Thursday, January 1, 2009

The Pogues: If I Should Fall from Grace with God


Ass-Headed Bottom: This is not--thank God if He's still There--what I looked like last night. But that gentleman up there did help me get through January 1st, which was not a half-bad day all told; better than most of 2008, anyway. I'd even label it a good day had I not begun the year with the nagging suspicion that I myself had long since fallen from grace with God. Oops.

Happily, the Pogues' joyous, hilarious, incomparable 1988 album was there to sort me out, with all the drunken reels, the leering ballads, the Irish nationalism, the vaguely anti-Semitic asides (okay, granted, I'm not a huge fan of those), the palatable punk, the drunken reels, the spirited liquors, the toothless grins, the drinking up, the passing out, the throwing up, the Britain bashing, the reeling drunks, and the only great Christmas song ever written. Come to think of it, Shane, there's no way you could have fallen from grace with God if He showered this much grace on you, a mighty stream of ill-advised, wasted grace pissed against the barroom wall.

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