Wednesday Wadio: Pogues’ Sick Bed Of Cuchulainn

Interviewer: What’s your poison these days?
Shane: I like wine, and I drink Peach Schnapps. It’s only 21 percent.
Interviewer: That sweet stuff’ll rot your teeth.
Shane: I haven’t got any teeth. – Playboy

Sick Bed is my very favorite Pogues song, and I listen to it constantly. I had the distinct and unlikely pleasure of seeing them last night at the Orpheum here in Boston. I say unlikely, because anyone who knows anything about Shane McGowan is well aware of his severe drink problem, and the fact that he comes close to death as casually as you or I flick off a lightswitch. When I heard they were touring this year, I figured it was without Shane (as they did from 91-to 2001) so imagine my pleasant surprise. It was a truly great time.

In Irish mythology, Cuchulainn “is taken ill when he is attacked in a dream by two women with horsewhips (he lay asleep in his sickbed for a year as a result)”. That’s kinda hot, especially if they feed you whiskey in your hospital of choice. Horsewhips aside, not only is this song catchy, rocking and pleasing to the ear – it tells a crazy story about a man who, among other things, pisses himself, gets thrown out of a bar, has his head kicked in and then vomits in a church. Shane is a little hard to understand at times, and you can read the full lyrics here:

When you pissed yourself in Frankfurt and got syph down in Cologne
And you heard the rattling death trains as you lay there all alone
Frank Ryan bought you whiskey in a brothel in Madrid
And you decked some fucking blackshirt who was cursing all the Yids
At the sick bed of Cuchulainn we’ll kneel and say a prayer
And the ghosts are rattling at the door and the devil’s in the chair

Anti-semitism, venerial disease and whorehouses – now that sounds like a Saturday night. Here’s Shane himself talking about the ditty from his book “A Drink With Shane McGowan“: “It’s about how every old dosser you meet on the street has got a history. He’s got a history of probably fighting in a couple world wars, maybe the Spanish Civil War.” And how did the book come to be? Glad you asked: “It’s a bunch of interviews that she did while I was drunk. I said a lot of things about people that I wouldn’t have said if I hadn’t been drunk and talking to my wife. But what’s done is done, and I think it’s a good book.” While we’re at it, here’s a great collection of drinking references in Pogues songs.

You can listen to the song for yourself by clicking Radio Pye to your left. The pictures you see were taken by myself last night during and after the show, and I’ve also uploaded a few video clips of which the audio and picture isn’t too bad. If you’re a fan, check them out. First off is their rousing performance of Sick Bed, during which I swear I felt the Orpheum’s balcony shifting with the weight of drunken, dancing Irishmen. The twat you can hear singing along is none other than yours truly:

I also got clips of Lonely Pair of Brown Eyes, Fairytale of New York and you can even enjoy watching Shane shoot a hat that is thrown at him like it’s a clay pigeon. From the size of the whiskey bottle you can see him take a pull off of in the Fairytale clip, skeet was probably only one of many foreign objects he saw floating past him on stage last night. And as it happens, I’ll only stop listening to the Pogues when pink elephants fookin’ fly. I’m thrilled I can now cross “See the Pogues Live” off my list. And throwing up in a church.