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A Sunday of song, sea and sperm… Wales and whales are both welcome!

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Thanks to Cap’n Salwarpe and his crew, yesterday we enjoyed a splendid Shanty Saturday,

A cavalcade of nautical songs from favourite artists, old and new, including the singing postie Nathan Evans, the Longest Johns, the Pogues, the Wellington Sea Shanty Society, Cyril Tawney, the Wilsons, Triakel, Ewan Macoll, Coope, Boyes and Simpson, Seán Dagher,
Alestorm, La Nef, The Sheringham Shantymen, The Watersons and the Storm Weather Shanty Choir.

Such was my nautical enthusiasm that I had to dash down to Systembolaget and buy a large bottle of rum. (I was hoping to get myself a bird to sit on my shoulder too, being a great fan of that shantyastic movie, Parrots of the Caribbean, but even Norwegian Blues were out of stock.)

Leading the singing was the AW’s very own Shantyman, The Cheshire Cat and he offered the following explanation of the genre:

”The purpose of a shanty is to give co-ordination to heavy team work; that can be on dry land, but is most remembered for being at sea. But some wipsy ballad about missing one’s sweetheart back in port, don’t count as a shanty just ’cause it’s being sung at sea.”

Twang posted Nic Jones’s The Humpback Whale, which he described as “clearly a sea song not a shanty” and that got me thinking of the many fine songs of the sea and sailors there are which are not shanties.

Several artists come to mind Tom Waits, Fairport Convention, Ebert Taube, Bellowhead, the Mighty Boosh, David Crosby, Morcheeba, Jimmy Buffet, The Who, Village People…..

Songs of typhoons, tornadoes, forsaken sweethearts, the Sargasso sea, riptides, sandcastles, surf, straits,

Whispy ballads, raunchy rockers, free jazz wigouts…..all genres welcome.

Come on shipmates, please share your nautical treasures!

To get you in a maritime mood, here is Alan Bennett reading one of the great poems in the English language: the Shipping Forecast.

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Comments

  5. And now a few Lodetastic selections from the Afterword 2020 List…….

    Elina Duni ‘s Lost Ships: “a tribute to the migrants who lost their lives in the Mediterrenean Sea”

    Guitar Trek with Flying Fish from the suite Six Fish suite which is featured on Bluetongue. Mikethep is right. They are an excellent band.

    Fleet Foxes – Shore.

  17. Not New Zealand’s Wellington Sea Shanty Society, but the similarly named Wellington Wailers, a bunch of actual recreational sailors who formed at the Duke of Wellington pub just up the road from me in sunny Shoreham By Sea (a terrific live music boozer, by the way). As well as industrial quantities of Harvey’s Best, they love a traditional saucy shanty, with many songs about the working girls who haunt ports.

    • I prefer Phil Odger’s solo take on Barrett’s Privateers to the Stan Rogers original. I understand he picked up the song from Weddings Parties Anything when they toured together. I saw him do it in Leeds a couple of years ago.
      Paul Simmonds seems to have a thing about the sea, maybe as he and Phil were teenagers near Southampton wheras Stefan Cush has a fondness for Wales.
      Three Ships Sailing

      Dogs Eyes, Owl Meat and Man Chop

  27. Fado music is full of songs about the cruel sea.

    Here is Barco Negro a classic song about bereavement sung by the mighty Amelia Rodrgues

    and now modern superstar Mariza.

  31. A couple from Nina Simone.

    Firstly one written by Brecht & Weill but modified by Nina. About revenge and piracy.

    .
    Then one that I think is a Trad. Arr. About girls of negotiable favour, lining up on the dock as a ship full of sailors, about to get their pay, came in. The line of girls on the dock was known as the See-Line.

    • Simone meets Brecht and Weill!

      Wow! Nina was on a roll!

      I’ve heard so many stories about how temperamental, unpunctual and unreliable she could be. And yet here she is in top form with a fantastic band!

      Thanks!

  43. You mentioned Evert Taube in the OP, so let’s give the rest of the Afterword a chance to hear him.
    Eldarevalsen is one of my favourite Taube songs about the life at sea, and holds the distinction of being one of a handful of lyrics that I have forced myself to learn as an adult – which is near impossible for me…I knew hundreds of lyrics as a kid and needed only to hear a new lyric once to learn it then, but as an adult I have not only forgotten 95 % of those lyrics, but I also lost the ability to learn new ones, unless I subject myself to the sort of daily and hourly cramming that usually happens before university exams…and if I don’t sing them daily for the rest of my life I soon forget most of them again!
    I now only remember bits of this lyric, unless I can sing along (then I know 50 %, as I can pair up the rhyming couplets):

    I love the understatement of the final lines! In this song we also learn to fear the police in Antwerp and that Newcastle is a dull and ugly city… 😀

  44. Thanks, Locust. I’ve never heard that before.

    Here are the lyrics if anyone wants to try Google Translate.

    https://lyricstranslate.com/en/evert-taube-eldarevalsen-lyrics.html

    Taube was so enormous when I first came to Sweden. I was told that I should listen to him and Lill Lindfors.

    Then I was told to try Wilmer X, Imperiet, Eva Dahlgrn, Tant Strul, Roffe Wikström, Cornelis and Marie Frediksson which were a lttle more to my taste, to be honest.

    From Swedes to Fools. I’m pretty sure that the first gig I ever saw with DuCool was World Party. I remember being rather under-awed.

    Listening to them since then, I feel I was rather unfair.

