Peter Richard “Spider” Stacy

Peter Richard “Spider” Stacy, English musician and one of the founding members of Irish band The Pogues, is born in Eastbourne, England, on December 14, 1958.

Stacy leaves school at the age of 16 after failing to attend regularly. He holds a few jobs, including working at a carwash and as a used car salesman for nearly two years. One of Stacy’s early bands was The Millwall Chainsaws, which Stacy describes as more of an idea than an actual band, although they perform seven gigs within two years. The band features Stacy on vocals and Shane MacGowan on guitar. Stacy and MacGowan had met at the Roundhouse at a Ramones concert that also featured The Saints and Talking Heads. They play some Irish rebel songs, later renaming themselves the New Republicans. This band later forms the genesis of The Pogues. Stacy has heard a good deal of Irish music growing up in London but becomes increasingly interested in it after meeting MacGowan.

Stacy co-founds The Pogues, along with MacGowan, Jem Finer, and James Fearnley, and appears on all of their recordings. He is credited with suggesting the band’s original name, Pogue Mahone, which is Irish for “kiss my arse.” The band’s original intent is for MacGowan and Stacy to share vocal duties, but decide to leave them to MacGowan after the first performance. Stacy opts to learn the tin whistle. Stacy still frequently contributes backing vocals and occasional lead vocals throughout his long tenure with the band. After MacGowan is fired from the The Pogues in 1991, Joe Strummer fills in for him for a short period after which Stacy assumes the role of lead vocalist. The Pogues record two albums with Stacy on lead vocals – Waiting for Herb and Pogue Mahone. Stacy resumes his original role in the band when they begin performing reunion shows in 2001.

Stacy has appeared in both live performances and on recordings with many fellow musicians, including Astral Social Club, Filthy Thievin’ Bastards, and long-time friend Steve Earle. In 2005, Stacy performs two songs with Patti Smith at the Meltdown festival. In 2007, he appears on Dropkick Murphys’ version of “Flannigan’s Ball” with Ronnie Drew of The Dubliners.

Stacy appears in several movies and television productions over his career, including the Alex Cox films Straight to Hell (1986) and Walker (1986), as well as Eat the Rich (1987). Most recently, he appears as “Slim Jim” Lynch in two seasons of the HBO series Treme, which is set in New Orleans.

Stacy and his wife have lived in New Orleans since 2010.

jem-finer Jeremy Max “Jem” Finer, English musician, artist, composer, and one of the founding members of The Pogues, is born in Stoke-on-Trent, England on July 20, 1955.

After college at Keele University, Finer travels around Europe and spends some time working on a barge in France. He settles in London and becomes the bass player in a group called The Petals and lives in 32 Burton Street, a house which he sometimes shares with Spider Stacey and Shane MacGowan. Together with James Fearnley they found The Pogues. Primarily a banjoist, he also plays other instruments, including mandola, saxophone, hurdy-gurdy, and the guitar. Apart from Shane MacGowan, Finer is the most prolific composer for the band.

Finer appears on all the band’s albums until their breakup in 1996. He continues working as a musician and composer after leaving The Pogues.

On January 1, 2000, the Finer-composed Longplayer piece of music is started and is designed to last 1,000 years without ever repeating itself. It currently exists in both computer-generated and live versions. Longplayer represents a convergence of many of his concerns, particularly those relating to systems, long-durational processes, and extremes of scale in both time and space.

Finer serves as “Artist in Residence” at the Astrophysics Sub-department of the University of Oxford between October 2003 and June 2005. Finer and Hamburg-based swamp pop legend DM Bob begin recording and performing together in 2005, releasing their album Bum Steer in August of that year and co-producing the debut album by experimental pop band Marseille Figs. In July 2005, Finer wins the PRS Foundation New Music Award on the basis of his proposal to build a device that will automatically “compose” a song of indeterminate length by harnessing the creative force of the weather.

In March 2012, Mobile Sinfonia, a global composition for ringtones is launched, developed during a year Finer spends as a non-resident artist at the University of Bath. This piece concerns mutual invasion of soundscape via ringtones.

Finer is currently working on a number of new projects continuing his interest in long-term sustainability and the reconfiguring of older technologies, including Spiegelei, a spherical camera obscura featuring Finer’s innovative 360-degree projection system and the Supercomputer in Cambridge, a 5-bit mechanical sculpture which will compute minimal musical scores.

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seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

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Birth of “Jem” Finer, Founding Member of The Pogues

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