The Cairns Ukulele Festival seems to have been turned into a political football. It looks like local politicians became involved (always bad news) – and Bosko and Honey are no longer involved in organising it. Understandably, the prospect of funding a ukulele festival didn’t go down well with the uke-ignorant tax payers. This article in the Cairns Post, complete with mocked up photo of the mayor of Cairns, attracted plenty of uke-bashing comments from people with an obvious axe to grind:
“Do the investors in five star hotels, restaurants and first class tourist facilities really want the town to be inundated with combi vans, floral shirts and ukeleles complete with eskies of mung beans, coconuts and happy weed?”
“Now come on everybody what is this woman on ??? we’ve voted and paying for a complete Idiot with the imagination and common sense of a dead cane toad.”
And it ruffled a few pro-uke feathers – as you can tell by the subsequent comments. The counter insurgency obviously worked as the paper then printed this article and this was the front of the magazine. And now the mayor has gone on a publicity offensive. All this entertainment and the festival still an entire year away.
Jimmy has launched a Bobby McGee’s competition where you can win a t-shirt and a special edition of the album.
New Re-entrants CD: The Good, The Bad and the Ukulele.
Preview of the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain documentary.
Halifax Ukulele Group has a pdf of camp fire songs.
I’ve only just noticed that Mark Occhionero is offering ukulele lessons by Skype. Seems like an excellent way to do things.
Ben Harper gives the gift of uke (via James Hill).
Video of the Vicenza Ukulele Festival and one of Ukelear Meltdown II including the quite brilliant Cat Green Bike.
A song for those of us in the small Venn diagram crossover between ukulele players and WordPress fans.
If you live outside the UK you can find the UOGB’s Ode to Joy tutorials here.
Zoe finds a simple solution to her ukulele storage problem.
Ukulele fever spreads to Thailand.
How to steal a ukulele in 10 easy steps.
The ukulele vs recorder story is doing the rounds in the UK press again. Here’s what the Telegraph said this week and here’s what they said two years ago. I hope that’s not a typo and the headteacher’s name really is ‘Barabara’ – I hope the kids taunt her with this song. Although when your school is called ‘Rood End’ you’ve probably got all the fun you need right there.
And so ends a rather cynical and world-weary edition of Friday Links. I think it might be due to reading Flat Earth News.
Sorry, Comments Are Broken Right Now