60 albums
1985 - The Pogues - Rum, Sodomy and The Lash

By 1985 my love for metal was well and truly over. Looking through the list of albums released in 1985 reveals a lot by bands I’d have jumped on a year or two earlier that are a complete mystery to me. It would seem that at the same time as metal leaving my life it was also the beginning of my transition from vinyl to CD. I think Kate Bush’s The Hounds of Love was my first CD purchase, but hot on it’s heels would have been The Pogues’ Rum, Sodomy, and The Lash. So I’ll bend my rules again and start allowing CDs into the series given how fully I embraced the format, despite never having actually loved it.

The Pogues - Rum, Sodomy, and The Lash

So, Rum, Sodomy, and The Lash - I’ve opted to give the title the commas I think it requries, unless rum sodomy is a thing in which case I’ll apologise - was The Pogues’ second album and might just be their best. It was certainly the one that had me totally hooked, and hooked right from the very start of it to the very end of it - it is an utterly flawless album and so, probably, The Pogues best (although If I Should Fall from Grace With God pushes it a close second.

I saw the Pogues a lot between 1985 and 1991 (see my previous post)and every gig was a treat, except maybe the last one in Finsbury Park that was a bit of a nightmare.

It’s funny because the thing that made those Pogues gigs so memorable was the mosh and the cameraderie within the mosh… but The Pogues best album tracks are the gentle ones. So on this album it’s I’m a Man You Don’t Meet Every Day (I think losing Cait’s voice after this album was a loss to the band), A Pair of Brown Eyes and their gorgeous cover of Ewan MacColl’s Dirty Old Town.

The last track is their cover of Eric Bogle’s And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda which has anger mixed in with the bitterness and sadness that most versions have and all the better for that. It’s a song that can make me cry. And still we are sending young people off to die for their country (cf. All Quiet on The Western Front).

I took the opportunity to also listen to the albums I don’t dig out so much and both Peace and Love and especially Hell’s Ditch deserve more of my time than I give them.