I Have One Word For You, Ben ... Pirates

My wife and I are in the the midst of that quintessentially New York rite, the search for a good kindergarten program for our daughter. We toured a really cool school yesterday, PS 8, right here in Brooklyn Heights. I found it interesting that PS 8 sponsors an after-school program for its first-graders where they design their own curriculum around an agreed upon topic. This year’s most popular subject, by a landslide, was pirates. For obvious reasons, of course, but it got me wondering - why hasn’t the music biz jumped on this? Other than Hal Willner's ‘Rogue’s Gallery’ comp on Anti- Records - which is one of the year’s best-reviewed records - where is the arrrrrrrgh?

If I had gobs of disposable income and a reissue label to call my own, my contribution to the pirate zeitgeist would be to reissue ‘Out Of Their Skulls,’ the totally overlooked, totally smoking ‘77 LP by, uh, The Pirates. Here’s a band with a strange and fascinating history. They started in the early 60s as a British beat group and scored a major hit (Shakin’ All Over), only to be hobbled by the death of their lead singer Johnny Kidd in a car accident. Fast forward over a decade to the release of ‘Out Of Their Skulls’ - a comeback record by a band no one really missed. But what comes around goes around, and by the time ‘Skulls’ was released, The Pirates found a new, if tiny, following for their brand of no-nonsense, revved-up rock n’ roll.

I’m not sure the album was ever properly reissued on cd, but there’s always LP copies for sale on eBay. And here’s a killer live clip, recorded right around the time ‘Skulls’ was released. And yes, they dress the part - dig the poofy shirt!