This was Zooey Deschanel channelling the Annie Hall with ukulele look at this years SXSW where she performed with her group, She & Him. They are due to play at the Koko, London, on the 7th of may, the Matt Groening ATP festival in Minehead on the 8th and finally the Shepards Bush Empire on the 10th of may.
Zooey playing a telecaster ukulele
Photograph: Weheartit.com
I’m always in awe of overly ambitious projects and this blog, beatles ukulele, can be firmly placed in that basket. Their mission is to release, a ukulele cover and accompanying essay of every Beatles song ever recorded. Each song will by a different artist and released weekly. I can’t think of anything more worthy especially considering George Harrison’s love of the uke.
Photograph: Unknown
Also another covers project that seems pretty cool is the Neutral uke hotel project by Shaun Fogel. Neutral Milk hotel’s, In an airplane over the sea, played live in its entirety with ukes. This is somewhere in the states but I’m sure it’ll be on YouTube once they’ve done it.
Image: Neutral Uke Hotel
I love novelty items especially ones involving ukuleles. Some ten your old Chinese kid has slaved over this item purely for my idle enjoyment. One of my absolute favourite recent finds are these, lunchbox ukuleles. They’re the brain child (I think) of ukulele Ray, Frank Zappa’s South American Dictator cousin.
They look amazing. Andy Warhol would be proud of them. Also, some even have a speaker amp embedded in them. I particularly like the sales pitch of Picnics, school, road trips – okay, I can just about see all them but then it says the office. Really… the office?
I’m not sure if you can use it to keep your lunch in but even if you can’t, they’re still pretty neat.
Walking up my local high street the other day I saw this poster in the window of the framer’s. At first I just looked at the colours, then I realised it was Tiny Tim so I had to take a photo. I love it. It was Tiny Tim’s birthday yesterday, so it seems like a fitting post
photograph: www.ukuleleporn.com
David Shrigley, a rather excellent artist, had an exhibiton a few years back where he would design a poster for the general public in his style and he’d then exhibit his favourites. All you had to do was drop him an email with the details and he would, in a week or so, drop you back an email with a poster attached to it. A lovely idea. Hmmm, I thought, party? Gig? I know, ukulele party at my house with a ukulele-off as the culmination. I emailed David and set out the vision of a ukulele party. I’m not sure he bought the idea but about a week later an email arrived with the following poster attached.
Image – ©David Shrigley
The ukulele party never happened at the White House. However, I still dream that one day I’ll get to host one and then be able to use this poster.
