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Join in the sea ‘chantey’ and grab a draught!
PREVIEW: ROGUE'S GALLERY
Barbican
IT'S funny how something that starts out as an amusement ride in “The Happiest Place on Earth”, or Disneyland, for those without children, can eventually make its way to a stage off Silk Street.
Pirates of the Caribbean, the multi-billion dollar Walt Disney movie franchise, has the dubious distinction of starting out life as a theme park attraction in the 1960s.
Film executives with a keen eye for making a few quid had the idea of turning the popular ride into a movie in 2003. Following the surprising and massively lucrative success of the first installment – Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, starring Johnny Depp – the inevitable trilogy was spawned, and Disney’s coffers were swelled like the corpse of a sailor left in sea water for six weeks.
But, from cynical moneymaking vehicles, interesting art can sometimes grow.
In 2006, an album of old sea shanties, apparently inspired by shenanigans on the set of the second Pirates movie, was released to critical acclaim.
Sea shanties – for the landlubbers among you – are work songs that were sung on the old wooden ships. Rhythmically, they matched the activity speed of the men hauling the lines.
Many of them are gleefully filthy and most are strangely beautiful.
Rogue’s Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs and Chanteys brought together artists as diverse as Sting, Nick Cave, Jarvis, Rufus Wainwright and Brian Ferry.
This disparate bunch of vagabonds and sea dogs lent their talents to songs with titles like Baltimore Whores,Boney Was a Warrior (about Napoleon, of course) and Little Boy Billee – sung by the infamous Welsh artist Ralph Steadman, whose warped imagination was presumably quite capable of mustering up the image of eating a cabin boy.
And now – lock up your maidens – Rogue’s Gallery the show is about to make land at the Barbican.
Shane McGowan, Neil Hannon, Pete Doherty, Martha Wainwright, Julie Fowlis, Baby Gramps, Gavin Friday, Teddy Thompson, Tim Robbins and Ralph Steadman... these are just a few of the names in a staggering line-up that will bring bawdy tales of pillaging and life on the seven seas to the Barbican.
Not for the faint-hearted, I suspect, but definitely an intriguing prospect and worth checking out.
I wonder what old Walt would have made of it all...
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