Deja Vu on Starboard, Sir, Deja Vu On Starboard...

'Huh?' you might be thinking, 'is good ol' OBG getting senile early'? Did he forget that he just posted this very Gordon Lightfoot comp a few weeks ago? No, no, he didn't. Call it Shanties 2.0. Call it fixin'. Call it whatever you want, but the fact is that Shanties was a good idea, but the execution could have been better. Now I could just sneak back and post the new version of Shanties in the old write-up, but no one in particular would see, notice or care. Giving the absence of any coments activity in the last weeks, it's already hard to see whether any of you fine folks see,notice, or care, so I wasn't just gonna rework that and leave it in the dust pile of posts come and gone. But don't worry, after the re-worked Shanties, we'll get to some more Gordon Lightfoot. As a matter of fact, the next months we'll all be light on our feet around here...

So, what caused me giving Shanties another look? Well, listening back to Gordon Lightfoot's entire discography, for one thing, for that big Lightfoot project coming your way very soon. Listening back to albums I hadn't listened to in about twenty years revealed that I had simply forgotten two songs that were perfect for the concept. "Marie Christine", with "Ballad Of The Yarmouth Castle" M.I.A. for three years, is thus the very first of Gordon's boat songs. But it is somewhat hidden in the middle of Back Here On Earth, an album I don't much listen to, so I completely forgot about it. As for the other forgotten shanty, "Triangle", well, I first heard that one as one of the really wet, misbegotten re-recordings Lightfoot did on Gord's Gold Vol. 2. 

While the re-recordings of his United artists material on Gord's Gold made sense commercially (instead of licensing tracks, Warner Brothers preferred to just recut them if necessary), they also made sense artistically: Lightfoot would rework the songs in his then current folk-pop style including orchestrations and steel guitar, hallmarks of his mid-70s style. But the re-recordings on Gord's Gold Vol. 2 made no sense and served no purpose, and to take MOR-leaning material and making it even mushier by having everything sound more artificial and flat was a terrible idea. So I had "Triangle" written off as a failure, and thus didn't listen back to it in preparing Shanties. When I did relisten to Lightfoot's collected works, I was surprised how good 1982's Shadows, of which "Triangle" comes, actually is. This was, for me, the first album that really dipped into the MOR-sound that would define his 80s albums, but it's sharper and better than I remembered it, and certainly better than the Gord's Gold Vol. 2 remakes make it sound.  

And finally, I threw off a track because "Sea Of Tranquillity", despite its name, is mainly about critters living in the woods, something Lightfoot himself pointed out in his song comments for Songbook. Switch critters for sea creatures: I finally decided to re-install "Ode To Big Blue", which was originally on the short list, into the line-up. Again, relistening made me realize that the song was better than I remembered it, and is deserving of a spot on Shanties. 

So here's the improved Shanties, now having a more fitting ten tracks for 44 minutes of music, all ready to leave port and take you out into the oceans, once more. If you liked the first version of Shanties, then you'll obviously like this, bigger, better and bolder than before. So, heave away, boys, heave away...

...and be back in a day or two, for the start of OBG's big Lightfoot project around here...