Talk to an audio consultant

33 1/3 SERIES BOOK #60 - The Pogues's Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash

Are Liner Notes Not Enough For You?

33 1/3 is a series of short books about the making of wide variety of albums, written by a diverse group of authors/artists with titles ranging from Aja by Steely Dan to Zeppelin IV. The series contains over fifty titles and is acclaimed and loved by fans, musicians and scholars alike. These are for the music nuts out there who appreciate fantastic design, and smart, fun writing. Each book in the series takes an important album and breaks it down in startling minutiae. We love these books…you will, too!

To absorb Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash is to be taken on a wild voyage with a cast of downtrodden revolutionaries.  Despite this notion, the epic themes of the Pogues’ second full length record have been overlooked by both critics and biographers in favor of two things: the band’s penchant for combining Celtic folk with punk rhythms (“the sound”) and the excesses of Shane MacGowan (“the creator”).  Instead of reiterating these aspects, this book discusses, in the form of a sea-faring narrative, the record’s articulation of what it is found to be magnificently trodden.  Through epic imagery gracing the cover of the album and reverberating throughout the lyrics, Roesgen's book shows that what the Pogues created is far more than pub-room music created by drunken men wallowing in Irish nostalgia and pining for something subversive.

About the Author:
Jeffrey T. Roesgen writes for Tiny Mix Tapes. He is currently working on his first anthology of short stories.