Should I Stay Or Should I Uke?

It's late August and it's about a million degrees out.

So I'm spending too much time on the Internets watching videos of blizzards, hoping they'll cool me off.

So far, it's not working.

Which brings me to the Department of Ukulele Clash Covers. How did it happen that there's an entire thriving subculture of Ukulele Clash covers? Let me tell ya:


33 years ago, the Clash played a gig in Islington, opening for the Sex Pistols. Johnny Rotten, noting that the Sex Pistols had opened for the Joe Strummer's band the 101'ers four months earlier, told Joe Strummer that his career was headed in the wrong direction and soon the only way Strummer's songs would be heard would be when someone played them on the ukulele. (Link for Gmail subscribers.)


Strummer dismissed this as the clear ravings of a lunatic whose band would self-destruct after a single tour of the U.S. (Link for Gmail subscribers.)


Joe Strummer may have had a point. But he ignored what we all now know: Johnny Rotten is the Nostradamus of Punk.