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Possibly the Awesomest Band Ever [Arrrrgh, A Guest Post, Matey]


Guest blogger Parkcow is not afraid of Captain Dan & the Scurvy Crew


I found the band thanks to a banner add for another musician. It was an electronica, indie chick who was actually pretty good (kind of like Imogen Heap, sort of, from Frou Frou—let’s say if Hooverphonic and Regina Spekter had a baby and Imogen Heap raised it).

Actually, after 13 years of using the internet (though I probably shouldn’t count the first two since that was when AOL was charging per minute so it’s not like I used the internet for anything but the high priority stuff: chat rooms and porn, and chat rooms about porn, of course), this was my FIRST purchase based on clicking through a banner add. I’m not sure if I’m the norm or not, but I don’t know how ANYONE makes money on the internet with that kind of year to purchases ratio.

Anyway, CD Baby, where I found Captain Dan, suggested that if I liked Echo Slightly, then I’d also like Captain Dan (and about five other artists). It should be noted that NONE of the artists they suggested were anything like the CD I purchased and, in fact, I quite disliked the other four artists (all metal-y, industrial funk type stuff that grated on my nerves more harshly than the musicians ham-fistedly grated on their instruments), but Captain Dan immediately drew my interest because the musicians were wearing pirate costumes.

I was immediately conflicted.

On the one hand, I’d learned a valuable lesson about trusting novelty bands to be any good by listening first to the Village People and then, even more disappointingly, to G.W.A.R. (and at this point I feel like mentioning that my baby is eating the wrist rest that usually sits in front of my keyboard. He gets immediately jealous when I sit at the computer and cries at the gate until I let him in, and now his favorite toy is the “jelly dong” wrist thingy I have. He’s chewing on it like he’s trying to crack a walnut and he cries when I take it away from him. God. Here’s to hoping whatever they put in jelly dongs isn’t toxic).

On the other hand, it was a PIRATE band! So I listened, and they were pretty good. They didn’t just dress like pirates, they sang like pirates too! (Oh, good. He dropped the wrist thing and is chewing on envelopes from the trash can now. Much better.) Being a 12 year old boy at heart, I found this incredibly entertaining.

The songs might not have much in the way of longevity for me—I’m guessing the novelty would wear off after about three listens—but I wholly support the concept of a pirate rap band. It does my old heart good to know that people are living the dream. The only thing that would be awesomer would be a ninja band. Actually, that might be kind of boring, which runs counter to the exciting ninja lifestyle. But ninjas would just sound like raspy, normal people—kind of like Bryan Adams but maybe a little less sucky. Maybe ninja robots would be better. Ninja pirates would have been the best, obviously, but now that pirates have been done it, it would just be a weird, hybrid tribute band, and nobody with any sense thinks those are cool. So, I guess I’ll just have to settle with the awesomeness of a pirate band, at least until I get bored with the music.

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