Origins: I'm Shipping up to Boston (W Guthrie...)

Subject: Origins: Shipping up to Boston
From: Greg B
Date: 11 Mar 12 - 07:26 PM

The TNT channel on cable has been using the tune to the Drop Kick Murphys' "Shipping Up to Boston" both as the theme for their "Rizzoli and Isles" series and as a channel-wide theme tune for the last year or so.

Here it is: (sorry for you lot who don't care for celtic punk, I happen to love it especially when it sounds as good as this).

So what's the origin of this thing? Any ideas? I can't find much on Google beyond the Murphys' version.

Subject: RE: Origins: Shipping up to Boston
From: GUEST,999
Date: 11 Mar 12 - 07:37 PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I'm_Shipping_Up_to_Boston

Subject: RE: Origins: Shipping up to Boston
From: Greg B
Date: 11 Mar 12 - 08:59 PM

Notably absent in the Wikipedia article is any reference for the attribution to Woody. I find one online attribution; it seems like it was at best a lyric fragment.

So how about the tune? It's almost too good to be of recent origin.

Subject: RE: Origins: Shipping up to Boston
From: GUEST,999
Date: 11 Mar 12 - 09:13 PM

I'm Shipping Up To Boston
Words by Woody Guthrie, Music by Dropkick Murphys

I'm sailor peg
And I've lost my leg
A climbing up the topsails
I've lost my leg

I'm shipping up to Boston
Shipping off to Boston
Shipping out to Boston
To find my wooden leg

from

http://www.woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/Shipping_Up_To_Boston.htm

Subject: RE: Origins: Shipping up to Boston
From: GUEST,999
Date: 11 Mar 12 - 09:22 PM

SF: Tell me about the song you did for Martin Scorsese's The Departed soundtrack, "I'm Shipping Up To Boston." Was that a Woody Guthrie poem?

Matt: Yeah. That was an unpublished lyric by him. We were bestowed the honor by his daughter of being able to go through his lyrical archives and pick out a song or two of unpublished lyrics that we thought would be kind of cool. (see what this is all about in our interview with Guthrie's granddaughter) I mean, we had no business even being able to look at those lyrics - there have been some big names that have been after those lyrics for decades. I know Springsteen's been after 'em, and then Elvis Costello.

It's just so amazing that we were approached to look at them, never mind have the approval of the estate to use them. And the reason why we used that was because it said "Boston" in it. (laughs) There's not a hell of a lot to the lyrics of that song, it's four lines of the verse, and then "shipping up to Boston." So it was pretty bare bones. And we'd had an instrumental that we started working on in Madrid, Spain in I think 2002. We recorded an older version of it, we just kind of did a demo of it, and it ended up on a Warped Tour sampler or something like that. And it sounds like a high school band, it's not very good. So we've been playing it live here and there, and so, like, what the heck, let's re-record this. The song grew a bit after recording it. And not many people knew it or had the recorded version, so I'm thinking what the heck, let's give it the real treatment and spend some time on it.

SF: Did you ever find anything out about what Woody intended the song to be about?

Matt: It was literally just a fragment on a piece of notebook paper, so it was just mysterious. We thought it was a cool lyric to do something with.

SF: Does it mean anything to you?

Matt: (laughing) Yeah, it usually means the show's almost over. Like my first beer. No, you know, on the other live albums we've had the Bosstones come up and play with us on the song, and those guys really gave us our first foothold as far as touring around the US and Europe. We didn't even have a full-length album out and they insisted on taking us on the road at the height of their popularity. Took us on a two-month US tour and a one-month European tour. They weren't as big as they were becoming in Europe yet, but it was still the biggest tour that we'd ever been on. We'd been in a band playing to like a bar full of people. So playing these big venues, big clubs, and then sometimes colleges and universities and stuff, was ridiculous for us. And it was great having them up on stage with us playing the trombone and saxes. They're big personalities, they're maniacs. So it was cool, it was kind of like things that come full circle or something, so that particular live version of "I'm Shipping Up To Boston" really warms the cockles.


from


http://www.songfacts.com/blog/interviews/dropkick_murphys/


Good luck with the rest.

Subject: RE: Origins: Shipping up to Boston
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 11 Mar 12 - 09:54 PM

Who'd've thunk Guthrie would write the National Bro Anthem?

Subject: RE: Origins: Shipping up to Boston
From: Charley Noble
Date: 12 Mar 12 - 08:09 AM

Woody would be amused by this howler!

Love the harmony...

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Origins: Shipping up to Boston
From: Greg B
Date: 12 Mar 12 - 09:57 AM

I hope they're raking in the royalties on the tune, which seems to be taking on something of the life of "We Will Rock You." Apparently Notre Dame has started using it as a football anthem.

Subject: RE: Origins: Shipping up to Boston
From: Greg B
Date: 01 Apr 12 - 01:30 PM

Yet another TV show, Discovery Channel's "Tuna Wars" seems to be using this as, if not a theme song, background for the trailers. Hope the Murphys' royalties reflect the catchiness of their tune.

Subject: RE: Origins: Shipping up to Boston
From: GUEST,R. LeBeau
Date: 21 Nov 12 - 07:21 PM

It was asked of me recently, when playing the Ingonish Jig for friends in a study hall, why, as a person known among my friends to dislike "Dropkick" very much, I was playing Shipping Up to Boston. I told them that I was, in fact, playing Ingonish (which I learned from a medley The Tossers recorded which included it, though misspelled "Ingenish"), and for the sake of science, we compared the two. Despite the Murphy's taking the writing credits, the tune for Shipping Up to Boston seems a note-for-note, punked-up Ingonish.