Shane MacGowan, the renowned Irish singer-songwriter, poet, and frontman of The Pogues, passed away at the age of 65. His death was announced by his wife, Victoria Mary Clarke. The Pogues also released a statement confirming his peaceful passing with his family by his side.

You can read the statement by Victoria Mary Clarke below.

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Below is the statement by The Pogues.

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— The Pogues (@poguesofficial) November 30, 2023

About Shane MacGowan

MacGowan, born on Christmas Day in 1957 in Kent, was celebrated as one of Ireland’s most influential songwriters and poets. Despite a challenging upbringing, which included being expelled from school and struggling with drug and alcohol addiction, he made a significant impact on the arts and entertainment world through his work with The Pogues and collaborations with a host of musical legends.

Throughout his career, MacGowan battled various health issues, leading to multiple hospital stays in recent years. He was treated for viral encephalitis, a condition causing brain swelling, and also suffered from shingles. Moreover, a severe pelvis injury in 2015 left him wheelchair-bound during his final years. Despite these challenges, MacGowan achieved sobriety in 2016 following a serious bout with pneumonia and a long hospital stay due to his hip injury. His wife, Victoria, with whom he shared a decades-long relationship and married in 2018, frequently updated fans on his health struggles.

MacGowan’s legacy, marked by hits like “Fairytale of New York” and “A Pair of Brown Eyes,” and his collaborations with artists such as Kirsty MacColl, Joe Strummer, Nick Cave, Steve Earle, Johnny Depp, the late Sinéad O’Connor, and Ronnie Drew, leaves a lasting impression on music and culture​.

The below “Haunted” was the soundtrack of both the lives of Sinéad O’Connor and Shane MacGowan.

About The Pogues

The Pogues, an Anglo-Irish Celtic punk band, was led by Shane MacGowan and other members. It was established in King’s Cross, London, in 1982 under the original name “Pogue Mahone,” an anglicized version of the Irish phrase “póg mo thóin,” meaning “kiss my arse.” The band gained international fame in the 1980s and early 1990s, producing several successful albums and singles. MacGowan departed from the group in 1991 due to issues with alcohol, and the band continued with Joe Strummer and later Spider Stacy as vocalists until their initial breakup in 1996. They reunited in late 2001 and performed regularly in the UK, Ireland, and the US East Coast until their final disbandment in 2014, not recording new material in this latter period.

Their music, which carried political undertones, was shaped by MacGowan and Stacy’s punk roots. However, they uniquely blended this style with traditional Irish instrumentation, incorporating the tin whistle, banjo, cittern, mandolin, and accordion into their sound.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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New Orleans-based alternative folk-rock artist Fred Abong presents the single “Shadows” from his latest “Fear Pageant” album, recently released via the Seattle-based label Disc Drive. This is Abong’s seventh long-player to date already and should please fans of the darker side of Leonard Cohen, Joe Strummer or Guided By Voices.

Fred Abong got his musical start in the 1980’s on the Rhode Island hardcore punk scene. In the early 1990s, he played bass for Throwing Muses and then Belly. Putting music on hold for academic pursuits, he then earned a PhD in Humanities and taught at various universities for eight years before returning to music. Now back as a solo artist, Abong also plays bass in the Kristin Hersh Electric Trio.

Available now is the video for Shadows which “came into being in much the same way as all my songs do … via a set of strong images or vignettes that flood into my head in response to a piece of music I’ve written,” says Fred Abong.

“I mentioned that the song makes me want to slow dance with my woman. This is exactly what I was seeing when I first laid down the arpeggiated chord progression that constitutes the beginning of the song … that and her lovely silhouette dappling every surface in the room. Those images gave way to Homeric scenes, something like Odysseus returning to Penelope after the Trojan War. A sense of triumph is the idea, though in this case not over armed conflict, but over a long and bloody war of the heart. Prayers of gratitude are in order.”

Abong earlier teased several tracks from the album, including “Father”, “My Way” and “Fear Pageant”. This new record follows Abong’s “Yellowthroat” album, released in 2022 and recorded with Rob Ahlers (50FOOTWAVE, Kristin Hersh Electric Trio) and earlier albums “Homeless”, “Pulsing” and “OMOPH”.

The “Fear Pageant” album is out now and available across fine music platforms, including Bandcamp. The record is available on vinyl or as a digital download.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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(Photo by Matt Vardy) This will interest some of you for sure. The Toronto-London ensemble, The Flowers of Hell, have announced the inaugural vinyl release of their album “Odes”, set for April 22nd in celebration of UK Record Store Day. The 180-gram red coloured vinyl will be issued through Space Age Recordings and presented in a luxurious die-cut sleeve.