  46. Last week, paulwright treated us to Home at Last, the Dan’s take on Ulysses’s homecoming.

    Here is Tim Buckley (from the Monkees’ TV show!) giving his superb take on Circe. The voice, the guitar, the lyrics….a gem!

    It woukd be churlish not to mention Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3TRns_zssM

    That was so wonderful, I want to hear another version. The Fendertones do a very fine job!

  50. What a wonderful range of different songs, subject matter and musical styles.

    Dolphins suddenly came to mind.

    The Byrds – Dolphins smile

    Beth Orton and Terry Callier with their wonderful cover of Fred Neil’s song.

    A couple more of my favourites

    Morcheeba – The Sea

    Blimey! It’s the ‘Orrible ‘Oo! With the White Wedding Hitmaker!!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4p578fW1RE

  51. Two more from 2020.

    Marine Parade from Tindersticker David Boulter’s Yatmouth.

    The album is a homage to childhood holidays.

    Another great discovery: Erland Cooper from the Orkney Isands.

    The title track from his new album.

    And here he is live.

    I had no idea that The Bangles had written a rather catchy song about Dover Beach.

    And yes it was inspired by the Matthew Arnold poem!

    “In a Songfacts interview with Vicki Peterson, she said: “Susanna and I were slightly geekish about opening the Norton Anthology of English Literature, flipping through that and going, ‘Hey, this is a great line.’ She had come across the Matthew Arnold poem Dover Beach at some point and that inspired that song, that idea of applying the fantasy of escape and the reality of what that would really mean. It was a really fun time to just mine the world for ideas.””

  55. I wish I had posted these in a different order because Gordon Lightfoot’s The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald will reliably bring me to tears. I thought this song was about some historical wreck. But it was 1975. The video brings that home with archive footage of the ship and photos of the 29 men who lost their lives. If you still have a dry eye by the time the bell rings “29 times, for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald” then I’m not sure we can be friends.

  56. Thanks Lando and Hubert. What riches we are finding in our net!

    Here’s out first artist from the Torres Straits and the first who was a retired pearl diver:

    the late, great Seaman Dan from the Northern Territories of Australia.

    Feelgood, relaxing music for a sunny day

  58. Sadly the Sea Stacks have disbanded. But this seems the perfect opportunity to give this very charming combo a listen.

    I have a very soft spot for bands of this ilk. Full of ambition, enthusiasm and the joy of playing with each other.

    Here’s another ambitious, quirky, enjoyable band: the North Sea Radio Orchestra.

    You can’t have too many versions of Sea Song, can you?

    You probably think I am scraping Rock Bottom now! Damn right!

    Here’s O Caroline, the final track.

      • I think that, between this and the shanties thread, we have now ticked off about 20 songs from my repertoire – I think there was a run of four successive posts up there.

        By and large, I don’t sing prog.

      • Thanks KFD – I might have jagged it, more by luck than anything for “W.T.B.C.I.” in my effort above. I do visit from time to time to see how things are with all.
        Was also trying for “Sea Shanties” by The Friends Of The Shipyard – which I thought would be appropriate

        “Very Own Expert…..NOT” – I get seasick on the Manly Ferry -from Syd to Manly – Chunderama Galore – Only once Have I used the cross channel ferry UK to France/Calais,
        NEVER EVER AGAIN – sick as a dog for yonks – a sailor I would never make.
        Plain Sailing/Sail On whatever, it is Terra Firma only for me – NOW that all flights have been put on hold or cancelled.

    • Great find, @Hubert_Rawlinson.

      Yesterday I felt like a little feline fun and stumbled across the episode it comes from: the very first.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9beAp3TG2E

      Sheer Smallfilms magic.

      John Faulkner and Sandra Kerr did the music.

      A perfect choice.

      Here is Sandra being interviewed after Oliver Postgate’s death.

      Back to sea shanties for a second. She mentions that the mice refused to work if they could not sing!

  62. These clip-heavy threads lately are taking rather a long time to load. 20 seconds just now to see what had been added to the thread since I last looked.

    • You are right, Mike!

      Time for Cap’n Fatdad to start winding things up.

      But what a voyage it has been!

      A lot of different contributors with some magnificently varied suggestions.

      I was just thinking about @Mousey who travelled to London by boat from New Zealand in the 70s.

      What a different pace of life there was when people travelled by boat.

      “I’d like to get you on a slow boat to …..Auckland”

      “Out on the briny, with the moon big and shiny
      Melting your heart of stone.”

      My mum (farm girl from the Prescelly Hills in Pembrokeshire) trained as a nurse and travelled to pre-independence India and then post-Hiroshima Japan.

      A journey and a half! That makes my Inter-Rail meanderings or Greek Island hopping, very tame by comparison.

    • Thank you kindly, shipmate @hubert rawlinson.

      I’m tucking into a chicken and rum breakfast here right now on my desert island. I was getting might bored of coconuts.

      I’m also preparing a playlist of of all the songs that were posted and listening to them.

  65. I stumbled across this Guardian piece about trio, Kings of the South Seas, and their modern take on whaling songs.

    https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/nov/11/whale-songs-folk-music-shanties-whaling-life-kings-of-the-south-seas

    No glamour here!

    “The dreary business of whaling was one of the worst jobs at sea. ”

    Kings of the South Seas have a refreshing take on their songs.

    Eight Bells

    Lady Franklin

    The article mentions Judy Collins’s beautiful version of Farewell to Tarwathie, which is accompanied by whale song.

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