The other half

Famed Irish band The Pogues were once called Pogue Mahone, which means something rude in Gaelic. The Pogues ditched the later half of their name, leaving Dublin lad Finny McConnell to pick it up, dust it off and dub his own band of Irish-punk-folk troublemakers with it. They like The Pogues (of course!) as well as punk rockers both of the 1960s and '70s variety (that's a Clash sticker on Finny's Ric).

Finny - founder, mainstay, chairman of the board, etc.



Ayron Mortley on mandolin. He later switched to guitar (the white hollowbody to the right of Finny is his), but I didn't stick around for that bit.



Arlyn Bradley on bass.



Drummer Nikos.



Sean on harp (of the non-Irish variety) and banjo.



The whole lot!



Laughs all 'round chez Mahones.





They had a special guest for the singalong action (on The Pogues' Dirty old Town), Jack from the Trews. I have to take their word for it, since I know naught of them Trews.





Faceoff action!



As I said in my earlier post, they were about to crank things up with some dual-guitar action. Unlike my previous note, the band is not in Australia. That trip got delayed.

• Show reminder: Mouthus, Cousins of Reggae, B'Italian and Smoke Judo make strange noises in the basement of End Hits; Clepto and Radiodazed play the Dominion Tavern; didn't I tell you Pride Tiger would come back through town? Once again they bring the boogie to Zaphod's with Die Mannequin and The Mighty Eagle Band. Brendan Flynn and The Terrible Liars and Eric Vieweg and The Silver Lining play Babylon. And of course, there's Westfest, with Big Stone Drummers and Alden Pompana, The Old Youth, Graveyard Dogs, Hunter Valentine, Andy Swan, Nukariik, Golden Dogs, Angela Desveaux, Jason Collett, Lily Frost, Lindsay Ferguson and Kathleen Edwards.