There isn’t much else that connects us to the sea than the music we travelled with and remember. If music was our only stimulus our senses were aware of, we could easily fall back to remembering many experiences of our life going to sea. The beat, the lyrics remind us of events, thoughts, and circumstances which have connected to our lives in ways, we don’t necessary clearly understand.
These days we can travel anywhere with hundreds of hours of music (and videos) right on our phone, slip on some buds, a headset or link to a blue tooth speaker and we are all set to rock. Yeah, you youngsters, I mean under 40 crowd, didn’t get to go through the whole evolution of how music is stored and played (nor the expense of it) so I will give you a very brief history
Now I am a young man, 63, so I cant go all the way back, so I will only mention reel to reel tapes which I have seen on ships in my early days, I’ll simply start off in the early 70’s. Initially, back when it was the 8 tracks, each about the size of a paperback, you could fill up a room with what you now have on your phone. Sometimes when you ejected an 8 track, well that tape just unraveled and you had to cut it out of the player. From there, we went to cassettes, usually these cassette players were included in huge combination radios (aka Ghetto Blasters) which were larger than brief cases and heavier. Well thank God, these quickly evolved, because it was just more shit to carry. Then, Sony Walkman’s came along, small players with headphones, yet we still had to carry individual cassette albums. So, of course, when came compact discs came a long we thought we were in heaven, but the drawback of these were you still needed a fairly, large player and speakers. A few years later, USB’s & IPODS finally broke into the market, and from there things quickly evolved so we now have our Smart Phones producing music in zero’s and ones..
Here is some of this old sea dogs music which refers to the sea. Try it, you might like it. Right click the hyperlink to open in new tab.
Grand Funk Railroad – Closer to home (I’m your Captain)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvOPucs7dC0
Van Morrison – Into the Mystic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6r2P4W9Yog
Looking Glass – Brandy (You’re a fine girl)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVx8L7a3MuE
David Gray – Sail away with me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oyBnvibWEY
Jackson Browne – Rock me on the water
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAXl4kYZyoA
Jimmy Buffet – A pirate looks at forty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT-m3Xz-QkQ
Jimmy Buffet – Changes in Latitude Changes in Attitude
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56nHBah7mdE
Bob Seger – Ship of Fools
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJTURFcBuB8
Grateful Dead - Lost Sailor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0LWGspyy1o
Crosby Stills and Nash – Southern Cross
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0LWGspyy1o
Styx – Come sail away
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5MAg_yWsq8
Blue October – Into the Ocean
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZES3nJQYJok
Frank Sinatra – Somewhere beyond the sea
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oH6mw2Rc3DQ
Gordan Lightfoot – Sundown
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7NMvpZ3PM0
Gordon Lightfoot – Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vST6hVRj2A
Jimmy Buffet – Landfall
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsS7aH25YMw&list=RDjsS7aH25YMw&start_radio=1
Another good post, Keith. I spent just about the entire year of 1977 on my Calhoon “Sea Year”. I carried an acoustic guitar I bought at a pawn shop up off Charles st, and placed a dozen or more cassettes inside the sound hole to maximize space utilization.. Those albums bring back memories of those days when I play them today. I had a single speaker short wave/AM/FM radio, and a small cassette player utilizing a self made connection to listen to my music. On our last trip to Subic Bay, I bought a counterfeit Gibson Les Paul electric guitar, and gave the acoustic to a Mess Girl on the ship. I managed to get the guitar to play thru the radio speaker, albeit poorly, but I thought I was Peter Frampton for a while!
Nice music selections you listed. When I started, 1962, about all we had was our radios and each other. We had full crews, typically around 40 men. We’d sometimes talk about Soviet Union ships that had some women in their crews, maybe, even (hard to believe) in the black gang. Once in a great while we have a woman in the crew. One of the officers would have his wife and she would sign articles as the ship’s
‘librarian’. Our libraries were lockers with books and magazines on the shelves, brought on board by crew members would would read them and put them in the library for others to read. I found lots of good books and read about every thing on the ship, including the manuals I could find for our equipment (often they were not to be found). I’m getting red lines. Maybe I’m ramabling…
Like your web site. Myself, been bye the sea most of my life, joined the Navy, Eight years, joined the merchant marine s , haven’t looked back. Yes being at sea is the only way I can live, land life Sucks! The Blue waters of the world, what a Beautiful thing.
Thanks again.