The Pogues appear to have a bit of dissent going on:
The Pogues have announced a “farewell tour” for the UK, much to the consternation of their guitarist. Phil Chevron has blasted notices for the goodbye tour, calling it “a marketing ploy” by others in the band. “This claim does not come from me,” he wrote on the group’s website, “and I will neither be supporting it nor discussing it.”
The seven-date tour begins in Glasgow and ends on 21 December in Brixton, with reported Irish gigs earlier in the month. These concerts will close the band’s 28th year, and their ninth since frontman Shane MacGowan re-formed the folk-punk rabble-rousers. But despite the flier’s unequivocal “Farewell Christmas Tour” tag-line, the Pogues don’t exactly seem ready to say farewell.
Not long after Chevron’s grumpy post to the official message-board, bandmate Spider Stacy popped in with a clarification. “This is the last Christmas tour for the foreseeable future,” he wrote. “That’s not to say we won’t be showing up at festivals here and there or maybe even the odd gig around the UK and Ireland and certainly in Europe. But we’re tired of dragging our weary, freezing carcasses around these drowning islands every December, so we’re going to give it a rest before you get tired of it, too. Go and see the Libertines. They’re the best.”
Shows how much attention I’d been paying . . . I thought 1996’s “Pogue Mahone” was the last album they’d recorded, and that they’d pretty much stopped performing. Off to Wikipedia . . .
The Pogues is a band of mixed Irish and English background, playing traditional Irish music with influences from punk rock and folk, formed in 1982 and fronted by Shane MacGowan. The band reached international prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s. MacGowan left the band in 1991 due to drinking problems but the band continued first with Joe Strummer and then with Spider Stacy on vocals before breaking up in 1996. The band reformed in 2001, and has been playing regularly ever since, most notably on the US East Coast every spring (bar 2010) and around the UK and Ireland every December. The group has yet to record any new music and according to Spider Stacy on Pogues.com has no inclination to do so.
That explains it nicely.
