Madison Avenue was ahead of the game, casting the song in commercials for deodorant, in several soundtracks, including Meet Joe Black, Finding Forrester, 50 First Dates and IMAX: Hubble 3D. As different markets have been exposed to the medley over a disparate length of time, the work has hit high on various charts in a span as large as 17 years. First released in 1993, it reached number one in Germany last year...
Beyond Iz, I've never gone out of my way to find the latest in ukulele music. That truly seemed like a one-time thing, that venture into the guitar's subset.
Enter Eddie Vedder.
My introduction to Vedder as a solo artist came, once again, through television and movies -- Deadliest Catch, Into the Wild and the anthem "Rise."
And there it was, that damned uke. Unlike a good many instruments, it gives off an aura of strict self-sufficiency -- and that is it's incomplete paradox. It needs a counterpoint of voice, something to temper its tinny quavers. Voice and instrument together? Perfected melancholy, and those diminutive strings that had threatened to go off on their own, brought back in an homage to dispossession, to life on an edge.
I'd never have thought that a ukulele -- played beautifully -- could speak so perfectly to something within, some archetype that sleeps until teased, its strings strummed almost angrily or picked and plucked in a near simper. It's the perfect vessel for folklore, and for the dispossessed. (Ua Mau ke Ea o ka ‘Aina i ka Pono, indeed...)
Based on I-don't-know-what, the uke has been classified in my sad head as a trite sound, as if it were a toy instead of an actual instrument requiring great skill. It's one of those "idées reçues" for which I'd love to find the genesis.
Tiny Tim? Maybe, though I was actually a fan -- a fan hoping to irritate the 'rents, sure, but still, a fan. He was way more than "Tiptoe thru' the tulips." **
There it was:
First Listen: Eddie Vedder, 'Ukulele Songs'
May 25, 2011
For his second full-length solo album, Eddie Vedder has taken up one of the most useful creative tools available: limitation. It's embodied in a little finger-strummed thing that the Pearl Jam singer picked up during a beer run in Hawaii nearly 15 years ago, an instrument whose limits he never pushes, and which ends up refining and expanding his own range. Ukulele Songs isn't a novelty record; it's a statement of truth. Made calm and open by the ukulele's intimacy, Vedder sounds like someone getting out of his own way and discovering what really matters within his art.
What matters musically, as he's been saying lately in interviews, is melody. The baritone growl that not quite singlehandedly defined millennial American rock transforms here into the lullaby singer's murmur and a romancer's croon. Pearl Jam is a big, noisy band, and in many of its best songs, Vedder has ridden its big waves hard: He's helped many a fan safely unleash un-pretty emotions. Here, though, he asks the listener to pull back with him and pay attention to the tiptoe of his voice as he descends a scale, or the sweetness of slipping into falsetto.
Vedder's song selections are culled from more than a decade's worth of writing he's done on the uke. A Pearl Jam song, the driving "Can't Keep," opens the set and seems like a form of reassurance — Vedder hasn't gone totally soft, Ten Club members! But the craving for escape that the song expresses here seems like a bit of a fake-out. Everywhere else, from tearjerkers like "Sleeping By Myself" and "Broken Heart" to the more hopeful likes of "Without You" to the vintage crooners' favorites that Vedder covers, Ukulele Songs is about staying still enough to feel something calmly and clearly... READ THE REST *HERE*
You can listen to it in its entirety at the NPR website -- but when it is released for sale on May 31, remember to support the artist by buying/downloading it -- perhaps HERE.
I've had my musical fix for the day. Uh-oh, I'm lapsing into more drug jargon... Mwa ha ha!
Seriously, though, I cannot see that there are any other musical contenders beating down my door to participate in the Ukulele Folk/Rock Division.
How goes the methadone taper? Famously, I suppose. I am holding at 15 mg for a few more days, or for good, I haven't decided. What I have done, I have done much too rapidly and my body and mind are determined that I should suffer for it. Last night, around 3 AM, the urge to give up almost won -- due to my version of Restless Legs Syndrome (also known as Wittmaack–Ekbom syndrome). Methadone doesn't bear the entire burden of blame here, as I inherited an affinity for "jumpy legs" from dear old Dad. I can still remember him coming home from a mission, dead tired, falling into bed, only to be betrayed by the dread spasms and misfires in his legs.
Wikipedia opines that "[o]pioid detoxification has been associated with provocation of RLS-like symptoms during withdrawal," but what does Wikipedia know? I also happen to have almost every pre-disposing malady it lists. Still, the timing is kind of suggestive. Oh, all right...
Anyway, I did what any person would do in that situation -- I dug up a bottle of trazodone and took it.
Oh, all right... I took a whopping 150 mg -- not the whole darned bottle -- which allowed for some sleep until pain woke me at 5 AM. Got up, baked scones, in the process dumping half a bag of flour on myself and the kitchen floor. Mopped, washed up, changed clothes, and slept wonderfully from 9 to 10:30 AM, at which time I began the aforementioned search for music, and began this post.
When next I attempt to sleep? I expect a hell of a soundtrack!
** I can't resist. This is one of my favorite covers by Tiny Tim (Herbert Khaury):
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