Awards season is upon us and time for scatter-shot awards for my favourite things from last year with a category structure loosely based on that of the Smash Hits Poll Winners’ Party.

This years winner of the 2008 Noah & the Whale ‘God are you only getting into them now? I was into them aaaaaages ago’ Award for Breakthrough Uke Act is Dent May and His Magnificent Ukulele. The MP3 blogs have been getting their dingles in a tizzy over him the last few months, but us ukers have been loving him since 2007.

So, after a long wait, Dent’s debut album The Good Feeling Sound of Dent May and His Magnificent Ukulele is coming out in February and it’s sure to be a smash hit.

Visit Dent May’s MySpace

More Dent May

Meet Me in the Garden (Chords)
You Can’t Force a Dance Party (Chords)
Love Song 2009 (Chords)

Part two of the UkeTube includes videos from Bosco and Honey, Ken Middleton and another killer song from Sarah Kinlaw. You can find part 1 here. Read the rest of this entry »

With all the videos built up over my break, I couldn’t put them all in one post without breaking the internet. So this first part includes hilarity courtesy of Taylor Mac, Paulina Sinaga and Jen Kwok’s parody of Britney Spears’s Circus; along with top notch songs from tUnE-YaRdS and Emily Wells (why have I not heard of her before?). And the second part will be along shortly. Read the rest of this entry »

I hope you all got a ukulele for Christmas. I bought myself an Ohana TK-35G (full review coming up). And it’s lucky I bought my own present as my brother bought me a Mahalo Flying-V. Bless him, but it’s the worst ukulele I’ve ever laid hands on. So right now I’m purely window shopping. Here’s a few ukes that caught my eye.

Ohana have brought out a plastic backed ukulele which MGM describes as sounding like a, “Fluke on steroids.”

Another gorgeous vintage uke laying in the ‘Hula’ category currently massively undervalued.

What the jumping-Jehoshaphats is this thing? Quite possibly the weirdest ukulele I’ve ever seen. And what’s going on with the frets?

It’s not often you see a Tahitian ukulele on eBay, but right now there’s a Cook Island ukulele listed.

“Alright mate, do you fancy buying one of those stickers from a Swagerty ukulele?” “Cool, yeah!” “Great. That’ll be $150.” “Fu…”

The Pathe Club loves Ukulele Dick.

We’re back in business. I hope everyone had a good Xmas/New Year. Lots to catch up on.

Mike Hatter (aka hoosierhiver) has started a new ukulele company: Mainland Ukes. Julie from Ukulele Review took a visit to the shop.

After the ukuleles for libraries stories, Unshelved did a week long comic strip series on ukes starting here with a line I intended to steal at the earliest possible opportunity.

Jimmy of the Bobby McGees has been sharing his ukulele wisdom with videos about moveable chord shapes, the split stroke and plenty more.

Ken Middleton has recorded a fantastic entry to the ‘Collaborate with Yo Yo Ma’ contest. You listen to and vote for his entry here and get the tab for it here.

Curt Sheller has uploaded a bunch of his ukulele books to Scribd where you can read them for free.

I wrote a guest post telling guitar players to buy a uke on Jemsite.

Winner of the Bushman World and so forth Contest is announced. I’m even more baffled than I was last year. I can’t believe my choice of winner didn’t even get an honorable mention. Nor did my second favorite: Banana Phone. And this video deserved at least a mention for the animation alone. And no Seeso. Pffft. Atleast Boing Boing knows its shizzle from its pizzle.

Wilfried Welti compares ukulele strings.

On Uker Tabs: Sam has put up a whole load of King Blues chords and Bomb the Music Industry, Todd has Pink Floyd’s Is There Anybody Out There?, katreetrunk put up A Fine Frenzy’s Almost Lover and Arnaud provided us with Round Midnight. Thanks folks.

No New York Ukulele Festival 2009.

UkeToob interviews Howlin’ Hobbit.

Second edition of Ukulele Player Magazine.

Ukelele-bot (Via ilovefizzypop).

Amanda Palmer and Emilyn Brodsky jump on the ‘ukulele covers of The Cure’ bandwagon.

Anyone have any advice on building a ukulelecopter?

Flapper girls are the cat’s meow.

When I got my first ukulele, I was completely clueless. This was in those dark, long forgotten days before the internet had been discovered. I didn’t even realise that the strings weren’t supposed to go thickest to thinest and restrung it.

So, to save you from the social disgrace I experienced, I’ve put together a mini-ebook covering the basics that every first time uke owner needs to know. Here’s what it contains:

Five Things to Know
Five Chords to Learn
Five Songs to Play
Five Websites to Visit
Five Things to Get Free
Five Things to Buy
Five Videos to Watch
Five YouTube Channels to Subscribe to

You can download it free by here:

So You Just Got Your First Ukulele

Merry Christmas, folks!

That’s all from me this year. I’ll be taking a blogcation and I’ll be back on the 16th January. (Except for a post tomorrow to capture people who get a uke for Christmas and make sure they’re turned into hardcore ukers).

To make sure my mum doesn’t get phone calls asking when my funeral is this time, I’ll write it in big, red letters:

I’m taking a blog holiday and I’ll be back on 16th January

Have a good one.

Tuesday Half Links

If you’re missing me already, you can read an interview I did with UkeToob.

And if you’re hurting for something to practice, Dav has posted a hat load of excellent tabs on Uker Tabs: Roy Smeck’s Music Box Waltz and Waltz of Yesteryear, Bob Brozman’s Ukulele Spaghetti, and Stars and Stripes Forever as done by Roy Smeck and as done by Jesse Kalima.

If you’re looking to download the So You’ve Just Got Your First Ukulele ebook, do it soon because from tomorrow you’ll have to sign up to my mailing list to get it.

The Guardian have a by-the-numbers bit about the ukulele being immensely popular this Christmas. It contains dazzling insights such as, “I’m not entirely sure why ukuleles have been so popular, to be honest… Who knows, maybe there is an underground ukulele movement going on,” “I don’t really know that much about ukuleles, but I’ve seen people play them on YouTube…” and, “I used it for about four months and then I just gave up.” And they say investigative journalism is dead.

Rather more insightful were The Re-entrants on Radio 4 – Click ‘Listen to the program in full’ and shimmy along about 8 minutes.

I always use this song as the soundtrack to my pre-Christmas chores: stealing presents, setting light to trees and punching reindeer. So I’ve written up the chords for Jonathan K Miller’s excellent ukulele version.

The first and most famous version of Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree was by Brenda Lee, but these chords are taken from the version by Roses Polenzani and Cousins. All the chords are pretty simple. And I’ve substituted the E chord in the intro for an E7 to make it even simpler.

The secret is out; I’m a massive Mariah fan.

Or not. I decided to write up the song after watching the ukulele version by Mariel a la Mode and Uni and her Ukelele. But I ended up missing the jazzier chords in it and wrote up the Mariah version instead. But they’re both in the same key and not a million miles apart, so play along with whichever you prefer.

Plus, it has the de rigueur Christmas intro: