FEBRUARY | MARCH 2012
THE BOATING PLAYLISTS
Playlist 1: The Starter Kit. Unless you
haven’t been a boater for more than about
two weeks or you just want to visit some old
music friends of your own, you can slip right
out of this well-marked channel to the next
playlists where we’ll explore some lesser-known gunkholes of the music world. The
Starter Kit comes in two halves. The first part
is a top- 10 list, based on a survey of boaters
recently conducted by Discover Boating, an
arm of the National Marine Manufacturers
Association. The second part is composed
of my own informal survey of boaters’ foundation songs. The playlist’s final item is not
a single song but a 72-song box set. Let’s
face it: The Starter Kit wouldn’t be complete
without highlights from the whole Jimmy
Buffett oeuvre. In fact, it’s no accident
that our first playlist begins and ends with
Buffett. He’s even hiding there in the middle. Love him or hate him, “JB’s” music has
thoroughly infused the boating scene since
his 1977 release, “Changes in Latitudes,
Changes in Attitudes.” And his better songs
came from before that: By the following
year, when “Cheeseburger in Paradise” hit
the airwaves, Buffett’s Parrotheads would
evermore dominate the space where boats
and music meet.
Within this category of well-traveled
boating tunes, Crosby, Stills & Nash (CSN)
best embodies the sailor’s wandering,
searching spirit not just in the lyrics but in
the very rhythms and intervals of their voices and instruments. The Discover Boating
list places CSN’s 1982 “Southern Cross” as
number 4, and that’s well deserved. Legend
has it that Stephen Stills reworked that song
from an unreleased Curtis Brothers demo
called “Seven League Boots,” recorded a
few years earlier with Lindsey Buckingham
and Stevie Nicks. (Despite plenty of trying,
I still haven’t tracked down that mythical
proto-song; if you find it, I want to know!)
No matter how deep you dive into the CSN
catalog, great boating songs keep turning
up. “Lee Shore” makes our next playlist,
and David Crosby was said to have written
“Wooden Ships” and “Carry Me” aboard his
1947 59-foot Alden schooner, Mayan. Neil
Young wrote many a song aboard his lovely
Ragland, a 1913 gaff-rigged Baltic Trader he
owned for 35 years.
Playlist 2: The Seafaring Setlist. The
songs in this second list fit a particular set of
folksy tastes, ranging from traditional shan-ties to contemporary singer-songwriter fare.
A cockpitful of do-it-yourselfers with any
1. THE STARTER KIT
“A Pirate Looks At Forty,” Jimmy Buffett
“Come Sail Away,” Styx
“Redneck Yacht Club,” Craig Morgan
“Southern Cross,” Crosby, Stills & Nash
“ 5 O’Clock Somewhere,”
Alan Jackson, with Jimmy Buffett
“Knee Deep,” Zac Brown Band
“Boats,” Kenny Chesney
“Sloop John B,” The Beach Boys
“If I Had a Boat,” Lyle Lovett
“Rock the Boat,” Hues Corporation
“Back to the Islands,” Leon Russell
“Four Strong Winds,” Neil
Young (Ian Tyson)
“And It Stoned Me,” Van Morrison
“Wooden Ships,” Crosby, Stills & Nash
“Boats to Build,” Guy Clark
“The Wreck of the Edmund
Fitzgerald,” Gordon Lightfoot
“The Irish Rover,” The Pogues
“Redemption Song,” Bob Marley
“Sail Away,” Enya
“Boats, Beaches, Bars & Ballads”
(album), Jimmy Buffett
The first 10 songs in this list come from a survey
conducted by Discover Boating (National Marine
Manufacturers Association). To hear those songs
streaming, visit this link: www.discoverboating.com/
newsroom/ boat-radio.aspx.
