Press Gang is a punk/metal outfit from Calgary, Alberta, and apparently they love wiener dogs. They have a song called “Me and My Wiener Dog,” and their web sheet features pictures of a wiener dog wearing a Viking horns helmet.
Modest Mouse just released an anti-whaling music video that was conceived and directed by Heath Ledger. In it, the tables are turned, and a boat full of whales hunts and harpoons swimming humans, and then they graphically remove the flesh from their bodies.
According to the official Modest Mouse web sheet:
In January of 2007, while visiting his homeland of Australia, Heath Ledger presented Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse with an idea to direct a video for their yet-to-be-released song ‘King Rat’. Heath’s vision, brave and unapologetic in its nature, would marry his love of bold and original music with his impassioned stance against the illegal commercial whale hunts taking place of the coast of Australia each year. Always one to operate from his heart and take a stand for what he cared deeply about, Heath’s intention was to raise awareness on modern whaling practices through a potent visual piece without having to say a word. It was his way to let the story, in its candid reversal, speak for itself.
The film was completed posthumously by a production company that Heath was affiliated with, and iTunes proceeds from the first month will go to the good people at Sea Shepherd.
You know, no matter how many chances I give Modest Mouse, they never quite turn my crank. Them and Radiohead. Yeah, that’s right. I said I don’t like Radiohead. More precisely, I don’t love them. But this Modest Mouse song isn’t terrible, just like the rest of their work. And the video’s a little heavy-handed, but it hates whaling, and that’s all that matters!
Don’t know why those whales aren’t harpooning human beings who are clearly and obviously Japanese, though.
Each evening as I sit down to “blog,” I first make sure that Paul Clayton’s “Sailing and Whaling Songs of the 19th Century” is playing in the background.
Paul Clayton was a folk singer who died like most folk singers; by taking an electric heater into the bathtub with him. Paul was a part of the Greenwich Village folk scene in the early 50s and 60s, and it’s believed that he had a big gay crush on Bob Dylan. And it’s believed that Bob Dylan stole at least one of Paul’s songs.
Here’s something else: Paul Clayton was born in New Bedford, Mass., and as a lad he learned sea shanties and whaling songs from his grandfather. This is what got him started collecting and recording American folk music. Of “Sailing and Whaling Songs of the 19th Century,” All Music Guide says:
Paul Clayton’s first commercial album, and a classic of its genre. The unifying element for these 20 songs was Herman Melville — in the wake of his entertaining at the premiere of the 1956 John Huston movie, Clayton was asked to cut an album of sea songs that would have been known in Melville’s time, the 1840s, and the result was these 20, a selection of short-drag shanties, much longer halyard shanties and captain’s shanties, all used in connection with different jobs and activities aboard ship. They’re passionate, lusty, funny, ironic and often laced with a mood of sadness, for these pieces were usually sung by men who were in the midst of months away from land and loved ones. Along with Englishman A.L. Lloyd, Clayton was the foremost exponent of whaling and seafaring songs during the ’50s, and this album was his magnum opus — his singing is authentically rough and unembellished, making the folk stars of the ’50s and ’60s sound like the most pretentious things on two legs, yet he manages a subtle sweetness in his tone. His guitar work is as nimble as any in folk music, yet straightforward and never over-embellished. A surprising number of songs here, including “The Maid of Amsterdam” (aka “A-Roving”) and “Shenandoah,” remain familiar today, though there’s little familiar with Clayton’s stripped down rendition of “Shenandoah.” There’s also nothing repetitive about any of the songs here, or a bland or unmemorable tune on this CD, and some of the material was apparently discovered by Clayton himself in the course of his research. The annotation is extremely thorough, with Clayton crediting his teachers and sources (especially Stanley Slade) and giving an account of the suspected origins and histories of each song. The sound is fairly clean and very close and vivid.
Seriously, this is a good record. If you’re not familiar with folk or old-timey music, but if you’re familiar with something like The Pogues, you’ll like this record.
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