Cruising the seas for gold dust and idols

Thanks for suggesting this, Lilly. It sounds like a fun exercise, although I’m a little unsure about how to proceed. You see, I don’t actually have an iPod (or iTunes, or anything else with that accursed “i” in front of it). Granted, I do have an MP3 player (ie., an iPod for cheap people), but it only holds around 80 songs, which just doesn’t seem like enough selection to really do this exercise justice.

My solution is to load all of the music files on my computer into my Windows Media Player and hit shuffle. That should give me enough musical selection to make this genuinely random, which makes it more fun for me (and therefore for the rest of you as well). I’ve got about eight years of musical accumulation on this computer—sometimes legally obtained, sometimes not so much. Since there’s no way I can keep track of all these songs, I’m just as likely to be discovering something as the rest of you are.

Song 1: "Barrett’s Privateers (live)" by Stan Rogers

Yes! Off to a good start. For those who aren’t aware, Stan Rogers is a Canadian folk music legend who briefly made music in the 1970s and ‘80s before dying in a plane crash. I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for his music ever since my grade 10 social studies teacher played a couple of Stan Rogers songs in class in order to illustrate the plight of Maritimers moving out to Alberta in order to find work.

Barrett’s Privateers is particularly stirring, and unsurprisingly, it seems to be one of Rogers’ most famous songs. You may have even heard it before and not realized who was singing. It has a tendency to pop up unexpectedly. I recall being at a party once where all manner of disparate people got together in the kitchen and tried to sing the song, even though no one seemed able to remember all the lyrics and it fizzled out before the end.

No matter—besides, who can compete with Stan Rogers’ voice? All I need to hear is his bracing baritone singing those first five words, “Oh, the year was 1778,” and I’m sunk alongside Barrett and his privateers.

To some, this might seem like a cheesy song (it is a sea shanty, after all), but I think it’s a thing of beauty. The song tells the story of a group of Halifax privateers during the American revolution who are conscripted by the King of England to “cruise the seas for America gold.” Everyone planned “to fire no guns and shed no tears,” but things take a violent turn, and Barrett’s ship is destroyed after an encounter with the Americans. The song is sung from the perspective of a surviving crew member, who, after six years at sea, returns to Halifax having lost both of his legs in the battle (Barrett himself fared even worse—in a vivid turn of phrase, he was “smashed like a bowl of eggs”). You could look at the song as an allegory about Canadian-American relations, but at it’s core, it’s just a vividly written, powerfully sung tragedy.

Incidentally, this live version is the best way to know the song, particularly for the mid-song break where Garnet Rogers (Stan’s brother) shouts at the audience, “Come on, you sissies!” Right on cue, the audience takes over the chorus, clapping and singing with impressive vigour. Why couldn’t there have been people like that at the party?

Song 2: "Gold Dust" by the Wooden Stars

As I mentioned earlier, I happen to have a few illegal songs on my hard drive. But only a few, I swear. At the most, maybe 10 or 12 gigabytes worth. Just don’t tell the cops, okay? I’m too boyish and tender for prison.

The problem with this kind of behaviour (I mean aside from the immense guilt and shame that results from it, obviously) is that you find all sorts of songs on your computer that you downloaded once on a whim and then completely forget about. Such is the case with this song.

The Wooden Stars are, as far as I know, a Canadian band of fairly obscure, minor cult status. I think I read somewhere that they were influenced by another Canadian band that I love, the Rheostatics, who are only slightly less obscure and minorly cultish. But maybe I misread, since I don’t see much similarity between the two bands.

Still, it’s not a bad song. Chiming, clear guitars, strong harmonies—basically, just some nice sounds coming out of a twisty, slightly eccentric song structure. There’s also a break midway through the song where they rock out in a sort of reserved, post-rock kind of way. Actually, it’s impressive how the song defies catchiness and yet manages to sound all melodic and pleasant anyway. In other words, it’s pretty, but not obnoxiously so.

I’m not sure what the lyrics are about, and I don’t think I care. The singer shouts, “On an island in the sun,” before the band “rocks” out, as if that phrase is supposed to mean something. It doesn’t. But the lyrics are functional in an evocatively cryptic way, and overall I enjoyed the song. I’m sure I must have listened to it a few times after I downloaded it, but I had completely forgotten about it until now. Perhaps I’ll have to go out and buy a copy of the album, just so I can make an honest man out of myself.

Well, slightly more honest. But we all have to start somewhere, right?

Song 3: "Kill Yr Idols" by Sonic Youth

Whoo! Very early Sonic Youth, from back when they thought decent singing and properly tuned guitars were a bourgeoisie affectation. It’s, um, fun? Or should I say “fn”? (Vowels are for philistines.)

The song, judging by the lyrics, is one of those self-conscious “We’re going to change the face of music!” manifestos that hip young bands like to write. They sneer a bit at music critic Robert Christgau, and then make a few mysterious pronouncements like, “It’s the end of the world/and confusion is sex.” Not sexy, you’ll note. Just sex. I guess we’re supposed to puzzle out the profundity of this statement and interpret it like prophetic wisdom, but the general rule for obtuse rock lyrics is that if you can’t figure out what they mean, then they’re either about sex or drugs. In this case, I’m guessing the singer is mad that he can’t get laid.

But then again, who listens to Sonic Youth for lyrics? If you’re going to listen to Sonic Youth, it’s for that wall of guitar noise that crashes down on your head like a brick wall collapsing. I love the albums they put out in the late ‘80s, and they’re still going strong these days, but their early stuff is pretty forbidding from what I've heard. This song isn’t actually that bad—it has a scruffy aggression that’s kind of endearing—but songs like this were a dime a dozen in 1983. The band got much better.