Talk Like A Pirate

A topical choice for a change. Today was the world-famous Talk Like A Pirate Day. To my mind it is at least as valid as Father's Day or Secretary's Day and it is surely only a matter of time before Hallmark start producing Happy 'talk like a pirate day' cards.

Someone at work came across this a couple of years ago and we try to mark the event by at least throwing a few Aaaaarr's around when we get in the office.

There is now quite a thriving pirate sub-culture on the Internet, which started well before the Pirates of the Caribbean film. Just look at the links listed on the Talk Like A Pirate website for a start.

Apparently my pirate name is Filthy Bryant Dagger and if you go to this site you can translate any website you like into pirate-speak, to six different degrees of piracy.

The very word 'pirate' conjures up some strong connections for music. First of all there are the original pirate radio stations like Radio London and Radio Caroline, and the later land-based pirate stations which even now blast out tunes from the tops of tower blocks in inner cities, then there is the whole music piracy ethic which started with making bootleg copies on a C90, and evolved through CD-burners to the whole Napster thing and other peer-to-peer programs. And no study of the music/pirate clash would be complete without considering Johnny Kidd and the Pirates (Shakin' All Over!) or Adam and the Ants and their pirate-chic stage outfits. For all these reasons its a great name for a band!

So Talk Like A Pirate would be, I reckon, an urban band, one of those grimy UK Garage sort of bands which has a symbiotic relationship with their local pirate station. And they would be one of the few bands to have a whole day named after them (assuming that someone has used at least one of these names:- Good Friday, Mother's Day, Halloween, etc.)