Since taking up the ukulele a week ago, I have become quite preoccupied with the instrument. I am amazed at how easy it is to play, and I have learned over a dozen chords so far. This is surprising for me as I don’t have a single musical bone in my body (check out The Dregs’ videos if you don’t believe me).
I can now play the followings songs on the instrument:
Wild Thing
Me and Bobby McGee
Sunday Mornin’ Coming Down
Rockin’ All Over the World
House of the Rising Sun
Five Years Time
I am planning to master Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots over the next couple of days.
It seems to me that just about everyone on Vimeo who makes HD videos of majestic landscapes uses Sigur Ros as the accompanying music. They are a great band, but why not use a little imagination and try something different?
The same applies to British TV makers. Every time a programme show dramatic scenery, on come the Icelandic eccentrics. This is even more inexcusable, as people are actually being paid to choose music for TV shows. “There’s some mountains, whack on the Sigur Ros” seems to be the BBC’s motto at the moment.
“A giant inflatable dog turd created by the American artist Paul McCarthy was blown from its moorings at a Swiss museum, bringing down a power line and breaking a window before landing in the grounds of a children’s home.
The exhibit, entitled Complex Shit, is the size of a house.”
The Fall- Edinburgh Man
This is hardly Mark’s finest moment lyrically, but I have found myself playing it a lot since I returned from my stay in Edinburgh. The curmudgeonly old git is rather critical of the Edinburgh Festival in this song, but I don’t believe him at all. I’ll bet he loves the Festival no end.
The Ubiquity of the Ukulele part 2- Florida by Loudon Wainwright III
In Edinburgh on Wednesday, we went to see a performance of Lucky You, the stage version of the novel of the same name by Carl Hiaasen. There were a number of video monitors on the stage, which were used throughout the performance. At the start of the performance, all the monitors showed this ukulele-based song by Loudon Wainwright III, which had been specially commisioned for the play. It is a catchy number that successfully captures the atmosphere of Hiaasen’s books.
