Abney Park at Pyrate Daze

In history, pirates were brutal psychopaths who terrorized the seven seas and murdered, maimed, and raped anyone who got in their way -- much like the pirates of today, actually. However, the image of the 18th century pirate has been romanticized in popular media and fiction. Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1883 novel Treasure Island probably started the trend, although I was too lazy to actually research the question. Piracy was also romanticized in such diverse media as Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta The Pirates of Penzance and the Disney movie series Pirates of the Caribbean.

Today, we think nothing of a baseball team being named the Pittsburgh Pirates (although it’s doubtful that any pirates ever got as far inland as Pittsburgh), but most people would look with horror and disgust on any team owner who tried to name his team the Boston Stranglers, Chicago Gangsters, or Washington Lobbyists, although you have to admit these would all make cool names for a team. However, there are hundreds of sporting teams named pirates or buccaneers, so in the popular view, pirates assume a heroic aspect not shared by murderers, gangsters, and lobbyists.

In keeping with this romantic view of the mobsters of the seas, Talk Like a Pirate Day was created in 1995 by John Baur and Mark Summers, of Albany, Oregon, who proclaimed September 19 as the official pirate lingo day. According to Summers, the observance began during a racquetball game between Summers and Baur, during which one of the gentlemen reacted to an injury with an outburst of "Aaarrr!" The game took place on June 6, 1995, but out of respect for the observance of D-Day, the two men chose Summers' ex-wife's birthday, as it would be easy for Summers to remember.

Since 1995, Talk Like a Pirate Day has grown in recognition and is now the International Talk Like a Pirate Day. In southern California this year, International Talk Like a Pirate Day was celebrated on the Queen Mary in an event dubbed Pyrate Daze. The Queen Mary, formerly the fastest steamship to cross the Atlantic, is now permanently moored in Long Beach. Pyrate Daze was a two-day event featuring music, masquerade, merchandise, and even a cannon show. Pyrate Daze celebrated not only pirates but steampunk, which is why we’re writing about it on this website.

For those who’ve never encountered the term, steampunk is a sub-genre of fantasy and speculative fiction that came into prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s. The term denotes works set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used, usually the 19th century, and often Victorian-era England but with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy, such as fictional technological inventions like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne. Other examples of steampunk contain alternative history presentations of "the path not taken" of such technology as dirigibles, analog computers, or digital mechanical computers.

Although many works now considered seminal to the genre were published in the 1960s and 1970s, the term steampunk originated in the late 1980s as a tongue-in-cheek variant of cyberpunk. It seems to have been coined by the science fiction author K. W. Jeter, who was trying to find a general term for works by Tim Powers, James Blaylock, and himself, which took place in a 19th-century (usually Victorian) setting and imitated conventions of actual Victorian speculative fiction such as H. G. Wells's The Time Machine. Steampunk was influenced by and often adopts the style of the early science fiction tales of the 19th century by Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Mark Twain, and Mary Shelley.

The earliest mainstream manifestation to invoke the steampunk ethos was the original Wild Wild West television series that ran on CBS from September 17, 1965 to April 4, 1969. The 1999 film remake of the series was one of the first contemporary steampunk motion pictures.

In addition to steampunk novels and films, we have, naturally, steampunk music. The band Abney Park, one of the most prominent purveyors of steampunk music, performed on the Queen Mary on Saturday night as part of Pyrate Daze. Abney Park, based in Seattle, was formed by Robert Brown in 1997. The band’s name comes from London’s Abney Park Cemetery, which was founded early in the reign of Queen Victoria. The aeronauts of dubious reputation. The band’s membership has changed several times over the past twelve years and now consists of Robert Brown (vocals, accordion, and drums), Kristina Erickson (keyboard), Nathaniel Johnstone (guitar and violin), Daniel Cederman (guitar), and Jody Ellen (vocals). For Saturday night’s performance, the band was joined by local dancers Ruby, Onix, and Meliza.

I have to admit, the only reason I went to Pyrate Daze was to see Abney Park perform. But to do that, I had to participate in some other Pyrate Daze rituals. The evening started with a rather sedate banquet with almost everyone but me in pirate costume. This made for some awkward conversational gambits such as when an elderly matron asked why I was there, and I replied, "To see Abney Park!" Her response was a blank stare, as if she’d never heard of Abney Park. Which was probably true.

The banquet and the concert were held in the Queen Mary’s former second class lounge (or in the newspeak of today, the coach lounge, as if those of us who fly coach don‘t know we‘re flying second class). According to a placard outside the lounge, the first class passengers were known to sneak down to the second class lounge when they wanted to have some fun rather than participating in the stuck-up drawing room conversation and aperitifs that the upper crud would typically have in the first class lounge.

The banquet was interesting primarily for the costumes. The men’s costumes all seemed to be vaguely gay, as if they’d taken Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean as their role model. Of course, with the puffy shirts and knee-length tight pants of the 1700s, anyone would look vaguely gay. The women’s costumes emphasized push-up bras, cleavage, and bare midriffs. Who says the eighteenth century was boring? The banquet concluded with speeches and prizes similar to what you’d see in a Rotary Club dinner (not that I’ve ever been to a Rotary Club dinner--maybe the Rotarians smoke dope while strippers perform, but I doubt it).

Then, late in the evening, the pirates all vanished, and Abney Park began performing. At this point, the un-costumed masses converged on the dance floor in front of the stage, so I spent the entire concert standing and peering over other peoples heads to see the band. The amplifiers were turned up to approximately the same volume as a jet engine, appropriate perhaps for an arena, but in the second class lounge of the Queen Mary, the sound was a little overwhelming. The ship’s structure withstood the acoustic vibrations, however, so we didn’t need to take to the life boats, which, based on my earlier tour of the ship, seemed somewhat in need of repair.

As for what Abney Park is like, picture a rock group transported back to Victorian England via H.G. Wells’ time machine. The band members all wore attire reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes and the acoustic equipment looked like it belonged to the 1880s. The three dancers performed with swords and snakes, neither of them real, fortunately. The music was entrancing, if slightly loud. Maybe it was the steam-powered amplifiers.

-- T.J. Powers, 21 Sep 09