The record showcases orchestral-pop interpretations of tracks by some of the group’s most admired artists, such as Joy Division, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Bob Dylan, Klaatu, Stereolab, Laurie Anderson, The Velvet Underground, and Neutral Milk Hotel. Featured on the album are Sea Power’s Neil ‘Hamilton’ Wilkinson and Abi Fry (Bat For Lashes, Sea Power), Ivo Pospíšil, a renowned figure in the Prague underground scene, and the Plastic People Of The Universe. “Odes” was recorded in Toronto and co-produced with Grammy-winning engineer Peter J. Moore (Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Joe Strummer), who also remastered the album for vinyl.

The band has now released videos of their versions of Joy Division’s “Atmosphere” and “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft,” a song popularised by Toronto prog-rock group Klaatu (once believed to be The Beatles under a pseudonym) and later, The Carpenters. Written in the early 1970s, the song was influenced by the 1950s International Flying Saucer Society’s attempt to synchronise their global membership to telepathically transmit a specific message to extraterrestrial life, hoping for a response. “Calling Occupants” is now the official anthem of World Contact Day.

On May 12th, The Flowers of Hell will release their sixth studio album, “Keshakhtaran,” and their first in six years. The 42-minute psilocybin meditation piece, comprised of two sections, features contributions from 20 artists, including Rishi Dhir (Elephant Stone, Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Black Angels, Beck) and avant-accordion virtuoso Angel Corpus Christi (Suicide, Spiritualized, Dean Wareham). The preview single “Foray Through Keshakhtaran” is now available on digital platforms such as Apple Music, Spotify, and Bandcamp.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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(Photo by Mike Maloney – CC BY-SA 4.0) Sad news, Keith Levene, full name Julian Keith Levene, the English musician who was a founding member of both The Clash and Public Image Ltd (PiL) died on November 11 aged 65. Levene died at his home in Norfolk after battling liver cancer.

At the age of fifteen Levene worked as a roadie for Yes on their ‘Close to the Edge’ tour. In 1976, he became a founding member of The Clash and The Flowers of Romance. Levene was responsible for helping to persuade Joe Strummer to leave the 101ers and join the Clash. Although he left The Clash before they began recording, he co-wrote “What’s My Name”, featured on their first album.

After the late 1970s British punk band the Sex Pistols disintegrated, Levene and that band’s lead singer John Lydon co-founded Public Image Ltd (PiL). He was involved in the writing, performing and producing of PiL’s early albums: “First Issue”, “Metal Box” and “Flowers of Romance”.

Levene left PiL in 1983 over creative differences concerning what would eventually become the band’s fourth album, “This Is What You Want… This Is What You Get”. In 1984, he released the original versions of the songs on his own label under the title “Commercial Zone” which was the original working title of the album.

After moving to Los Angeles the year before, Levene was asked in mid-1986 to produce demos for the album “The Uplift Mofo Party Plan” by Red Hot Chili Peppers at Master Control in Burbank with engineers Steve Catania and Dan Nebenzal. Also in 1986, Levene worked together with DJ Matt Dike, experimenting with sampling techniques and hip-hop for Ice T and Tone Loc on their early recordings for “Delicious”. In 1989, he released his first solo release, “Violent Opposition”, on which members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers performed.

In 2003, Levene contributed to Pigface’s album “Easy Listening” and since then has released several solo records.

In 2011 Levene contributed to three tracks on the album “Psychic Life”, a collaboration between former PiL bassist Jah Wobble and Lonelady. In spring 2014, Levene went to Prague to record “Commercial Zone 2014”, an album backed via a crowdsourcing campaign funding website at Indiegogo.

In later years, he invested heavily in Bitcoin and other forms of cryptocurrency.

Below is an interview with Keith Levene and John Lydon on The Tom Snyder Show in 1980.

And here is an interview called “Bitcoin is Punk Rock with Keith Levene” from 2 years ago.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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Jonathan Rhys Meyers (“Into The Woods”, “Les Miserables”) will star as Joe Strummer, the lead singer and frontman of legendary punk band The Clash, in “London Town”, a new film opening in select theaters and on demand on October 7. Next to Jonathan Rhys Meyers, the film will be starring Daniel Huttlestone, Dougray Scott, Natasha McElhone and others.

The plot: When fifteen-year-old Shay (Daniel Huttlestone) hears the music of The Clash for the first time, it’s a revelation, opening up a new world of social consciousness and anti-establishment defiance beyond anything he’s known in his dead-end London suburb. Drawn into the heart of the city’s burgeoning punk scene, he forges two relationships that will change his life, falling in love with rebellious cool girl Vivian (Nell Williams) and finding an unexpected connection with none other than The Clash’s electrifying frontman, Joe Strummer (Jonathan Rhys Meyers).

The film soundtrack itself ‘bounces’ from The Clash to The Ramones to Buzzcocks.

The film was directed by Derrick Borte and written by Matt Brown. Borte is not a newbie in the film sector, the American filmmaker is known for the dark comedy, “The Joneses” (2010) featuring Demi Moore. He wrote, directed, and produced the film. He was also involved in the 2013 film “Dark Around The Stars” as director and executive producer. In 2015 he directed and co-wrote the American mystery drama-thriller film “H8RZ”.

You can view a film teaser below.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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