been my last Pogues show. The band themselves, and their volatile leader is not the reason, though I must say that last night was the first time I felt that they were all going through the motions, and not happily so. Who could deny them the ability to make a little cash late in their careers.

But with MacGowan incapable of creating anything new, the band hashes through the same twenty-five songs like a sorry rock and roll revival band.

Then there's the crowd. I wasn't the only member of the audience in my sixth decade, but I can assure you we were not in legion. Most of the fans were thirty and forty somethings who grew acquainted with the Pogues through the recordings long after the band had broken up in their first incarnation.

And a majority of the fans seemed to be less interested in the music (though most know the lyrics well enough to belt out a chorus at the top of their lungs), and more interested in deifying MacGowan and emulating his disease, alcoholism. In fact, there seems to be a game played at these concerts - who can get drunker than Shane.

As fans carried unstable fistfuls of plastic cups filled with beer between bar and buddies, they plowed through onlookers, glassy-eyed, stumbling and the picture of an Irish cliche. I witnessed two fights, gallons of spilt brew, and one beautiful young woman who ambled toward the bar, incoherent, with one of her lovely breasts inadvertently dangling from her spaghetti-strapped dress.

During the Bragg set, the crowd was polite, though there were pockets of Pogues fan consuming fuel for the main event. Up front, near where I was standing, as soon as the much began, the first eight rows turned into the expected scrum. What none of us expected was the rush toward the stage by drunken louts from the rear of the house, toward the stage, knocking aside any who might keep them from jigging in front of their beloved, toothless, poet-king of intoxication, Shane MacGowan.

The abuse of alcohol at the show was really frightening (considering many of these idiots were going to climb behind the wheel for drives back to Jersey, Connecticut and beyond). The goal of drinking to oblivion by a good portion of the audience made it, at minimal, uncomfortable for the rest of us, who would have been happy with a Guinness or two, a chorus of "And a rovin' a rovin' a rovin' I'll go," and a glimpse of a legendary band in their decline. Instead, we spent the evening sidestepping lurching beer zombies intent on perpetuating an Irish cliche.

If it sounds like fun to you, there's always St. Paddy's day today - the annual vestige of Celtic shame.

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.

I keep faith

On his last, and abbreviated, tour of the US, Billy Bragg introduced a new song as one he had written for all his fans. As Dick Gaughan might say, I Keep Faith is a love song of a different kind. Bragg sings encouragement to all those who have been involved in trying to change the world in one way or another. You can hear the song as a preview to his new album, Mr. Love and Justice, on his myspace site.

You can also pre-order the new album at his website, and as a bonus, get a download of a song that won't be on the album.

And don't forget, there are still some tickets left for the March 16 NYC Roseland show with Bragg and the Pogues.

Bragg visit to WWUH cancelled

Billy Bragg was named Classic Songwriter at the Q magazine music awards this week.

'Twas an opportunity to answer the classic "mixing pop with politics" question for The Guardian.

Bragg will be in America next week, where he will appear in New York on October 17 at a benefit for Huntington's disease which honors Woody and Marjorie Guthrie with appearances by Steve Earle, and Stone Gossard's band Brad.

The next day, he'll be at the Calvin Theater in Northampton Massachusetts. There are still some decent seats left, for the Calvin Theater show.


Other interesting Bragg news. He's been participating with a variety of interesting folk, rock and world music musicians in a project called the Imagined Village and will be touring with them. He's released a vinyl 45 rpm single called Johnny Clash which benefits his initiative called Jail Guitar Doors, which provides free guitars to prisoners. And he's doing a one-off co-engagement with the Pogues during their holiday tour of the British Isles. He'll be playing the Manchester Central on December 15th. And he's part of the already sold-out Joe Strummer Tribute, Acton Arms Aloft, in Acton, England on November 15.