Wednesday, July 17, 2013

A Whale of a Tale, Wrapped Up in Some Doggone Fine Music

If you're looking for a "story" song about two guys who are trapped in the belly of a whale, and one of them wants to kill the other one to avenge a wrong the second guy did to the first one's mother long ago, and the first one has been looking for the second one for at least fifteen years plus twenty months, well then, "The Mariner's Revenge Song," written by Colin Meloy and performed by his band, The Decemberists, is your best bet.

Truth be told, I had some trouble following the lyrics at first, because there are a lot of them. (Sometimes when people are talking to me, all I'm apt to hear is blah, blah, blah, Buddy, especially if I'm tired, which I was when I first watched this video on YouTube.) For your convenience, here's a link to the song's words if you need to see them. And here's a useful Wikipedia article about it.

While I ended up liking the story, after doing my research, what I enjoy most about the video are the sounds of the instruments and the singers' rather strange voices, and especially the drummer's driving beat, which reminds me of eating French fries. What I mean by that is once you get started, you don't want it to stop.

Check it out. (For the wide-format version, go here.)



3 comments:

Bonnie said...

Very catchy! :-)

Anonymous said...

Buddy, I sure needed something “cool” today and your post filled the bill, even if the heat index is still 108 degrees in my town.

The Decemberists have appeared here several times, but I couldn’t attend the concerts. Thanks for the fun sample! Colin wrote some award winning semi-dark fantasy-themed books too. Check out his “Wildwood” series.

Stay cool!

Anonymous said...

a little weird, but I like it!