I might have gone a bit overboard with the Madeline Ava videos this week. But I couldn’t help it. She’s such an outstanding songwriter. And I had to celebrate the fact she has a new website where you can download her stuff.

Also this week is Francois Peglau, Ukulele Bartt ripping up some LuVaBe, Dominator jamming with Brittni, hand-farting and plenty more. Read the rest of this entry »

Quite a number of Martin ukuleles on eBay this week. Particularly catching my attention are this Style 3 Taropatch, this 1926 Tiple and this Daisy 5M.

I’m going to have to buy a Le Domino one of these days.

This week, shame on me, I’ve a g**tar catch my eye. A 1930s Slingerland Songster from Jake Wildwood.

National are the resonator makers. So it’d be interested to hear what their bottom of the range resophonic ukulele sounds like. That one looks like it’s been used to hammer nails into a barn door. But people seem to be bidding on it enthusiastically.

Brand names that don’t suit the ukulele #1: Conqueror. Save it for your range of condoms.

It’s July. Where are people selling ukulele Christmas ornaments?

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.

Becca is the latest addition to the Bobby McGee’s and is described by Jimmy as a combination of, “my looks and Eleanor’s ukulele ability.” Not content with that description, I grilled Becca for some more details.

How did you come to join the Bobby McGee’s?

I saw Jim and El play in my Fresher’s week, and then met them through a mutual friend; before I knew it we were sharing a flat and they were badgering me about playing saxophone with them. For a long time I refused, but when they told me they were playing on BBC 6 Music, I realised that my secret ambition had always been to play with them.

You’ve added ukulele to the long list of instruments you play. How does it compare?

I definitely love the uke a lot. It has a style and tone all of its own, and it’s been inspiring to listen to some older ukulele stuff, and realise there’s a long tradition of music which goes all the way back to its home in Hawaii. I like that the uke is still rooted in this particular tradition; it lends itself to a different sort of music than a lot of instruments. That said, all the instruments I play do different things, and while I enjoy playing some more than others, the rest of the band seem to like the overall result.

How on earth do you get a tune out of a saw? It seems like the hardest instrument to learn.

I think it’s a lot like bass, easy to be not very good at (like me!) and very hard to play well (see the Hot Potato Syncopators for example). The basics are not really that tricky: you start by putting the saw between your legs, with the teeth facing in; then you just have to bend the saw into an S shape and find the harmonics with some sort of bow, and then shake parts of your body to make the vibrato sound. If that makes it all sound a bit pervy, it’s because it kind of is!

Which three songs does everyone need to hear?

Since seeing them at Glastonbury I’ve been singing Art Brut non-stop; they were so good. My current favourite is ‘Slapdash for no cash’ about how over-produced music is a waste of time; the whole new record is great but I’d recommend having a look on you-tube for it too, cos Eddie Argos always seems to tell different little stories in the middle. Also everyone needs to hear Eleanor’s song ‘Mary Kate and Ashley’, she hates playing it because it’s really dark and disturbing, but I think it’s an important critique of body culture and commodity fetishism! Sadly it’s not on the new album but hopefully next time. And Graves by The Stars Down to Earth, they’re one of the best Brighton bands I’ve heard for ages, oh apart from the Tulips, who are also great. Argh! Three isn’t enough!

How do you put up with Jimmy? And why?

He really hates it when you pinch him on the bottom of his arms (the triceps is it?); it seems to get him to do what I want most of the time. But most of the time he’s okay actually, I think when he puts the make-up on he becomes more evil! Also I like playing music that’s a bit different; that encourages the audience to take part, have a dance, and hopefully go away and write their own songs. And Jimmy’s very into that, which is great.

Another Bobby McGee’s song with two titles. The longer, less obvious one comes from a headline in The Brighton Argus. What the story was about, I have no idea.

Jimmy’s take on the more obvious title and the song itself: “FOREVER & A DAY: was a phrase whose first “recorded” utterance was in the Shakespere play “As You Like It” (or possibly “Taming Of The Shrew”)…..queue many bad Shakespere jokes during the live performance….The solo…well, you really have to see it performed live to appreciate it…I used to ALWAYS get a cheer when I managed to get to the end without screwing it up!….El said it was more to do with the look on my face than the technical virtuosity of the piece.”

The song got picked up by Film 4 for an ad. Resulting in enough royalties to keep them in face paint and retro dresses for a long time to come.

Buy on iTunes

Probably my favourite bit of uke playing on the album. You can see most of what’s going on in the video with Eleanor’s fingerpicking and Jimmy’s much loved triplet strums. I tabbed up the bit Eleanor plays in the video as it’s a bit fancier than the part on the album.

Buy The Bobby McGee’s’s latest album on Cherryade Records.

Jimmy has upload a bunch of ukulele advice videos teaching you how to be a Bobby McGee’s style ukulele hero in the way that only he can. Here’s a selection and you can watch them all on his YouTube Channel. Read the rest of this entry »

A quick tab of the intro riff to this one:

The chords are B – A – C – B in the verse. And you have G, D and C in the chorus in typical lightning fast Bobby McGee’s style. You can get the full explanation in this video.

Buy it on Cherryade Records.

The best ukulele bit of this song is impossible to hear on the album version, but Jimmy fills us on it in this video. So here’s the tab:

If you can’t handle the fancy stuff, you can play C and G in the chorus.

You can find this one on L’Appropriation Bourgoisie de la Bobby McGee’s (and you get a free sweetie when you buy it).

A fairly good representation of The Bobby McGee’s ukulele style with Jimmy dishing out some rapid strumming and Eleanor with the single note runs.

One interesting thing is that the two parts seem to be in conflict with each other. In the A chord Jimmy’s playing a major third (C#) and Eleanor is playing the minor third (C). When I asked Jimmy about it he said, “The major over a minor third was something I first heard in the work of Shostakovich…or was it Buddy Holly????” And he also notes that the A chord is played with a rock and roll hammer-on from A7 to A.

The Billy and Tracey of the title are Billy Childish & Tracey Emin.

Buy The Bobby McGee’s’s latest album on Cherryade Records.