There’s a new surf range from Mahalo. A steel and nylon string ukulele but also, more excitingly, a lap steel slide guitar shaped as a surfboard. Yep, that’s right, it’s shaped like a surfboard!
No idea what they sound like but the lap steel in particular looks like a lot of fun.
Images: Mahalo
Willa Holland of the O.C., Gossip Girl and all sorts of other stuff I’ve never actually seen plays the ukulele! She’s even managed to get a song called Pretty Sweet Song, on the Spike Jones skateboard documentary, Pretty Sweet – so she’s okay in my books. You can listen to the song on spotify but it’s strangely absent from YouTube.
There’s also a nice interview with her in Marie Claire from a larger piece called Extracurricular Cool Women. Her obsession is the ukulele and she recommends using a shoestring as a strap.
Image: Marie Claire
The Kuricorder Quartet are the modern day Beatles of the eccentric happy novelty instrument quartet world. I came across them on a compilation a few months ago and have found out they’ve done a ukulele album called, you guessed it, Ukulele Kuricorder. It reached number 6 in the Japanese charts when it was released in 2006. It looks excellent, however, the album’s forty odd quid in the UK which is a bit of a blow.
Oh well, here’s an excellent video about their recent trip to London, I particularly love busking in Regent’s park. Enjoy.
Ode to Uke, a ukulele novelty book I wrote, is now available for iPad, iPhone, iPod touch and Kindle. It’s taken a while to get it completed but I’m really pleased with it. The illustrations by Paul Andrews look brilliant and although it’s not on every bookstore counter, it’s on the internet counter, which is good enough for me. If you have an iPad, iPod, or iPhone you’re better off buying it through Apple’s iBookstore, for Kindle, you can get it straight from Amazon.
There will hopefully be a print version in the future but it will be a low numbered limited edition affair and there’s no set date.
The eBook version costs less than a pint of beer, so please take a look on the book’s website. Here’s a little promo video for it. I hope you enjoy.
Japan Camera Hunter is a photography site which has a section called, In Your Bag, where people send in photos of their setup for shooting. This seems to tap into some normally dormant nosey neighbour syndrome I have. I find it fascinating, in a guilty secret kind of way. Anyway, much to my surprise, a recent bag had a ukulele in it so I thought I would share it.
Image: Japan Camera Hunter
