Produced by Elvis Costello Rum, Sodomy And The Lash stuck several thumbs up at the purists who saw The Pogues as an affront to trad values. Not so. Rather, Rum saw the first flowering of Shane MacGowan as a unique and brilliant song-poet, unafraid to speak the unspeakable but also capable of magnificent vocal interpretations of songs like Ewan McColl’s ‘Dirty Old Town’.
Alongside acknowledged classics like ‘Sally McLennane’ and ‘A Pair Of Brown Eyes’, ‘The Sick Bed Of Cuchalainn’ uses images of Irish myth to depict the problem of alcoholism. ‘The Old Main Drag’ may well be the first Irish song to deal with male prostitutes. But others paid for their passage too. Cait O Riordan delivered the delicious ballad ‘I’m A Man You Don’t Meet Every Day’ and the band played throughout as if their very lives depended on it. The sad big wigs at Woolworth’s insisted the cover be overstuck with a warning about the lyrics. As if that could keep them in.