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Album Title: The Very Best of Stan Rogers
Why I Bought It: Online friends of mine - Canadians, most of them - kept raving about this guy, so he went on my to-get list and eventually worked his way to the top.
What I Like (Determined): "The 'Mary Ellen Carter'". A song about a sunken ship, and the surviving crew who are determined to raise her, in defiance of the suits who actually own her. A song of encouragement, with a glorious postscript of a last verse:
What I Like (For Valentine's Day): "Forty-Five Years". A love song:
What I Like (Despairing): "Barrett's Privateers". Sung by the crippled last survivor of a British privateer, smashed - the ship, and the singer - by a Yankee cannonball. A song of impotent fury, by a man sent unprepared into greater danger than he knew.
Overall: Wow. There are one or two songs here I don't get, like "Tiny Fish for Japan", but "White Squall" (about the dangers of Great Lake shipping, and the human cost), "Lock-Keeper" (about the ones who stay home instead of going to sea), "The 'Jeannie C.'" (another beloved boat sunk), "The Idiot" (Go West, Young Man!), and several others make this one of the best albums I have. (Sadly, the "Mary Ellen Carter" track dissolves into static at the very end, but I don't think any of the song itself is marred.)
Why I Bought It: Online friends of mine - Canadians, most of them - kept raving about this guy, so he went on my to-get list and eventually worked his way to the top.
What I Like (Determined): "The 'Mary Ellen Carter'". A song about a sunken ship, and the surviving crew who are determined to raise her, in defiance of the suits who actually own her. A song of encouragement, with a glorious postscript of a last verse:
And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling bastards lying to you everywhere you go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.
Rise again, rise again
Though your heart it be broken and life about to end
No matter what you've lost, be it a home, a love, a friend.
Like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.
What I Like (For Valentine's Day): "Forty-Five Years". A love song:
After twenty-three years you'd think I could find
A way to let you know somehow
That I want to see your smiling face forty-five years from now.
What I Like (Despairing): "Barrett's Privateers". Sung by the crippled last survivor of a British privateer, smashed - the ship, and the singer - by a Yankee cannonball. A song of impotent fury, by a man sent unprepared into greater danger than he knew.
Overall: Wow. There are one or two songs here I don't get, like "Tiny Fish for Japan", but "White Squall" (about the dangers of Great Lake shipping, and the human cost), "Lock-Keeper" (about the ones who stay home instead of going to sea), "The 'Jeannie C.'" (another beloved boat sunk), "The Idiot" (Go West, Young Man!), and several others make this one of the best albums I have. (Sadly, the "Mary Ellen Carter" track dissolves into static at the very end, but I don't think any of the song itself is marred.)
