Ewan MacColl - Dirty Old Town
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 มี.ค. 2019
- Taken from the album "An Introduction to Ewan MacColl"
🎧 Stream the album here → bit.ly/EwanMC_Spotify / bit.ly/EwanMC_Apple
🎵 Listen to the full album on TH-cam → bit.ly/EwanMC_YT
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I probably heard this song in the early 1960s and have loved it ever since. It's a beautiful melody and evocative of many mill towns in the U.S. and the UK. I remember driving through Pittsburgh in the 1940s, and it was just like this song. Everything covered with coal dust. The houses slack-jawed and falling apart. It was grim along Route 40 in those days, which is how my dad drove us to Ohio to visit family. It also stank. Nothing can smell as bad as coal slag, except maybe the dead fish smell of Gloucester, Mass., during the days when it was a major fishing port. Goddawful! Yes, I agree with Steve Jepson below. Such songs should not be forgotten. Just because we no longer see so much manufacturing here doesn't mean it has gone away, taking with it its awful stench and rank poverty. It has merely gone to the Third World to wreck their environment and destroy their citizenry. All in the name of progress, that deadly curse.
progress = prosperity = technology... which is the rising tide that lifts all boats... including the mere possibility of us having this "conversation" ...and me spelling "possibility" correctly, twice.
This man has not been described as a national treasure. He may not have appreciated the phrase in any case. Ewan was a lifelong socialist born in Salford. He was vilified by the British establishment for supporting working class causes and culture and his work is mostly ignored by the British establishment for the same reason. This enormously important character needs to be given his place in British cultural heritage and to be rehabilitated in the same way that Alan Turing has been rehabilitated. It's shocking that his work in bringing to life the lost ballads of working people is not celebrated more widely. He wrote a lot of beautiful songs in addition. Wake up people. You have been systematically disconnected from your past by orchestrated means; culturally managed and this includes the X-Factor.
Not sure about that . I heard his music regularly at folk clubs back in the 1960's and its was often university students that went to those places. But you are right in that not many people realise who wrote the song originally .
I think you're somewhat exaggerating about "the British establishment". But he did do some important cultural work around folk songs generally, and wrote some very fine songs. (None of which are Americana, Blues or Country, by the way!)
@@jerrysimon6938not sure you can exaggerate about the British establishment!
Great voice ,tainted political narrative
This was your hero not mine.. They where hard times for every one. Regardless to what country you lived in England Holland Ireland. . Now scotch had it easy in Highlands sheep shagging every night fresh air. Aberdeen Angus on the Huff. Now the next generation from working class tough city Liverpool. The beatles . You see we just moved it along and boy the beatles conquer the world. That was not bad MacColl did his bit these lads got a ticket to Ride . Then the rest is history. We out the mines off the bus and in cars. .. . The kids gone woke😂😅😢😂😂.
This song brings back memories of my dad, this was one of his favourites, thank you Ewan for the memories
If for nothing else
This song makes Ewan
My hero
Many apparently... including "Thin Lizzy"
I love this song as born there but lived on the South Coast most of my adult life! However very proud of my Dirty Old Town! Brilliant song, brilliant singer, brilliant writer.
Thank you Susan Barrett
I love my dirty old town 🧡
Genio. !!!!!!
this song haunted me for years. first time i heard it was when napster was new! i was on a hunt for all the irish/scottish folk music i could find. i had no clue who this man was but i was in love with his voice and the way he sang thing song. i burned it onto a CD along with other traditional ballads and played it a LOT. but sadly the disk was destroyed and i never could find this version, no matter who i asked. i was under the assumption it was one of the Clancy Brothers, but it definitely was not the right version. i assumed it might have been a spur of the moment recording in some pub, which would explain why i never could find THIS version.
i couldn't, and still can't, stand any other rendition. Everyone wants to shout the lyrics and hammer their guitars..... it's a ballad. a lament. it should be crooned, not screamed.
anyway
as it turned out the answer was hiding under my nose the whole time. Around the same time i discovered the standard windows music media player also had radio stations from all over the globe. my favorite was Clancy's Irish Music Radio that played nonstop traditional irish music. I found Christy Moore, Luka Bloom, The Pogues, and consequently, Kirsty McColl when she sang along with Shane. About a year later after falling in love with all of them fellas and dozens more she lost her life. But I still never knew it was her dad who sang this haunting melody. I'm not even sure how i cracked the case. I'm just happy that I did.
I've been able to finally find a lot of stuff recently that was ONLY discoverable and ONLY attainable through good ol Kazaa n them.
Funny and fitting that you found this version before the Pogues'
Great and at least as good as Working Class Hero. I always thought it was about Dublin even though I originally hailed from that area of NW England.
This is absolutely brilliant by any standards!!! I'm sure he was ignored during his lifetime because he was a member of the Communist Party but has a greater voice ever been given to the ordinary working man than this? Gives me goose pimples, I know a lot people appropriate which town he is actually referring to, especially after the Pogues excellent version of the song, but it is definitely referring to Salford in 1949 when it was written!!!
what a great singer.Now I understand ,why so many people try to cover that song. Not that they are doing bad, but they are not doing better than the original
Covered by Simple Minds. So, I put that and this in my SM playlist. Thanks for the upload!
Pogues also did an amazing cover!
Chad and Jeremy also.
[Verse 1]
I found my love by the gasworks croft
Dreamed a dream by the old canal
Kissed my girl by the factory wall
[Refrain]
Dirty old town, dirty old town
[Verse 2]
I heard a siren from the docks
Saw a train set the night on fire
Smelled the spring on the smoky wind
[Verse 3]
Clouds are floating across the sky
Cats are prowling upon their beat
Spring's a girl in the streets at night
[Refrain]
Dirty old town, dirty old town
[Verse 4]
I'm going to make a good sharp axe
Shining steel tempered in the fire
We'll chop you down like an old dead tree
This version may not be as catchy as the Dubliners or the Pogues, but it is the one where the meaning is most apparent.
I kissed my girl...
by the factory walls
Listen to the version where he sings this with Peggy Seeger. Amazing 🙌✌️
This is English Folk music - not Americana, blues or country ... this stuff was being written here hundreds of years before a white face was even seen in the americas
Absolute nonsensical comment
Interesting it sounds like sheep and kind_accepting
This version and the others seem so slow compared to The Pogues that i can't get into it
no a patch on the pogues, sorry...
Made in manchester
Salford, actually.
Just like the Beatles done Twist and Shout they made it their own and rightly the Pogues made this their own
I heard this song long before the Pogues ever recorded it. It will always be Ewan McColl's song.
This is authentic