Posted on Aug 30, 2007
This is not a fanblog
Augie March are one of my favourite Australian bands.
On they're first album they have this song called Men Who Follow Spring The Planet 'Round, which is the inspiration for the name of my blog, except I tweaked the title somewhat to reflect my wife's and my own impending voyage.
At our wedding several weeks ago three friends of ours played that same Augie March song as my bride walked towards me at the start of our ceremony. Mike an old friend of mine, played cello; Kristy, a new friend of Zo's and mine played violin; and Richie, an old uni mate and band mate of Zo's sang and played the acoustic guitar. They were fantastic.
I have a scratchy video of them rehearsing the song which i may put up on Youtube one day, with their permission of course...i might have to get Augie March's permission too.
Well maybe not. As I am want to do, i was researching into things, and learnt that Glenn Richards didn't write the song, it is in fact a traditional sea shanty ballad thing....folk music! Yay! In other words it's a song so old, that it belongs to everyone! It's called The House Carpenter or The Demon Lover
And of course there are umpteen-thousand versions of the song out there, and this started a hunt that led me all over the place. It turns out that the traditional version is about a man who leaves his true love while he goes out to sea to seek adventure and treasure and scurvy and such and such. He is gone or such a long time (3 months?...1000 years?) that his girl forgets about him and shacks up with a carpenter, gets married and even has a kid or two. Eventually the seaman returns, and finds that his wife has moved on, so he attempts to woo her back, promising gold and adventure across the sea, if she would only leave her carpenter man and children and journey with him across the sea. Well, she agrees (its quite a long song, see?) and boards the ship/boat/schooner and they head out to sea, but once they are out in open water she begins to regret her decision, starts pining for her children and all that, and suddenly the man reveals that it was all a trick to get his revenge for not staying true all those years ago. At this point in the different versions the man is either a man, a ghost, or the devil; and he either rips the ship in two and they all sink to the bottom of the sea (if he is the devil), the boat spontaneously sinks (ghost) or the woman throws herself overboard (man). My favourite version is the devil one.
A cheery sentiment with which to begin married life.
Here's this great folk music archive site, with the an English and Canadian version of the lyrics. Bob Dylan did a version too, the cool devil one.
On they're first album they have this song called Men Who Follow Spring The Planet 'Round, which is the inspiration for the name of my blog, except I tweaked the title somewhat to reflect my wife's and my own impending voyage.
At our wedding several weeks ago three friends of ours played that same Augie March song as my bride walked towards me at the start of our ceremony. Mike an old friend of mine, played cello; Kristy, a new friend of Zo's and mine played violin; and Richie, an old uni mate and band mate of Zo's sang and played the acoustic guitar. They were fantastic.
I have a scratchy video of them rehearsing the song which i may put up on Youtube one day, with their permission of course...i might have to get Augie March's permission too.
Well maybe not. As I am want to do, i was researching into things, and learnt that Glenn Richards didn't write the song, it is in fact a traditional sea shanty ballad thing....folk music! Yay! In other words it's a song so old, that it belongs to everyone! It's called The House Carpenter or The Demon Lover
And of course there are umpteen-thousand versions of the song out there, and this started a hunt that led me all over the place. It turns out that the traditional version is about a man who leaves his true love while he goes out to sea to seek adventure and treasure and scurvy and such and such. He is gone or such a long time (3 months?...1000 years?) that his girl forgets about him and shacks up with a carpenter, gets married and even has a kid or two. Eventually the seaman returns, and finds that his wife has moved on, so he attempts to woo her back, promising gold and adventure across the sea, if she would only leave her carpenter man and children and journey with him across the sea. Well, she agrees (its quite a long song, see?) and boards the ship/boat/schooner and they head out to sea, but once they are out in open water she begins to regret her decision, starts pining for her children and all that, and suddenly the man reveals that it was all a trick to get his revenge for not staying true all those years ago. At this point in the different versions the man is either a man, a ghost, or the devil; and he either rips the ship in two and they all sink to the bottom of the sea (if he is the devil), the boat spontaneously sinks (ghost) or the woman throws herself overboard (man). My favourite version is the devil one.
A cheery sentiment with which to begin married life.
Here's this great folk music archive site, with the an English and Canadian version of the lyrics. Bob Dylan did a version too, the cool devil one.
Loading comments...