I should have had it done in time for Talk Like a Pirate Day but I only this weekend got done with reviewing Rogue's Gallery. Johnny Depp and Gore Verbinski took some of their fat Pirates loot and hired Hal Willner (producer of Lost in the Stars, the excellent Kurt Weill tribute album, among many other things) to do a set of pirate songs and sea shanteys. Too much fun! All sorts of everybody showed up -- Bryan Ferry, Nick Cave, Richard Thompson, Martin Carthy, Eliza Carthy, Loudon Wainwright, Rufus Wainwright, Van Dyke Parks, Lucinda Williams, David Thomas, Bill Frisell, Antony (of Antony and the Johnsons), Gavin Friday (I'm pretty sure that one of the tracks is a Virgin Prunes reunion), Sting (who gets into the spirit o' things), Bono (who does not, turning in a bloated corpse of a tune... easily the worst track on 2CDs), Stan Ridgway, Lou Reed, Akron/Family and more. (what? Tom Waits was outta town that weekend?) Pete Thomas (of the Attractions), Eyvind Kang, Robyn Hitchcock, and Wayne Horvitz turn up in the backing band on some tracks. Non-singing-types like Warren Ellis, John C. Reilly, Ralph Steadman, and Ricky Jay also appear. Jay's number is probably the most disappointing (I expected the Bono cut to suck). He can't sing worth a damn but they weren't able to work the song around that -- it just sounds like someone talking w/ unrelated music overheard from another room in the background. Which might even be the point but it didn't work for me. The Bryan Ferry/Antony duet is a high point. Both of the John C. Reilly tracks are excellent, as is Sting's. I love the Ralph Steadman song about "the custom of the sea." Nick Cave kills, as usual. One of my regrets is that there's this one Loudon Wainwright track that'll never get played on the radio. It's kinda like a sea chantey version of the Artistocrats with each verse seeming to top the preceeding in just being flatout nasty. Even though it doesn't use any of the classic "bad words" it's clearly way too obscene for airplay. I have to admire that kind of commitment. Apparently it was part of a collection of bawdy sea songs published by Maurice Girodias.