Magazine’s still in a world of its Own
SHANE AMONG FAMOUS FANS
FULL OF LIFE: Joe Kinnear during his time as Nottingham Forest manager
THE feeling of dread grows greater by the day.
The local elections are going to be chaos. Look at some of the candidates who’ve declared to date — more loop-the-loops than an ice cream fridge.
Remember this: it was county councillors who voted for Peter Casey to be on the Presidential ballot in 2018.
The man who thought it would be a good idea for all of the Travellers in Ireland to move to a camp in the Phoenix Park. Be worried about June.
IT’S 40 years since The Pogues made their mission statement.
There wasn’t much fuss about the release of their first single back in 1984.
Well, not in terms of bothering the charts. That single — The Dark Streets of London — didn’t even trouble the compilers of the top 500, let alone the top 40.
But it was played on BBC Radio One by John Peel and David Jensen. That led to a call from a producer to inform Jensen that the band — then called Pogue Mahone — had a rather rude name...
Jensen’s response was to call them The Pogues on air. For a time, the band were annoyed but then figured the new name wasn’t that bad at all.
What is striking about that single is how it laid bare the themes that would become so familiar afterwards.
Exile
Themes of drink and exile and grimy London and the potent charm of cheap music.
It was a world that was familiar to anyone who read Dónall Mac Amhlaigh in the pages of Ireland’s Own.
When Shane MacGowan passed away last December, RTE interviewed many people in Nenagh who knew him. One man they talked to was Ronan Dodd, a journalist who had a long and distinguished career.
He remembered coming across MacGowan in a pub, sitting in a corner reading Ireland’s Own.
Dodd had a stint at the magazine so struck up a conversation. MacGowan informed him that he’d always loved Ireland’s Own because it printed the lyrics: Shane and (inset) an Ireland’s Own magazine
lyrics of old Irish songs.
Consider the impact that had on the teenage MacGowan. He was to the fore in the original punk scene in London but, at the same time, was hoovering up songs about Roddy McCorley, the Rising of the Moon and Boolavogue.
There are flavours of other Ireland’s Own staples too in MacGowan’s work.
The darkness of Kitty the Hare’s world, the mischief of Says Cassidy, the enquiring eye of Mrs Flanagan.
When you consider the way another London-Irish luminary — playwright and filmmaker Martin McDonagh — uses language, it’s a fair bet that Ireland’s Own used to come into his house too.
Think of all the magazines that have fallen by the wayside. There was a time when NME was a colossus in the music world. Smash Hits had the same impact in a different part of it.
Sports Illustrated is no more too, another mighty behemoth.
But Ireland’s Own keeps on keeping on. Rarely talked of, but quietly influential.