Afterworders in the UK have got a lot to think about today. Here in Sweden I’m sitting on the dock of the bay and thinking about ports.
Dangerous, exciting, dynamic, exotic places. Traditionally packed with merchants, sailors, excise men, smugglers, streetwalkers and worst of all was the press gang. They want you for a new recruit!
Also of course a motor of musical development. New American releases in 50s Liverpool. Cuban and Latin American rhythms spreading from the ports of Africa. African music in Cardiff.
Glasgow, Baltimore, San Francisco, Shanghai, Barcelona, Southampton, Marseilles …..
Your favourite songs about ports and harbours please. And your favourite artists who live or have lived in them.
Nazareth can kick things off.
Gatz says
Where would Uncle Tom be without a lonely sailor, home from the sea, to write about?
Kaisfatdad says
Up to the rigs and down to the jigs…..of London Town.
With one of my favourite live bands, the mighty Bellowhead.
duco01 says
Here’s a guy who doesn’t get enough mentions on the good old Afterword board – Phil Ochs.
The title track from “Pleasures of the Harbor” (if you’ll forgive the US spelling of ‘Harbor’):
Wayfarer says
Brel – Dans le Port d’Amsterdam.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8lWkNnhJB0
Rigid Digit says
I’d go for the Bowie version (basically because I can’t speak French, and therefore don’t understand a word Monsieur Brel is wittering on about)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_LdJX-xga8
Kaisfatdad says
Mr Scaggs with some wistful harbour melancholy. Without u. I suspect Boz is always melancholy withour you.
Zanti Misfit says
All You Pretty Girls by XTC but we all know what that sounds like, so here is the Crash Test Dummies cover of it for a change
Kaisfatdad says
Jim Moray also does a fine version.
Wayfarer says
Barrett’s Privateers – sung from the perspective of someone sat on the dock of Halifax (Nova Scotia) Harbour
Kid Dynamite says
I was going to post this one! But i was thinking of the Men They Couldn’t Hang version
and I think I posted this during the Facebook Interregnum. It is the man who wrote it, singing with friends in his (?) kitchen. These guys are further from cool than I am from Alpha Centauri, but they don’t half look like they’re enjoying themselves
and while we’re on the subject of people with no legs sitting on harbours
Vulpes Vulpes says
Stan Rogers! How brilliant to see someone post him here. Fogarty’s cove etc. Fantastic artist.
Jorrox says
Agreed. Stan had some great songs.
davebigpicture says
More Men Kid
Wayfarer says
Brilliant! I’ve not seen the Stan Rogers clip before.
RubyBlue says
I suspect only @walter-rego and I like ‘Martha’s Harbour by All About Eve, so instead here’s Tori and another Martha and another harbour:
‘Martha’s Foolish Ginger’.
“I’ve got one song I’ve just finished which only had a title – Martha’s Foolish Ginger – and a chorus: If those harbour lights had just been half a mile inland who knows what I would have done. I’ve actually been working on this song for eight years but couldn’t figure out how to finish it. Then I suddenly realised the title was the name of her boat. And with that it was liberated, unlocked and everything came clear.”
– Tori; Word Magazine (UK), Feb 2005
Kaisfatdad says
You could well be wrong @rubyblue. We are a very broad church here!
Kid Dynamite says
Afraid she is – I really liked the first AAE album. I think I also bought the Martha’s Harbour single, probably on 97 different formats, as was the fashion at the time.
RubyBlue says
Aha! Very pleased to be wrong. I still love it; playing it now and singing along (alone, thankfully.)
RubyBlue says
For most people I think the only point of interest about that song is that whilst miming on TOTP the feed hadn’t got through to the monitors and so the song carried on playing, and Julianne Regan had to just sit there. I thought she coped with it remarkably well- I think I would have cried.
walker1 says
You’re not alone. I started a slightly similar thread at the old place on “coastal features” if I recall correctly with two Marthas – …and the Muffins with Echo Beach and Martha’s Harbour. Of the two, Echo Beach is my stock answer to the “Best song ever?” query but I have a certain affection for the All About Eve number as well.
Rigid Digit says
Marthas Harbour – I’ll go for that one too.
Saw them at Reading Festival 1987 – quite a competent set, if quiet, as I remember.
