Almost two decades ago a friend of mine came up from London to visit, when I rented a room in a house not far from where I live now. My friend A.N. was about to go to India, and we went out got drunk and ended up back at the house listening to music, eventually sticking The Pogues on, and talking drunken rubbish, praising the lyrics of Shane McGowan for being both a realist and a romantic, and being able to paint pictures with words and all that kind of drunk music bloke stuff. This song was the one for me at the time- brilliant musical backing and Shane's lines about 'whiskey on Sunday and tears on our cheeks' and how it's 'stupid to laugh and useless to bawl about a rusty tin can and an old hurley ball'. What we couldn't understand though was why in the final two lines Shane suddenly lurched into science fiction B Movie territory- 'where we once watched the robots landing, and the broad, majestic Shannon'. Made no sense at all. Quite liked the image of robots crawling out of the river Shannon, but didn't fit with the rest of song. We got drunker and moved onto other topics. Blah blah blah.
A few weeks later I got a postcard from A.N. at the Taj Mahal describing sights seen and places been, and right at the bottom of the postcard in tiny handwriting- 'P.S. It's row-boats, not robots.'
14 The Broad Majestic Shannon.wma
A few weeks later I got a postcard from A.N. at the Taj Mahal describing sights seen and places been, and right at the bottom of the postcard in tiny handwriting- 'P.S. It's row-boats, not robots.'
14 The Broad Majestic Shannon.wma