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.

Ukelele + Vintage Zep t-shirt = Irony?

I hunt for the weird shit on UkeTube? so you don't have to.

I live in Los Angeles, which is well-known as an irony-free zone. But even the most hardened Angeleno will tell you that the surest recipe for irony is to combine a ukulele with a vintage Led Zeppelin t-shirt. Because happy, shiny, ukulele picking can turn the saddest dirge about junkies overdosing into a toe-tappin' happy tune!


Finland is not known for surf music (and, as a nation, they've never quite recovered from the fact that the Beach Boys snubbed them on the Holland album). So you may ask yourself what would Finnish Tweens know about surf music played on ukuleles... and the answer is plenty!


And it's hard to mention Ukuleles without posting something from the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain (whose cover of "Shaft" is well worth a look), so here they are with Kaiser Chiefs (who might be my favorite recent band even if they didn't send me special videos on my birthday) doing a kick-ass version of "Ruby."

Smells Like Teen Ukulele Spirit

I never really understood why people worshipped Nirvana.

Maybe eight ukuleles and tuxedos would help.


Or a swing arrangement by the "Havin' My Baby" guy (link for Gmail subscribers):


Or a banjo version from Patti Smith and Sam Shepherd: