Barnacle Bill the sailor

Who's that knocking at my door?
Who's that knocking at my door?
Who's that knocking at my door?
cried the young fair maiden.

It's only me from over the sea, said Barnacle Bill the sailor
I'm all lit up like a Christmas tree, said Barnacle Bill the sailor
I'll sail the sea until I croak,
I fight and swear and drink and smoke,
But I can't swim a bloody stroke, said Barnacle Bill the sailor.

.... ...

Oh, sixteen men on a dead man's chest, sang Barnacle Bill the sailor
Yo he ho and a bottle of rum, sang Barnacle Bill the sailor.
Oh high rig a jig and a jaunting car
A he a ho are you most done
Hurray my boys let the bulgine run," sang Barnacle Bill the sailor

Pictures of rock and roll singers

Bil Haley, the singer who sang the "Rock around the clock", the ultimate rock and roll song. Please note that his name is written as Haley, not Halley as it is often misspelled.

Picture of Elvis Presley, still young and charming. There must be a zillion pictures of Elvis all over the world, it would be nice to collect them together on a website so people could look at them in one place. Or the same goes for any other rock and roll singer. Or historical figure. I really think this would be a good project, someone should take the time and energy to do this.

One of the later pictures of Mick Jagger, where he is portrayed without the rest of the band.

Cliff Richard and his guitar.

And again, Elvis Presley, a bit older.

Stagger Lee aka Stagolee

I have an old recording of the song Stagger Lee about which I have not heard or read elsewhere. I understand that the story of Stagger Lee has a complex folklore, written in many different ways, including Stagolee, Stackolee, Stackerlee, Stack O'Lee, Stack-a-Lee, etc. It has been performed by Lloyd Price, Taj Mahal, Tina Turner, the Grateful Dead, etc. But I have no idea who sings on this old tape that I have, which I have recorded from the radio about 25 years ago.

What is peculiar about this particular recording is that it has a wonderful dark blues rhythm to it, there is nothing rock-and-rollish about it, not too slow, not too fast. The beat is very heavy, almost like in a hiphop song.

Then there is the lyrics. The lyrics are quite obscene so I am not going to post them here. But it starts with the words "in 1956 when times were hard..." In this version he has been left by him woman and he is "going from ho to ho." He walks into a bar where the bartender is disrespectful with him and he shoots him dead. Then when the dead man's wife walks in, he takes her upstairs... Then he shoots a policeman. Towards the end he is sentenced by a judge who says,

The judge said, Stagger Lee, you're a friend of mine,
I'll give you ninety nine years, that's your time.
Ninety nine years ain't enough to make my bed,
I'll do it in the corner, standing on my head.

Anyone knows anything about this version?

Can a dolphin kill a shark?

So here is the question: Can a dolphin really kill a shark?

One thing is clear. Sharks can kill dolphins and sometimes they do. From Janet Mann's book Cetacean Societies: Field Studies of Dolphins and Whales, for example, we learn that at least a third of the examined bottlenose dolphins near Queensland had scars from shark attacks. Dolphins near the Natal coast of South Africa also had scars from shark bites. Dolphin remains in sharks' stomach are also known to be found. But, as Mann points out, no actual cases of sharks attacking dolphins have been observed.

But what about the other way around? We know that a dolphin would not eat a shark but can it inflict injuries that would result in death? In his book The Living Sea, Jacques Cousteau writes that "sea mammals can kill a shark by ramming it at high speed, as dolphins have demonstrated in oceanarium tanks." Now I am no expert in this field so I would have to take professor Cousteau's word for this.

In other words, sharks and dolphins can both be deadly to each other. The other interesting question would be whether they can be friends...