Beirut - St Apollonia
January 15, 2008 · Print This Article
Beirut - St Apollonia (Chords)
It probably won’t come as a huge shock to you that I enjoyed Beirut’s Flying Club Cup. Ukuleles, brass bands, pretentiousness; what’s not to love? Better still, it came with a website full of videos of the band performing tracks in various rundown areas.
There are a couple of uke-heavy tracks on the album: The Penalty (you can find the chords for The Penalty here) and St Apollonia.
St Apollonia is structured in quite a strange way. The song starts out with a C major chord, then shifts to C minor for the first and only verse. For the instrumental section, the chords over the verse are shuffled about.
During the song, there are some rapid strums. Because they’re using those horrible rhino’s toenails, they have no option but to strum really fast. If you use your fingers, it’s easier to get this effect using a roll - rasgueado if you want to get Spanish about it. These are produced by flicking downwards with each finger individually. You can watch a good explanation of the rasgueadoes technique for guitar here.
You can find more Beirut chords here.
It is through StumbleUpon that I found Beirut. (one hour later I ordered both Gulag Orkestar & Flying Cup Club) And it’s Beirut that is one of the two reasons that I bought a ukulele… =)
That’s certainly a feather in StumbleUpon’s cap. The only stuff I’ve ever found using SU is addictive, time wasting games.
Haha… rhino toenails… I’d never heard that before.
I think I have a new insult to add to my ukulele vs. guitar argument/defence repetoir.
Delivered as promised. You’re a diamond Mr Woodshed, sir!
Thanks, moocher.
Ian: I think I’ll have to do a list of insults for guitar players.
YAY MORE BEIRUT STUFF!
I wuv yew.
The video for Nantes on that site is one of my favorite things ever.
You won’t have to wait too long for yet more Beirut stuff (including Nantes).