Fogarty's Cove by Stan Rogers

[seekingferret]

And finally I catch up on AotW reviews.

Fogarty's Cove is a collection of folksongs- Canadian folksongs. Stan Rogers is so apparently beloved in Canada that when another Canadian-originating friend saw that Rogers had been recommended to me, he starting furiously campaigning me to make sure that I listened to the correct Rogers album to properly appreciate his music. Fogarty's Cove was the consensus choice that eventually emerged.

I mean, what can you say against music like this? It rankles no feathers. There's merry guitar, cheerful and enthusiastic singing, and lyrics that are charming if more than a little hokey. There are overdone ghost stories and lurid tales of shipwrecks and more sedate pictures of life on the shores of Nova Scotia. It's campfire music. I didn't feel that it quite held together as an album. Its momentum flagged at times, especially in the middle with "Fisherman's Wharf" and "Giant." But "Rawdon Hills" is lovely and "Plenty of Hornpipes" is an excellent fun instrumental to pick things up again.

The most hyped song on the album, "Barrett's Privateers", I didn't feel lived up to the hype. Wikipedia has quite the lengthy article on the song, documenting both its attention to historic detail and its occasional failures of accuracy. But for all that obvious care, its narrator's self-pity didn't capture me at all. I found the song dreary and lacking in drama, and I'd rather not say those things about a song involving privateers. I did like the amateur sea-shanty feel, though. I enjoy sea shanties, generally speaking. I have a suspicion this song is more fun live.


<-- I've been holding on to the above post for a while. I was hesitant to post it, as I often am about AotW albums where I didn't like it as much as the recommender did. This is a problem with AotW that I haven't quite solved. But let me add this one addendum and post the damn thing: I have discovered that I like "Barrett's Privateers" when I'm drunk. It is a delightful song to sing when you've been drinking with friends, but as I started to sober up, I stopped liking it again.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Your PS captures the true pleasure of Rogers' work: it's great to sing (even when sober). This pops up in a fandom context in Due South, where the completely upright, uptight, and haunted Mountie drops in to a den of pirates on board a replica Mounty. They look to him for an explanation, and he bursts into Barrett's Privateers ... and within two verses the pirates are singing alone on the chorus.

[sophia_sol]

I was hesitant to post it, as I often am about AotW albums where I didn't like it as much as the recommender did.

I think this is something recommenders are aware is a danger; after all, different people DO have different musical tastes. I was perfectly aware it was a possibility when I recced Stan Rogers to you. So although I am disappointed that you don't like it as much as I do, I totally understand your perspective on it too!

And yes, the best thing about Barrett's Privateers is to sing it, and it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that drunkenness improves that experience. :D

[seekingferret]

Yeah, well, it's a problem that really emerged when a close friend recommended two Iron Maiden albums in a row and I found that I didn't just not like Iron Maiden, I found a lot of things about Iron Maiden worthy of mockery. I held onto the second review for quite a while because it's one thing to negatively review an album someone recommends, and he surely was prepared for that to happen, but it's another thing to belittle someone's musical choices and I needed to make sure I was staying, at least mostly, on the safe side of that line.

In this case, the issue was that two separate people had given me enthusiastic recommendations of Stan Rogers and this album in particular, and I wanted to make sure I was being fair to them.