The video is NOT the infamous TOTP appearance (which without it, they would probably be long forgotten)
hubert rawlinson says
Just looked for a song about Grimsby and it appears Elton John has one though I must admit I’ve never heard it
As I lay dreaming in my bed
Across the great divide
I thought I heard the trawler boats
Returning on the tide
And in this vision of my home
The shingle beach did ring
I saw the lights along the pier
That made my senses sing
Oh oh Grimsby, a thousand delights
Couldn’t match the sweet sights
Of my Grimsby
Oh England you’re fair
But there’s none to compare with my Grimsby
Through nights of mad youth
I have loved every sluice in your harbour
And in your wild sands from boyhood to man
Strangers have found themselves fathers
Take me back you rustic town
I miss your magic charm
Just to smell your candy floss
Or drink in the Skinners Arms
No Cordon Bleu can match the beauty
Of your pies and peas
I want to ride your fairground
Take air along the quay
So here’s Mr Thompson with the Mingulay Boat Song.
Blue Boy says
Amazingly Sir Elton also appears to have written a song about Belfast.
Blue Boy says
And here it is in all its glory….
fitterstoke says
This might do the trick for the Hull-Grimsby axis, @Kaisfatdad…
hubert rawlinson says
and from the same album Rogue’s gallery.
fitterstoke says
Also…
fentonsteve says
My old mucker Boo Hewerdine with Follow My Tears
Baron Counterpane says
Hamburg – Jackie Leven’s “Standing in Another Man’s Rain”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbKp40qPrJM
timtunes says
Mary Hopkin
timtunes says
One of my favourite The New Pornographer songs – haven’t got a clue what it’s on about though
Kaisfatdad says
Nice work @baron-counterpaneI was hoping for a German port. Getting one from Jackie was a real bullseye.
Lots of songs I’ve not heard being posted. So I’m happy as a jolly Jack tar on shore leave.
timtunes says
No-one is as exotically evocative as Les Baxter
Kaisfatdad says
From Barcelona:Manu Chao.
policybloke says
I quite like Glen Campbell’s ‘Galveston’.
Steerpike says
Appropriated by many, here’s Nic Jones’ version
Blue Boy says
Joe Jackson’s homage to Pompey
timtunes says
..but it could also be that jewel of the south coast, Gosport??
Blue Boy says
Hmm, possibly – although surely this lyric can only refer to Portsmouth FC and not the mighty Gosport Borough?
‘I seem to hear a distant sound
Of waves and seagulls
Football crowds and church bells’
ivylander says
This came up on shuffle last week. On my 13-year-old Top Ten. Not sure it has worn especially well, but it’s certainly in keeping with the theme….
Jack Kelsey says
THE WORLD’S GREATEST HARBOUR
“Fast Boat To Sydney” Johnny Cash
“Australia” The Kinks
“Harbour Town” Icehouse
‘Somewhere in Sydney” Sky hooks
I haven’t conquered the “pasting/posting” of vid’s yet – sorry about that !
Kaisfatdad says
No worries Jack.
They’ll fit in nicely on my Spotify playlist
Kaisfatdad says
Marseilles. Moussu et les Jove ts
retropath2 says
“Between the beggar’s mantle and the Lights o’ Peterheid”
Yes, it’s the Battlefield Band with “Silver Darlin’s”, not to be confused with the simil\rly named “Silver Darlings”, which references Aberdeen, but is shitey.
I would suggest the fishing toun shown in the video is not Peterhead, the most depressing and disturbing hell-hole on Nicola’s earth.
bigstevie says
Anstruther.
I already posted this on the ‘Scotland’ thread, but since Retro mentioned the beggar’s mantle, I thought I’d post it again.
hubert rawlinson says
Then there’s the workers.
Kaisfatdad says
From Kaurasmäki’s film Le Havre: Matelot by the Renegades.
Never has France looked and felt so much like Finland!
