Not everyone's cup of tea...

[Reggie Love]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiSk6mjLG88 The Pogues - Pinned/alone in the wilderness

But I like it. It's got a rough beauty to it. RIP Joseph Hill. i wonder if he ever heard it.

[Ringo]

Not sure I actually like it, but it's interesting. I used to go and watch the Pogues live a lot from the early to late 80's, great live band until MacGowan's drinking reached the point where he couldn't remember the lyrics. Gave up on them in about '89 when he'd descended into farce and fell off the stage. Some great musicians in that band.

Just found this, Joe Strummer production might explain the reggae influence. I know some of the band were into reggae ever since punks picked it up in the late 70's but I'd never heard of them recording anything particularly influenced by JA.

By the time we got to working on our fifth album, the Joe Strummer-produced Hell’s Ditch, we even finished a strong new backing track of it for that record, but it never got completed. When Shane came down to Rockfield Studios in Wales, he allocated his time there to other ideas - including the remarkable medley of Culture’s “I’m Alone in the Wilderness” with his own “Pinned Down” [Disc One]. It is perhaps a mark of how fraught with debate the track-listing on that album became (some of the saga is detailed by Carol Clerk in her biography of the band) that when, at the album’s end, I left Rockfield with Joe, a passenger in his old Morris Minor, I was so certain that “Pinned Down / Wilderness” would make the final cut that it never occurred to me it might even need an advocate.

http://www.pogues.com/Releases/Disco/BoxSetPage.html

[Reggie Love]

Yes Ringo, I was a big Pogues fan too and went to around 8 live shows between 86 and 89 and then a couple more in the 2000s. A fantastic energy to those gigs and like you say, they could really play. I'd never seen gigs before or since where it seemed like the whole venue was going for it, not just a 'mosh pit' at the front.

This track comes from a five cd box set of different mixes, rarities, radio sessions etc that came out a few years ago. I only picked it up recently though and enjoyed a Pogues patch - also reading James Fearnley's (accordion player) book about the band.

I find the song strangely moving and its imperfections heighten that. MacGowan is mumbling and Spider is probably off-key, but somehow it works for me.