Ask Cavers: What is Your Favorite Cave Song?
March 13, 2013
The Gigantic Concert Hall of Postojna Cave. Photo by Lander/Wikipedia
Cavers have long habit of expressing their fondness for the underworld in song.
Mehmet Döker‘s response to a recent Ask Cavers question, which referenced the song Never Go Caving by Jan Conn, made us curious to hear your recommendations of other excellent caving tunes.
Check out the NSS Cave Ballads Salon music repository to get your caving music fix and be sure to tell us your favorites, where ever you heard them, in the comments below.
Comments (11)
“You Left Me in a Hole” by Yonder Mountain String Band. They intended it to be a song about heart ache, but I always hear it as a song of celebration!
I may be in California, but I’m a Bluegrass caver at heart.
Going Underground – The Jam
anything by Rockin’ Caver Dude!!!
It’s a toss up between “It’s a long, long, crawlway” and “Plastic Justrite”
After visiting the list I see that none of the ballads that were put on cassettes and sold back in the mid/late 1970’s are there.
Could they be added?
Good question!
As the new Cave Ballad Salon Chair, I had a long talk with Barbara Am Ende, the out-going chair who put in many years at this job, and she never kept the songs, they went to the NSS. Part of the application process for submitting cave ballads for judging gives the NSS legal right to use them for certain purposes (which you can limit). There have ben cave ballad compilations made from time to time over the years, but my suspicion is that they never sold well and didn’t justify the cost of professionally producing them. On the other hand, why not have one or two CDs (or cassettes) made and put them in circulation like they do the slide shows?
http://www.harmonieii.co.uk/caving/exploration.html
You know, I’d love to get a recording of the Terminal Siphons! Can we get someone with recording gear to get the performance at the convention this summer? I’d pay $20 for a download or a CD. The money could go to the bands favorite caver cause, perhaps the NSS HQ fund.
Nothing like Canadian musician Stan Roger’s “Northwest Passage” being sung to you a cappella by Cathy Borer, Ron Miller & Sabrina Simon as you climb out of a deep pit.
Plastic Justrite….a classic for the ages.
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