Tales of the Uke – Part 16

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Last month it was a fun Beatles romp. For November, it’s a love song wrapped in an existential crisis. Or vice versa. Either way, Clocks, released by Coldplay in late 2002, was a hit. The song appeared on numerous charts, peaking at 29 on the Billboard  Hot 100 and reaching number one on the Billboard  Adult Alternative chart. The song also came out a year before lead vocalist Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow were married. An omen?

Clocks is famous for its piano riff that plays throughout. It’s more difficult to master on the ukulele but is instantly recognizable. Last summer, Trevor had me working on a few famous rock riffs to break up the monotony of practice. The riff for Clocks was one those. Later I got the sheet music for the full song written in a different key. The riff follows the chord progression of: C major, G minor, D minor with a variation to C major, G minor, F major.

Clocks is a repetitive but challenging song to learn on the uke. I use a lot of real estate on the fretboard, and the bridge is particularly demanding. In an attempt to vary the music a bit, I add my own touch in places. This song has a resigned tenacity to it, as reflected in the lyrics:

Lights go out and I can’t be saved
Tides that I tried to swim against
Brought me down upon my knees
Oh, I beg, I beg and plead
Singin’, come out of things unsaid
Shoot an apple off my head
And a trouble that can’t be named
A tiger’s waiting to be tamed
Singin’

You…are
You…are

Confusion never stops
Closing walls and ticking clocks
Gonna come back and take you home
I could not stop that you now know
Singin’, come out upon my seas
Curse missed opportunities
Am I a part of the cure
Or am I part of the disease
Singin’

You…are
You…are
You…are
You…are

And nothing else compares
Oh, nothing else compares
And nothing else compares

Home, home, where I wanted to go
Home, home, where I wanted to go
Home, home, where I wanted to go
Home, home, where I wanted to go

I put together two different videos for the song. The first has a few elements (clocks everywhere!) to mirror the urgency the song imparts:

The second is simply a straight performance:

For the next month I’m taking a break from what I usually do to revive “Uketide” Tunes. Lots of Christmas songs to perform, and my daughter will be joining for a few, which is always entertaining! Otherwise, more “regular” music coming next year. At some point I hope to tackle a Carpenters song…

Enough

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It has been a long four years, and 2020 has felt the lengthiest of all. There was a repudiation of the Trump Republican Party a couple years ago with the blue wave that swept the U.S. House of Representatives. After an absolutely dismal performance dealing with a still raging pandemic, this general election will not be close as long as people vote, and they have been in record numbers thus far. I expect a steamrolling that will be clear by Wednesday or Thursday. (Later than usual because of the complications around voting and COVID-19.) There is no election to contest when it’s not close. The president will throw tantrums, but after a couple weeks no one will be listening anymore, and he will be lucky if any sycophants in Congress help load his U-Haul trucks in January. We’ll have to hope he doesn’t burn down the house on his way out, but I expect a lot of unpleasantness as the transition between administrations gets underway.

For weeks the internal polls that the public doesn’t see have been bad for Republicans. Wall Street has been incensed by this president, pouring massive money into the Joe Biden campaign, desperately hoping for a return to predictability. Small donor money has flowed in consequential amounts to unseat vulnerable senators who have tied themselves to Trump, and while winning the Senate is not a given, Democrats have an excellent chance of doing so. The blatant hypocrisy that Republicans barely tried to rationalize in order to push through a Supreme Court nomination a week before the election, on top of a pitiful response to COVID-19, has infuriated a sizeable swath of the electorate. So has the tepid response to actually governing. For years the GOP has spent most of its time packing the courts, which has only required brute force. They make an excellent living at taxpayer expense for doing so little.

The president didn’t drain the swamp; he built a sewer. But, we’re on the eve of Election Day 2020. The bill is due, and this is one he can’t skip out on. There is a stiff price for the ineptitude, perfidy, self-dealing, and abysmal job performance of Trump. The GOP had numerous chances to be heroic and reign in this empty vessel of a human being but refused to do so with little more than a whimper and a shrug. We can send them home, too. The opportunity to get this country off the schneid is here. An opportunity to end this perversity at home and return to the world stage as a leader among nations, rather than a country to be pitied. This won’t happen overnight. It will take years to repair the damage this president and his ilk inflicted on the United States. But we take that first step now. Enough. Vote.

Tales of the Uke – Part 15

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After performing a couple classical pieces, including one that was submitted for a recital, I’m back to pop music. This time out, it’s the Beatles with a children’s song, Yellow Submarine. The tune was a hit for the band in 1966, reaching number two on the Billboard  Hot 100. Trivia note: It was released at the same time as Eleanor Rigby, on a double-A side single.

Yellow Submarine, like many songs for children, is simple in nature and fairly repetitive. This allows me to toy around with playing the lyrical verse a bit differently each time:

In the town where I was born
Lived a man who sailed the sea
And he told us of his life
In the land of submarines
So we sailed up to the sun
‘Til we found the sea of green
And we lived beneath the waves
In our yellow submarine

We all live in a yellow submarine
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine
We all live in a yellow submarine
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine

The song is fun to play, and in the beginning I add tremolo. This takes a lot more practice to sound just right, but it’s a new concept I’m learning and was encouraged to add for variety:

Yep, it’s a nautical theme, so quite a few of my daughter’s bath toys are hanging around the microphone. She had some questions about this. Ha! A fine and colorful collection of rubber duck, fish, and sea turtle groupies. It’s one of my larger audiences.

Up next, I hope to get a Coldplay song finished before Christmas music starts later in November. The song I’ll do requires a lot of work all over the fretboard and has a famous riff that takes extra effort to play on a string instrument. Good times!