By: Annna
[2001-05-03]
Ukulele Week: Day Four
note the second u, dammit
Image stolen from Carol Lay
I have to finish my translation of
Genesis B, practice for my presentation some more and also probably sleep, so no wacky ukulele anecdote today. Don't fret! (Ha, it is kind of a wacky ukulele pun!) I have an amusing JPG I found on eBay instead of text:
Okay, time for MP3s!
I have no excuse for this one.
The Ballad of the Green Berets, by Barry Sadler. 1.27 MB. Maybe if I'm ever falsely imprisoned people on the outside could circulate this MP3 and paint me as a patriot. Perhaps one day I too will be mysteriously shot in the head in a Latin American taxi, just like Sgt. Sadler.
If you haven't heard it before, believe me: I'm singing it with
more of a tune than the original.
This is what I'm doing in class Thursday. We each have to recite a poem from the reading. I've already read from
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner with
big hand gestures assistants reading the non-Mariner dialogue. The GTF absolutely
loved it. I think she was under the impression that I was "highlighting the issues of narrative authority and voice," which I did talk about afterwards, but any actual literary theory put forth in that recitation was completely accidental, I assure you.
My two assistants got extra credit, but I'm still indebted to them. So today I'm helping one of my ex-helpers recite an Emily Dickinson poem. By "helping" I of course mean "playing rhythm ukulele." The other gal is singing backup. I'm singing too, but as you know I have a hard time singing and playing at the same time, so it'll probably be "mumble mumble three hour tour mumble mumble bucket." Not that that's bad.
Anyway:
Dickinson's Island 2: The Brain is wider than the Sky, 522 KB. As you'll recall, yesterday I experimented with
Dickinson's Island 1: The Book, 364 KB. We decided on today's poem instead because it was in the assigned reading, shorter than "Because I Could Not Stop for Death," and fit the meter of "Gilligan's Island" best.
We're just going to talk about how Dickinson used hymn meter, say that we will now supply music to a poem of hers, and launch into Dickinson's Island, considerably slowed down so we can get all the words in unison. If anyone catches on that it's "Gilligan's Island," more power to them. We should be off the stage by the time they know what hit 'em.
Interestingly, Thursday is also the day that our professor is evaluating the GTF's performance in the discussion group. I hope he likes our song!
Finally, I
was going to record some Ramones, but I emailed my mother about something else and she said:
I'm enjoying ukulele week on thingsihate. You are doing a good job. I believe you have found your instrument.
That made me pretty happy, because I'd played her my
Psycho Killer demo (938 KB) last week and she started laughing hysterically and wouldn't tell me why.
So here's Mom's request, because she's my mother and you're not: Jimmie Davis'
You Are My Sunshine, 955 KB. Yes, I know there are more verses. This is the only verse Mom sang to me as a wee tot.
You may notice that my voice is getting a little rough. It's not so much the singing as the spending all afternoon in my car with Richard and Spider, yelling free ice cream directions to each other over the engine noise. My promise to you: no more yelling!
Better voice tomorrow! Ramones! Probably Dylan! Maybe! I don't have any homework due Friday, so Thursday may well be a uke bonanza, although I do have a lot of scanning to do
for top secret Project: Delicious Rabbit Meat.
Going to bed now!
Main Entry: uku.le.le
Function: noun
Etymology: Hawaiian `ukulele,
from `uku flea + lele jumping
Date: 1896
Variant(s): also uke.le.le
/"yU-k&-'lA-lE, "U-/
: a small guitar of Portuguese origin
popularized in Hawaii in the 1880s
and strung typically with four strings
There are a surprising number of people online who spell it "Dickenson," too. Not ukulele, they usually get that more closely right. Was it Liz Browning or Dickinson that left a bunch of unpublished poetry under their bed? I forget, but one of them did.
My big finds today were "Facist Girl, " by Ukulele Man; and streaming Hawaiian radio.
I think we're all enjoying ukulele week, which I now spell in the modern, accepted way.
good thing there's no free ice cream around here; I might do myself an injury.
Yeah, I'm turning into a regular poi dog. Annna's writings have reminded me of projects begun but not completed. Like her accordian.
I got a concertina, and was learning salty sea songs, but that's another instrument like sax that you got to have some room to practice. I got Kweskin's Jug Band a long time ago, it had a good version of "Ukulele Lady," and that temporarily revived my interest in uke. In local music news, Mark Knopfler played at the Daughters of the American Revolution Constitution Hall here, but tickets were like $72,
so my next scheduled cultural experience is PRS & The Dragons.
A few months ago, when I wasn't sure quite what ukuleles should sound like, I made the rounds. The
Ukulele Freedom Front has a lot of useful stuff, printable chords and whatnot, and they pointed me to the "Oregon Go-Go Boy" MP3, which is nice, although the first twenty seconds get kind of grating.
I should have known you'd like "Fascist Girl." Also on MP3.com are the Ukulele Hipster Kings, who have some nice songs like "Tacos, Whiskey, Surfin' and Sex," and "I Like to Drink." The Rhonda Ukulele Experience is okay, too.
The
Duke of Uke is incredibly great. He used to have more MP3s up; I guarantee you, his CD is worth it. Great voice. His cover of "Search and Destroy" is particularly moving. Ooh, here's one of his
originals.
Hymn meter, yeah, that's what I meant with "all sound the same."
I think I remember reading the Dickinson never had any luck getting very much of her stuff published while she was alive, and they found tons of her poems after she died, all neatly written out and bound into books. I don't like her.
The Duke of Uke is in Portland, isn't he? You should challenge him to a uke-off. I'd come up there to sit on the judging panel.
I liked "Oregon Go Go Boy" because it's so...regional! Not many songs mention K-Falls and Medford and Eugene, even if only in a grating intro. I like that "Olga" thing, too. There seem to be lots of tabs and chord sheets for guitar. I like that the Duke of Uke does urban and traffic planning. I should know better than to try to point you to things uke, you're way ahead of me. I am enjoying this uke luau pretty much. Sometime after the secret rabbit project, maybe you could have "Accordian Week?" I'd love to hear everyone's accordian favorite,
"Lady of Spain!" And "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida"
I can play one song on accordian. "I Will Survive," by (I think) Gloria Gaynor.
And by "play" I mean not just using the keyboard side, but the chord-button-thingies side too.
I thought I had a concertina, but then I read a book on how to play concertina and that's apparently not what it is at all. It's some kind of squeeze-box, with keys on both sides, and it's shaped like a hexagon. The concertinas in the book I have are all rectangular.
It looks like the instrument the captain was playing in "Cabin Boy" when singing about his Bessie Mae.
Yeah, concertina's a small hex box with buttons on both sides.
My favorite songs to play on concertina are "Sailor's Hornpipe,"
"Irish Washerwoman," "Cielito Lindo," and, of course, "Eat Bertha's Mussels." I'm getting pretty amped-up for this Paul Reed Smith & the Dragons gig; it's real local. I found out that the original PRS Dragon guitars are now going for $12-$18,000! He gwarantees that you will love his guitar, or your money back! There's a local group here called "The Sunshine Skiffle Band;" you might like their stuff, too.
http://www.skiffle.com/
http://www.prsguitars.com
I decided that professor visit + sort-of-folksinging + hot weather = skirt time. (I am also wearing a nicer top)
One problem with wearing a skirt is that I have to find places for all my pocket stuff, most importantly my keys and ID. I usually leave my hankie, chapstick, nail clippers and knife at home on skirt days, which leads of course to the perfect opportunity for their use coming up, dammit.
But skirts are sometimes nice. This top is okay, but kinda translucent when it stretches. I had to take it off, change into my black bra, and change back, which of course made me kinda late for Old English.
As I walked in dressed to the eights, carrying a mysterious case, the whole class turned to look at me. Howver, because of the previously mentioned warm weather, there were only four people present, counting the professor. He was glad I showed up at all. I translated some of "Genesis B" and then spent the rest of class taking notes and writing the chords to "Gilligan's Island" on the inside of my left arm.
Then, in my next class, we totally blew Prof. Stein away. We kicked some Dickin. THANK YOU EUGENE! GOODNIGHT! TIME FOR TENNYSON!
When I went to Virginia Commonwealth University, I made the mistake of scoring several standard deviations outside the norm on an English test, and as a consequence, I got stuck in a small round-table class with a playwrite who was a good buddy of Edward Albee. That prof once asked me directly to interpret, "The child is father to the man," which I believe is a bit of Al Tennyson. It made an impression; in our lives, we are continually birthing ourselves, parenting ourselves. My father evidently thought it a grand idea to get tattooed at age 15. So, in retrospect, I should not have listened to my inner-child; but rather, smacked the little bastid and told him to study harder. But that prof did give us some good theatre time. He had a passion for fine dogs and shotguns, too. We were required to conference with him at least once in his office. He had us read "The Ball Turret Gunner," and had a great passion for that verse; but also, one called, "That Mean Back-Pedal Brake," about a sexually voracious lass who contracts fatal cervical cancer. I still have very ambiguous feelings regarding that educator. But on the plus side, I could make-up any kind of crap and source it to "The Southern Literary Review," and he'd buy it.
The Rainbow
MY heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
But I would have sworn that Tennyson used that phrase better.
Hi There Annna and any other responsible uke enthusiasts. i enjoy the coverage that the uke is getting. heh. i've been playing ukulele for 5 years now and funny enough i too have done a Psycho killer demo on uke and played it around a few clubs in the Houston, TX area. Also, while i dont know the chords to "You are My Sunshine" it is also a song my mom sang to me as a "wee tot" which, coincidently is the same phrase i would have used... so what does that mean? were we perhaps linked at birth? i dunno. anyway, feel free to email me at ruok@ureach.com and/or listen to some ancient mp3's at mp3.com/rhondaukulele.
enjoy!
Rhonda
I'm and avid ukulele player from the mountains of WV. I'd like to know that chords you used to play "You are My Sunshine", and in what order. Keep up the good work.
