Full Album Stream: Son Of Rogues Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs & Chanteys – new compilation album

 

Now, this girl has to have some fun too, no? Since I presumptuously call myself “daughter of plunder”, heh, and am presumed to like all things piraty (which is true, btw), and am spending my morning listening to pirate ballads, sea songs & chanteys, and have always wanted to write stuff like “produced by Hal Willner” and “executive produced by Johnny Depp and Gore Verbinski” as well as “featuring Tom Waits, Keith Richards, Iggy Pop, Nick Cave, Patti Smith, Sean Lennon and many more”, do surf over here (The Music) to listen to 36 sea shanties, which will be released as double CD through Anti Records (a sister label of Epitaph Records) tomorrow, February 19th, 2013. (Listen to Disc 1 in full via player available below.) Then kindly shop for ‘Son Of Rogues Gallery II’ here (Anti Records store) or order via Amazon.

 

The idea to pay such an extravagant homage to the original heavy metallers was, reportedly, first imagined when Verbinski and Depp were working on their second film together, the “Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest”:

“I slowly became fascinated by the idea of a contemporary reinterpretation of the sea chantey,” [explained Verbinski] I imagined the artists that I listen to and respect doing their take on this age-old music: the song of the sea. I then described the project in detail to my old friend Brett Gurewitz (owner of Epitaph and Anti Records) who immediately understood its wondrous and strange potential. I also asked Johnny Depp if it might be something that he would like to be involved with. He has a great musical aesthetic, and as my partner in the films, his opinion is one I value. I’ve always believed Johnny is a musician first and the actor thing is just his day job. The project took shape when Hal Willner became “the captain of this vessel”.”

Immersing himself in antique bookstores, old record stores, and the internet for hours and hours, Willner collected some 600 songs and then went about narrowing the song selection down for the album. 60 songs were recorded for ‘Rogue's Gallery’; 43 appeared on the album. In 2006, ‘Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, & Chanteys’ was released:

“There is something here for most, and something to piss off everyone else. The real deal is this: by bringing up these old relics - some of which took considerable research to find - Willner has done a service to folk culture by presenting it in such an oddball, loose, and fun way to the masses. Perhaps that rarefied world of folk culture fascists (who will remain unnamed here) may take umbrage, but consider those who will actually get turned on by this music and research the old songs themselves. Certainly that may be a choice few; for the rest, there is untold knowledge to be gained for random conversation, filling in the “personal weird stuff” file in their brains, and perhaps, if urbane enough, may spark a discussion for a moment or so until the next really “big” thing distracts them. Any way you hoist it, ‘Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs and Chanteys’ is a treasure trove of the beautiful, the weird, the arcane, and the dangerous right out there on the record store shelves for anyone with a few dollars to spare to be awed or amused by,” [commented Thom Jurek, AllMusic – read the rest here]