Well, last week, the weather was very hot here in Yorkshire and I could not be bothered spending too long in front of the computer, so I did a few songs that are very familiar to me and require little time/effort on my behalf and this is one of them. The others will be posted when I have nothing else to put up.

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Despite what it says on the end of this video, this is not an entry for Shane's UU Go90s contest. It WAS and entry for Shane's UU Go90s contest, but I can't count and I had already made 5 entries. Waste not wan't not.

Do you remember Skunk Anansie? They were massive for about twenty five minutes in 1995 and were perfectly brilliant. Whilst Britpop was at its height, they were part of that Britrock undercurrent that threatened to overshadow the Blurs and Oases of this world, but the threat never materialised. Then they disappeared and I haven't heard anything about them since. The singer, Skin, has/had an amazingly powerful and expressive vocal quality and was/is beautiful in very scary way.

Anyway, this song is from their album Paranoid and Sunburnt which I bought and played to death.

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Nothing to say.

90s

I like it.

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This song is from Billy Joel's 1973 album, Piano Man. I would love to tell you that this was a major musical influence in my teenage years and I wish it had been, but the truth is I never even heard the album until my early twenties. Have you ever heard or seen something and thought, "I wish I'd seen or heard that when I was . whatever age"? Well that's how I've always thought about Piano Man. I wish I'd heard this album when I was thirteen or fourteen and just taking my first tentative steps into early adulthood and playing music.

So here's a message for all you young adults out there: Go and listen to Billy Joel's Piano Man before you regret not doing so. I know he has a certain image and reputation these days but in 1973 he was an angry young man with a great deal to say and share and a beautiful and gritty way of saying it.

One more thing to say about this song specifically (and it explains the ending somewhat) is that I thought it was a song about getting drunk when I first heard it. It turns out that "Captain Jack" was the name of a Long Island drug dealer and it is an anti-drug song, but when I was a teen, Captain Jack is what we called Jack Daniels. I still think about the song in the context of teens getting drunk when I sing it now. I did it, yes, but if you are a teen drinker don't! You may end up looking like me! I prefer Makers Mark these days, anywayor Wild Turkey if I can get it. I sound like an old soak but I'm not, honest!

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Sometime ago I did a song called Girls and Boys by Good Charlotte. tehjummie (Jamie) http://www.youtube.com/user/te hjummie commented, "Curses I thought this was the Blur song and got very excited." I remember being quite shocked because the Blur song would have been a hit when he was a baby and I assumed he would have thought of Good Charlotte first.

I decided then that I would doa Blur song and dedicate it to him to abate his disappointment but I never got around to it - OK, I forgot! It's my age. Then Shane's thingy came up and all of a sudden I remembered. I didn't want to do another Girls and Boys so I decided on Beadlebum, Song2 or Parklife.

It should be obvious by now which one won.

Shane's Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/uk eshale
UU thread: http://www.ukuleleunderground. com/forum/showthread.php?t=148 99

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Don't understand what the hell you just saw?
Me too!
For a clue, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v =ApVv3cAmpfA&feature=PlayList& p=5179FDEE1D01A3CD&index=0
Still no idea?
See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v =ookJtJMxELs
or: http://ukuleleunderground.com/ forum/showthread.php?t=14637

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I have wanted to do a rap song for a while - how hard can it be, it's only talking?
Turns out BLOODY HARD!
I tried Mr Boombastic first and that proved to be impossible - wouldn't it have been funny if I'd pulled it off though?
Second choice was this one. I actually lie this song a lot and bought the album when it first came out. I like quite a lot of rapping songs but I have discovered that it is a talent I do not possess to any degree at all. So, as a tribute to all you budding rappers out there, here is how it is not done.

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I had put this on the back burner (actually, I put it on a memory stick) because only three entries to the comp were allowed and I am nor overjoyed with it. However, I saw Shane's goalpost-shifting message on the UU forum and decided to include it as we can now post 5 entries. Give Shane another week and it'll probably go up to 10!

Does anyone remember Natalie Imbruglia? She was/is an Aussie soapstar who had a minor hit with this song. I have always loved the song since, and her performance of it. PLUS she is very beautiful in a down to earth sort of way.

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I am useless at anything practical. Electronics and electricity frighten me. None of this is helped by the fact that I am clumsy, fat fingered and slapdash in my approach to practical projects.

So here is a demonstration in basic electronics for the inept.

Funkarello posed the question about amplification for her melodica recently and I explained that I used a contact pick-up, but only for recording purposes. I decided to try it as amplification and it was way too sensitive. So I bought a ceramic Piezo Xducer 2 7/1.8 from Maplins for 59p as it seemed to have the right output frequency for a melodica (total guess) and fitted it using the tools I had to hand.

I have tried it at various volumes through a guitar practice amd and it works pretty well.

Please note - if you try this, there is very little room inside the casing of a melodica to accommodate a1/4 inch jack. I now have three extraneous holes in my melodica casing. CHECK that there is room to close the casing again with the jack in place BEFORE making a hole.

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This is for Shane's Ukulele Underground Contest. You know I can't resist being runner up in Ukulele Underground Contests and this is a definite "also-ran"

Apologies for the bum notes on uke and voice - this was take 28,564,381, give or take and I couldn't bear to sing it one more time. I liked this song before I started to record it and now I hate the damn thing. The bass line is incredibly simple, but byt the time I'd got around to adding extra bits, I couldn't concentrate and that took nearly half a million goes to get it right - wasn't there a song about Master Of The Understatement her recently? As my mother would say, " I've told you a million times - stop exaggerating."

Anyway, Red Hot Chillies, Under the thingy, good song from the 90s, yadda, yadda, yadda....

Enjoy

2:39 to 2:49 I look as if I could happily kill the Red Hot Chilli Peppers

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No disease, death or syphillis in this one - however, there is a nasty and totally unavoidable accident at the end that the Health And Safety Executive might want to investigate.

Bernard Cribbins is/was/ever shall be brilliant. Whether you know him as Wilfred Mott, Donna Noble's grandfather in the most recent episodes of Doctor Who or as Tom Campbell or Doctor Who's (Peter Cushing) assistant in Daleks' Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. or as the voice of the wombles or singer of Hole In The Ground you will know him as a brilliant performer in whatever he does.

This is one of my favourite Bernard Cribbins outings from 1962.

Have a look at his website:
http://www.bernardcribbins.com /

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It seems such a long time since I've done a song about death and syphillis that I thought I'd make amends.

The origins of this song date back to the late 17th century and a ballad called the Unfortunate Lad or (in Ireland) The Unfortunate Rake. This evolved in to St James's Hospital which, In turn morphed in to St James Infirmary Blues on its crossing the Atlantic. In Ireland it became The Lock Hospital and another Atlantic crossing saw it evolve in to The Streets of Laredo.

The lyrics to this version see the story from The Unfortunate Lad flipped to tell the story of a girl who contracts syphillis from her unfaithful man - It is from an 18th century source though I have used The Streets of Laredo Melody rather than the original - just for a change.

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