I’ve just recently heard a couple of versions of an old folk song called Barrett’s Privateers, and neither quite captured my imagination.  Two groups I know – The Men They Couldn’t Hang, whom I love, and the now defunct Australian band Weddings, Parties, Anything, whom I quite like – have covered the song, and presumably there are countless more.  Neither recording really captures the experience I once had hearing it live, and both are live recordings themselves.

The first time I actually heard the song was when The Men They Couldn’t Hang performed it at King Tut’s in Glasgow back in about 1995.  They, as is generally the way, sung it entirely unaccompanied (acapella just sounds a bit gay, I can’t call it that) and it was absolutely spine-tingling.

The song itself was written by Canadian Stan Rogers back in the 70s and tells a pretty convincing tale of a young man lured away to the sea and piracy, only to end up broken and crippled at the age of twenty-two after a brief and disastrous expedition to plunder American trading vessels in the Carribean.  The venom with which the Men They Couldn’t Hang snarled it out brought the bitterness of the song vivdily to life in a way, I suppose, that a studio recording would find it nigh on impossible to capture.

Their live recording isn’t bad, it must be said, but hearing it live was something else.  Have a listen and see if you can quite imagine what I mean:

The Men They Couldn’t Hang – Barrett’s Privateers
Weddings, Parties, Anything – Barrett’s Privateers