Ukulele Orchestras and Spinet Parts

Have I mentioned the return of live music to our lives?

Years ago, nothing much kept Fred from his collection of guitars, his fascination with high-end speaker design, and exciting evenings spent with Audio Societies of various girths, talents, and overdressed, bitchy audio widows.

Then, the music died.

I don't know exactly why, although I suppose the move to Tête de Hergé and Fred's immersion, literal and figurative, into the cold, murky waters of Marlinspike Hall's moat may have caused the arthritis in his thumbs to flare.

Plus, he has shared some choice adjectives to describe the acoustics of The Manor and the heritage of tin ears that must trouble the Haddock lineage.

Sometime last year, I had the many layers of priceless carpets of silk and wool removed from our private quarters, mostly due to runny eyes and sneezes that always seemed to occur at just the wrong moment, if you get my drift, and I think you do.  We're not sure, so don't spread it around, but we think we may have unearthed a companion piece to the famous Pazyryk Carpet -- Cyrus the Great was truly a carpet hound.  How the Haddocks got their entrepreneurial hands on the weave is something we can only wonder, and any anonymous tips to Bob Woodward certainly did not originate with us.

In lieu of museum quality floor coverings, I consulted with the Sole Home Depot West of the Lone Alp, and had quality fake wood flooring installed.

And the music was reborn, no longer muted, no longer sucked into the ancient fibers of long gone days.  No more breezy sneezes and hooty honking to undermine the beauty of quadrilles, pasodobles, and the odd fandango.

No... Fred brought out his guitar collection, then a ukulele appeared, and, most recently, a spinet piano.   The spinet was a surprise.  I am still surprised everytime I see it and most especially surprised when I run into it, which happens with disturbing frequency.  The dear, polite woman piano tuner who came Tuesday to work on the only impulse buy I've ever known Fred to make... Well, the pools of sorrow in her eyes could only have been a reflection of my own.  She gently told him things about the spinet that he did not hear.  She stayed for tea, and tried again, a warm chesnut cardigan finished with fine ruffles framing the heart shape of her freckled face, a vintage maxi-dress covering her tiny feet.

She sported quite a different expression after tea, as she hauled away the spinet's entire action, after removing all the keys, and reassuring Fred that the task was nigh unto impossible and receiving an enthusiastic nod, with a hearty thumbs up, in return.

The ukulele has been, on the other hand, a veritable hoot.  Though the Wednesday night group still flounders, in large part due to the Merlot which emboldens them, Fred has opened for me a whole new world of ukulele richness and divcrsity.  One of these Wednesday nights, he will wisely replace the Merlot with tequila, and the ukuleles will sing.

You may already know what the ukulele can do but I marvel at performances like these, by the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain.  Among the "Frequently Asked Questions" listed on their website is this one:

How did the members of the orchestra meet? 

Some say it was at Bobby's Club in Hastings, some that they were all moonlighting BBC radio announcers. The truth is that when two or three ukulele players are gathered together the gravitational force means that other ukulele players start to come into the orbit. Very soon you are awash with pluckers.

I can attest to the veracity of this observation.

Anyway, enjoy these performances and maybe you'll go running through the night, credit card in hand, to acquire your own ukulele, amplified or acoustic, soprano to baritone, koa or mahogany, vintage or new.

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain

Teenage Dirtbag - The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain - BBC Proms

Tinny Quavers: Ukulele Music

I was introduced to Israel Kamakawiwo'ole when the television show ER used his "What a Wonderful World/Somewhere Over the Rainbow" medley.  It was a beautiful pairing -- Mark Green's necessary death in Hawaii and Iz's pristine ukulele, his own gasps and sighs -- fitting, both, under a broad blue sky, floating above an ocean.



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." **

I woke up feeling mighty ill this morning, but musically inclined.  Nothing that I put my hands on fit the bill, however, and I was close to settling for local radio.  My detoxifying brain nixed that notion and I found myself on the NPR website, combing through entries to "First Listen."  

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):