Rob C says
Vulpes Vulpes says
When I was a boy, and my father worked for the Navy in Plymouth, I’d often see the gates at Devonport dockyard as the men spilled out at the end of a working day. There was a romance about the place, the gateway to the wider world, mere oceans away. Half my friend’s fathers and older brothers worked there. It wasn’t only civilian workers who poured through the gates, it was also the matelots, returning from sea and off to paint the town red during a brief and riotous shore-leave. Just outside the gates you could buy a pasty, some chips, or maybe both from a little stall. Cyril knew this, and wrote a song about it, way before I was born.
Kid Dynamite says
My dad worked in the dockyard, so did his dad, and his dad before him. I went past it on my way to school every day for seven years. In so many ways it was the heart of the city.
Kaisfatdad says
What a wonderful song @vulpes-vulpes! I’d never heard it before.
I did a bit of research and gather it’s smething of a standard in folk circles.
https://mainlynorfolk.info/cyril.tawney/songs/theoggieman.html
It’s on the rather fine Folk Song a Day site
http://www.afolksongaday.com/?p=398
But the link to Cyril Tawney has been hijacked by a bloke of the same name who designs luxury bathrooms! Has he no shame!
Vulpes Vulpes says
Cyril and his charming wife Rosemary are no longer with us; there was a time when you could order LPs or CDs from her and Rosemary would put a little hand-written thank-you note in with your purchase. Old school, and all the better for it. Most of his CDs are still available – at the moment – the one pictured in my post is well worth investigating. His most famous songs are all known by other’s interpretations – Sally Free And Easy being the most widely known, covered by loads of the more famous of his contemporaries. My introduction to his music was via the Mayflower 1970 celebrations in Plymouth, commemorating the sailing of the Mayflower to America, when I heard his album A Mayflower Garland, which includes a satirical song about Plymouth that we used to sing in the coach on the way back from rugby matches. Happy days.
walker1 says
For some reason I’ve always thought this is about Belfast. Thea Gilmore puts the music to Sandy Denny’s lyrics.
Rigid Digit says
Mike Oldfield – Portsmouth
(or will set of the QI Klaxon?)
Rigid Digit says
and what happens in (some) Ports – or used to?
Shipbuilding
Rigid Digit says
If only The Beatles had sung: “We all ive in a Nuclear Submarine”, I could’ve posted something in praise of Barrow-In-Furness.
As it goes, there isn’t much one could do to praise Barrow-In-Furness
Carl says
You mentioned Baltimore in the OP, which when I saw the thread was the first song I thought of – here’s Randy:
A bit more obscure is Judy Collins’s Farewell To Tarwathie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV29xK2xyZ4
Mike_H says
The Platters – Harbour Lights
Mike_H says
Grateful Dead – Wharf Rat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmT_4RQ0ANU
Black Celebration says
This came on the radio the other day – what a pleasure.
Moose the Mooche says
Pd used to write TBS songs on the Hull-Rotterdam/Zeebrugge North Sea Ferries. He’d just get on one, spend a few hours in Rotterdam, get the next one back.
I think there’s a thread to be had on unorthodox songwriting enironments.
Black Celebration says
Your wish is my command.
*wiggles nose*
Rigid Digit says
Dun Laoghaire – birthplace of one Robert Frederick Xenon Geldof:
Kaisfatdad says
Gorgeous jazz standard, I cover the waterfront, was inspired by a 1932 Max Miller novel of the same name about a journo who was covering said waterfront in San Diego.
There was also a 1933 film starring Claudette Colbert, in which it featured .
Here’s Lena Seikaly: one of many, many fine versions.
Kaisfatdad says
Thanks to @kid-dynamite and @vulpes-vulpes for those personal memories of port life.
And thanks to everyone else for posting all these fab songs.
An extra portion of rum for all our jolly crew, Mr Mate!
Lando Cakes says
One of my favourite Julian Cope songs – Port of Saints. It appears to concern some altercation with Bill Drummond and David Balfe. I suspect you needed to be there.
Morrison says
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPU2mqTDMJg
Big in ‘ull – trawler man’s favourite.
Sewer Robot says
I hope I haven’t missed the boat!
Mention of Julian Cope reminds me of his song “Not Raving But Drowning” about the guy who fell of the Sealink ferry, which in turn makes me wonder whither Bryan Ferry? But I’m posting this:
(THE Stars Of Heaven – Lights Of Tetouan)
Kaisfatdad says
Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?
We could do a whole thread on songs about New Orleans. Let’s have this classic from Labelle.
Those girls were sassy dressers. Why does nobody on the AW wear togs like that?
Tiggerlion says
Because they are dressed as prostitutes.
walker1 says
Not particularly about the port but I do like the song so am posting anyway.
Moose the Mooche says
When this came out I assumed it would go to number one. It barely scraped the charts. As tonight I say, fuck the public.
mikethep says
Is it just me, or do the lads look like they’re about to micturate on Leith? Great song naetheless.
Moose the Mooche says
I used to own that album – perhaps still do – and the colour is pretty extraordinary. It’s as if they’ve said “Awww fukkit, we’ll never have enny real sunshine, so let’s puir Technicolor the bastart!”
Kaisfatdad says
Our first Caribbean port: Kingston.
Kaisfatdad says
African, Asian and South American ports then? There must a be a few songs? Help me!
I did find this Finnish hymn-like song about Mombasa.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M07JPFndzRo
Alias says
Cali, Colombia, unfortunately most famous for its exports was a major centre for Salsa. Here is a nice version of Grupo Niche’s homage to the city. Anyone at salsa gigs in London in the 90s would have heard this.
A link, not as tenuous as I initially thought, to another Colombian port Buemaventura. Yuri Bueanaventura is actually from there and changed his name from Bedoya.
Alias says
Dakar Senegal, a major regional port. And judging by the influence in a lot of the music from there, their imports included records from Cuba.
Here is a very young Youssou N’Dour
Kaisfatdad says
Lagos had a song contest to get an uplifiting song!
http://www.thecable.ng/lagos-invites-entries-for-spirit-of-lagos-theme-song-contest
I will have to check later and listen to the winner.
Wayfarer says
Harbours need lighthouses, right?
Kaisfatdad says
Wayfarer, you are the light of our lives!
Wayfarer says
Did you miss a B in that sentence, KFD?
carabara says
Harbourcoat by REM
I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight by Richard & Linda Thompson
Fisherman’s Dream by John Martyn
Fisherman’s Blues by The Waterboys
The Dock Of The Bay by Otis Redding
Anything by The Lighthouse Family (now, that suggestion should kill this thread in double quick time!)
carabara says
Oh, nearly forgot, and anything off Diamond Mine by King Creosote and Jon Hopkins
Kaisfatdad says
A fine list @carabara.
I’ll even forgive you the Lighthouse Family as you then mentioned King Creosote!
Alias says
Early in the American War Of Independence, George Washington recognised the strategic importance of New York’s harbour and built defences and waited for the British to attack. Attack they did with significantly greater numbers of troops. The Americans were forced to retreat, which they did by escaping under cover of a real pea souper of a fog by summoning every flat bottomed boat and ferried the troops from Brooklyn to Manhattan. A victory for the British could have changed the outcome of the war and condemned Americans to a life of drinking tea and eating cucumber sandwiches.
Instead we can enjoy a couple of Brooklyn’s most interesting new bands.
Kaisfatdad says
Thanks for that history lesson. And two bands I’ve never heard of!
As ever, you go your own way @alias.
Alias says
Its amazing what you learn from the compere when you ride on the New York River taxi!
Mike_H says
Nina Simone – Pirate Jenny. Live in 1964.
Kaisfatdad says
I now have the time to listen through all the songs properly and have made a Spotify playlist.
I’ve still a few songs to add, but there are 42 there already.
spotify:user:kaisfatdad:playlist:2iHnpviUlykTq9SfTJK5ma
Enjoy!
hubert rawlinson says
@kaisfatdad, to be listened to whilst partaking of a Southampton Red Rum, a brainstorming cocktail involving a large port, vodka, rum and horseradish sauce.
Enjoy
Kaisfatdad says
You’re my kind of bartender @hubert-rawlinson!
Kaisfatdad says
Mr Rawlinson has got me mighty thirsty. Off to the Lord Nelson pub for a drink with some old sea salts.
A margarita for Jimmy Buffet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGNpjDmiHvc
Rum and Coca Cola for Lord Invader
And a cuppa and a biscuit for Seaman Dan
Kaisfatdad says
The leaving of Liverpool by the Dubliners.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdKAuIkJCWs