Season 260 : Roads Girdle the Globe

OK, just made it. My apologies to fellow Seasonistas, I have been too busy to watch anything this week so far. But I did manage to finish up this one.

 
Last one from me this week. This one has me and my band "The Saturday Blues Project" playing on it. It is one of the latest songs we are working on. The basic track was taken from a recording made in a recent rehearsal and then I added the uke and me singing to camera at a later date (today, in fact). So, although the song wasn't written for this season, the arrangement was.... and I think it fits the theme nicely.

The inspiration for this song was something one of our fellow seasonistas said about Interstate and inner state. I filed that away until the next jam session when this song emerged. If you recognise yourself (or if anyone recognises the quote) in this anecdote please tell me and I'll credit you (or the person responsible) on the Youtube description.

PLAY THIS LOUD

 
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Streets of London by Ralph McTell



(Has some audio issues, but at least it's loud enough for once.)
 
Some more comments. It's just possible that I get a little punchy while watching videos and trying to activate the verbal part of my brain, so I apologize if it seeped into the comment on your video:


Tootler - Rosemary Lane - Nice choice, Geoff! Thanks for bringing this one, I haven't heard it before. Another great old folk song about a lost maidenhood. The Wikipedia page for this one is fun: An alternative title for the song is "Bell Bottom Trousers" and a mountain inn version became the official marching song of the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division.

CeeJay - On the Road Again - That's a great arrangement, CeeJay! Rootsiness with just a touch of music hall. I like it when you go up higher on the neck for the third verse, and I LOVE that solo at the end.

Jazzbanjorex - 12th Street Rag - Whoa! I wasn't expecting you to go all Johnny Marvin on us! It's too bad YouTube doesn't have the UU emoticon for bowing down and going "We're not worthy!" I'd use it here.
:worship:

CeeJay - Road to Hell - Woo Hoo! If I smoked, I'd be holding my cigarette lighter up right about now! That was awesome. People forget now, but before AC/DC built the Highway to Hell, you had to take the local roads. "Last petrol for next 3 circles of Hell".

mountain goat - Dirty Blvd. - Fantastic, Jon! You've got a great groove going on the uke and you have the Lou Reed vocal mannerism down pat. I'm surprised that I don't already have this song in my music collection. Time to fix that.

TWO LITTLE WOODPECKERS - Walking Down the Street - I thank you, and Eisley thanks you! -- Signed, Sour Apple Pie You two give me a big smile during a snowy, overcast week here. That's why I came walking down your street, I was looking for some summer. And a little bit of extra Lou Reed to tide me over.

frisbee fred - Cross RoadBlues - Really nice, Fred. Listening to this, I got to thinking that we don't have any legends about ukulele players selling their soul for complete mastery of the uke. Hmmm... I bet if we put our minds to it, we could disseminate a legend pretty quick, what with our worldwide group of Seasonistas.

Harry122 - Fannin Street - Good job on this, Randy. Sounds like Houston's answer to "House of the Rising Sun". The "rue the day" line reminds me that at the start of the week, I wondered if someone might try to slip in a "rue the day" song title because the French word for street is "rue".

wee_ginga_yin - Penny Lane - This couldn't be more different than elmann's version. A unique interpretation. I'm not sure what the exact adjective I'm looking for is. It's not quite "dirge-like". "Dour", maybe?

YorkSteve - Killermont Street - Nice singing there, Steve, especially considering your cold. Good job. I never heard much Aztec Camera back in the day. They didn't make much of a dent in the U.S. -- we got Aztec Two-Step instead.

Barbablanca - I Hate the M-54 - This is a heavy original, Berni. It's got a unique lyrical topic that I don't recall hearing in any song before. Definitely much more specific and personal than "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot," which is the closest analogue that jumps to mind. Much respect.

Barbablanca - Out in the Street - This is one of your most downbeat lyrics that I've heard. But I love that ferocious strumming. The upbeat rhythm and major key chorus do a good job to offset the verses and give the song as a whole a real power.

cua94 - Sesame Street theme song - Very nice job on this, Liz. That bridge has some tricky rhythms. I was wondering if this song would show up this week. Thanks for playing it.
 
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It showed as Public on my dashboard, but I changed it to unlisted to see what happens. Tell me if that worked? I never set my vid's to private, didn't know how, perhaps it's You Tube tripping over it's own tongue?

Weird, It was listed as Public but I didn't see it when I checked my channel, I made it unlisted and checked again, didn't see it so I changed it to Public and voila it now shows up. ???

That exact thing has happened to me on the last few videos I have uploaded to YouTube. :mad:
 
Season 260 has now ended. There are 96 videos (not counting my own) by 53 Seasonistas, including regular contributors, some folks I haven't seen here for a while, and several new arrivals whose styles I'm still getting to know. I thank you all for taking part.

Please check to make sure that your video is in the playlist. I will finish watching them all and select the shirt prize options for this week, then select the winners.


Edit: I've just gone back through the whole Season. The only song I found that wasn't in the playlist was wee_ginga_yin's cover of pabrizzer's "Endless Road". But Rob still had his full allotment of three songs on the playlist (Key to the Highway, Blackberry Way, Penny Lane). So I'll leave it this way unless he wants to substitute Endless Road for one of the other three.
 
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Thx for hosting Seasons#260. I only posted one video but I honestly enjoyed this ...it's a pity that it is almost impossible to listen to every entry:(.
 
Hi,

Another great week. Thanks a bunch for hosting.


Ciao
 
I'm still watching all of the videos from Season 260. I had an out of body experience today. I had 125 views of my "Roads Girdle the Globe" video in the last day. This doesn't happen to me often. When it does, it usually means the video got posted on a fan site for the band. I found that the editor of an XTC fanzine had posted it on the Facebook page for the Chalkhills.org fan site. Then he left me a comment on YouTube that he'd also posted it on Twitter, and XTC's Andy Partridge (who wrote the song) had responded "WOW!!!!! just WOWW!!!!!" I'm just floored. If UU had a jaw-dropping smiley available, I'd use it.

Roads Girdle the Globe.Andy Partridge response.jpg
 
I'm still watching all of the videos from Season 260. I had an out of body experience today. I had 125 views of my "Roads Girdle the Globe" video in the last day. This doesn't happen to me often. When it does, it usually means the video got posted on a fan site for the band. I found that the editor of an XTC fanzine had posted it on the Facebook page for the Chalkhills.org fan site. Then he left me a comment on YouTube that he'd also posted it on Twitter, and XTC's Andy Partridge (who wrote the song) had responded "WOW!!!!! just WOWW!!!!!" I'm just floored. If UU had a jaw-dropping smiley available, I'd use it.

View attachment 97936

That's great, Jim and so good of him to be appreciative. Some songwriters are a bit sniffy about other peoples' efforts to perform their songs.

Not mentioning a certain raptor band, of course.
 
Here's a batch of comments on the videos. There will be one more batch to come.


redpaul1 - On Raglan Road - Very nice, Paul! Good song choice. The lyrics sound like this should be a traditional folk song. I was surprised to find out this was written in the 1940s.

xommen - Where the Streets Have No Name - Thanks for taking this request, Wim! You play this expertly. If I didn't know better, I'd almost think you'd played it before. Just once or twice. I know it takes a lot of practice to keep a rhythm like that going without letting the timing of the vocals throw you off. Great job.

Jazzbanjorex - Carefree Highway - I'd completely forgotten this song. (I always thought he was singing "every highway".) Great choice, and that's a fantastic strum to use for this song -- more insistent and upbeat than Lightfoot's original version. This one may be going on my iPod.

TCK - Hard Road Again - Hi Mel! Great job on this, TCK. I hadn't heard the song before, but then I hadn't heard of the band until last Season. After listening to this, I went to iTunes and listened to the sound clip of the original song, but I like your stripped-down version better.

frisbee fred - Ventura Highway - Great job on this, Fred. I don't know why, but I thought it was the Eagles who had done this song. I found this on Wikipedia: "Dewey Bunnell, the song's vocalist and writer, has said that the lyric "alligator lizards in the air" in the song is a reference to the shapes of clouds in the sky he saw in 1963 while his family was driving down the coast from Vandenberg Air Force Base near Lompoc, California, where they had a flat tire. While his father changed the tire, he and his brother stood by the side of the road and watched the clouds and saw a road sign for "Ventura"."

auntieuku - The Street Where You Live - This was just gorgeous! Lovely singing and beautiful, jazzy playing. I don't recall ever hearing this song until this Season, but I guess I must have, because I almost used it for the name of the Season.

mountain goat - Swayin' Down the Street - Yay! Thanks for writing this song for Season 260! Randy has it right, this reminds me of a Tin Pan Alley song. I could picture this being sung in a Fleischer cartoon. I loved it. (If I tried to kick up my heels like that, I'd end up flat on my butt.)

hendulele - Streets of Bakersfield - Nice choice, Rick, and well done. I just know Buck Owens from "Hee Haw", I don't know his songs. Lately, I've gotten fascinated with how many songs there are with a narrator singing about all the horrible things he's done in a life gone wrong, while hardly giving any actual mention of any of those things in the lyrics. Randy's "Fannin Street" is another of these. It extends to pop, too -- listen to Pink's "Dear Diary". A lot of "I'm generally bad, but not specifically" songs.

Joko - On the Road to Mandalay - "I can hear those paddles chonkin'"? Kipling must have meant boat paddle ukuleles. It's always fascinating seeing your missives from Myanmar. A country that few of us Seasonistas will ever visit. Now I need to watch your video of the mahout village that's showing up along the right side of the screen.

CeeJay - Waterloo Road - At the end of Waterloo Road, will I get to see a Waterloo sunset? Really nice one man jam, CeeJay. I always love seeing you solo on uke, I hadn't known how good your keyboard skills are. If it wasn't for Wikipedia, I wouldn't have realized this was the same song as "Les Champs Elysées" that Elmann played.

weerpool - Ventura Highway - This sounded great to me, John. You're overestimating how noticeable your mistakes are to listeners. One of the benefits of the Seasons is that the limited timeframe frees you from the tyranny of perfection. Instead of doing 50 to 100 takes looking for the perfect take, you learn to live with what you can do in a handful of takes. It's not learning to "settle", it's accepting that for our Seasons purposes the immediacy outweighs the few percent improvement that would come from worrying at it for weeks.

Tomcat Wombat - Blue Jay Way - Very nice. Trippy visual, too, with the tilted camera and the colors all jumping out like a blacklight poster. This Season has taken us on a Magical Mystery Tour, between this and Penny Lane. In hindsight, I'm surprised no one did "Why Don't We Do It in the Road".

JodeTheToad - Oystershell Road - Great job, Jodi. That's a really interesting song. I'd forgotten that in WWII, there was that much fear that the U.S. coasts would be invaded. I remember in Maine visiting fortifications on the hillside above Popham Beach, where artillery was set up in case the Germans tried to go up the Kennebec River to attack the Bath Iron Works shipbuilding facilities.

mountain goat - Golden Road - This is so many different kinds of great that I can't begin to describe them, Jon. The playing, singing, video, all of it. We've had a bunch of snow the last couple of weeks, so it's nice to see somewhere that it's summer. I'm not familiar with Martin Sexton. This did remind me, though, that no one did Peter Gabriel's tribute to Anne Sexton, "Mercy Street". Doing a collab with Rick in Season 261 reminded me that I could be doing a whole lot more with Audacity than I do.

Tootler - Tobacco Road - Good job, Geoff. That's a very different take on the song than Rex's. I haven't gotten to Janet's yet. There were a bunch of songs done twice this Season, but I think this is was the only one done three times. While I've heard of the song before this week, I don't recall ever actually hearing it till now. I'm assuming you used a little reverb, and that resonance wasn't ALL from the baritone.

LimousinLil - Highway in the Wind - A lovely cover. I'm not familiar with the song. One of my brothers had the "Alice's Restaurant" album, but I don't remember ever listening to Side 2. I thought all the songs with "Highway" in the title would be loud driving songs, but this one sounds like it's practically a lullaby. I think my first apartment was smaller than that uke.

ddanner - I Dream of Highways - Nice work on this one, Dennis. I haven't heard this song before. It's fairly upbeat for what's basically a break-up song. I expected the "highway" songs this week would be about driving fast cars for hundreds of miles, but that hasn't been the case at all.

bigphil - Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road - Wow, Phil, that was fantastic! Both the playing and singing were first-rate! This is on a Dr. Demento compilation my brother gave me.

librainian - Road Trippin' - Great cover. Both your fingerpicking and singing are beautiful. I took a listen to the original as a comparison, and I'm impressed. But I am scrolling down to the comments are because that trippy color alteration on the video is hurting my eyes. Bad trip, man! Talk me down!

Auni - Road to Nowhere - Great work on this, Auni. It really sounds great on the guitarlele. You know, for decades I had people looking at me like I had a third nostril because I wanted to play something other than '20s songs or Hawaiian music on the uke. Maybe my favorite thing about the Seasons is to see people just play the music they like, and make it work on the uke. "I'm not going to play this song on the uke because it's a "uke song", but because I want to play this song and I'm a uke player!"

decaturcomp - Carefree Highway - Rex made this song his own with a strum, and you've done it with a croon and fingerpicking. I remember hearing this on the radio a thousand times in the mid-70s and always, always thinking he was singing "every highway". You did a fine job on this.

Ginas uke - Streets of Philadelphia - Well played! In terms of your singing AND playing AND song choice. The double exposure visual effect fits well with the lyrics, the feeling of displacement. You're the first to play this song for this Season. It was done when I hosted the "Saddest Songs in the World" theme in Season 188. For some reason, I hadn't thought of this song for this Season -- I was thinking more along the lines of "Tenth Avenue Freeze-out" or "Thunder Road".
 
Okay, it's two months late, and I finished reviewing the last of the videos two or three weeks ago. First, here's the last batch of comments, which were all made on the YouTube pages already:


librainian - Bourbon Street Parade - Holy crap, Andrew, that was fantastic! I had to go back a couple of times and take a better look at those fingerpicked walk-downs at the start of a verse. I don't listen to albums of ukulele music, so I'm not familiar with Papa Lemon, but I've got nothing but respect for the style and the performance. Wow!

AlanDP - Pineapple Road - This is a great song! Great find, Alan, and you played it great. Now I know what "pau hana" means. The local luthier who made my armadillo-shell uke out of an old mandolin uses "Pau Hana" as the brand name for his homemade ukes.

UkuleleLow - Streets of Baltimore - Great job on this. I'm impressed with your multitracking skills. I'm still trying to learn how to do some basic things. I don't think you were with us yet in Season 168, where I hosted a theme about "bright lights at night". I was used to songs from the '80s about wanting to go out and have an adventure in the night life, but all the country music lovers brought sad songs about how those awful bright lights made their woman leave them. This song was one of them.

Desert Pavement - Dead End Street - Very well done. Your playing is great, and your singing is a lot better on this than you give yourself credit for. I like the "pizzicato" picking on the verse. I've got one song where I've been doing that for years, yet it never even occurs to me to ever try it on other songs.

thesillydave - L.A. Freeway - Hey, Dave, great to see you! And still sounding fantastic! I like the wardrobe change between this song and the next one. I admire a man who commits to the part! I'm curious as to just what kind of trouble the narrator is escaping.

thesillydave - The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane - Wow, this song is a stupenous find, Dave! Thanks for coming by for this Season and bringing something so silly to the pary. "She just needs someone to change her."

lizalele - Leaning on a Lamp Post (at the Corner of the Street) - Excellent, Liz! Great fingerpicking, and taking those tempo changes with confidence. I haven't listened to much Formby, so I don't know this song, but I've got to think most ukers would have just strummed those chords instead of the intricate picking. Good job.

JodeTheToad - 6th Avenue Heartache - That's an interesting song. I've never heard it before. A sort of "Hymn to the Unknown Busker". A good song choice, and well done, Jodi.

Tootler - The Streets of Laredo - This is a very good fit for your voice, Geoff. My formative years were spent listening to Allan Sherman records, so I always hear this song as Sherman's version, "The Streets of Miami", sung in a heavy Yiddish accent.

decaturcomp - Human Highway - And the cigarette lighter is out and held up! Fantastic, Alan! I don't know if I've ever seen a baritone banjo uke before. Was the camera angle chosen specifically to show the sign over the door?

hendulele - Rocky Road - A tribute to a fine flavor of ice cream! Thanks for bringing this one, Rick. And I want a better look at that Cthuluau t-shirt! Has AlanDP seen that? Since falling way behind in watching the videos, we've had a couple of t-shirt days here since the Season ended. But this morning was 11 degrees.

myrnaukelele - On the Road Again - This brought a big smile to my face, Myrna. This is a song that never made that much of an impression on me, but I'm really enjoying hearing Seasonistas playing it. Hope you had a great trip!

UkuleleLow - Life's Highway - Very nice. I don't think I've heard the song before. Sort of a driving song version of "Morning Has Broken". Drive well today, and try to stay out of life's breakdown lane.

TheOnlyUkeThatMatters - Worse Than 43rd - Yeah Ralph! I'm happy to give you a reason to dig into your rock star past! And it got me listening to a few Feelings sound clips on iTunes to hear you sing leads. On uke, this almost ends up sounding like ska. Go Sal!

ddanner - Endless Road - Really nice, Dennis. The Bonanza episode was in 1965, so why is it Axton didn't ever record the song until 1978? Unless the Internet has it wrong (I can't imagine such a thing). I also saw something on-line that said the song was really written by Axton's mother.

MikeOnTheUke - Boulevard of Broken Dreams - Great job on this, Mike! And thanks for doing this one. It's a song that I was really hoping to hear this Season. One of the names I considered for the Season was "The Boulevard of Broken Strings."

JackLuis - Six Days on the Road - You've got a good voice for trucking songs, Jackluis. I like this. I don't recall hearing this song before, though it looks like dozens of people have recorded it over the years. Wikipedia says the song is "often hailed as the definitive celebration of the American truck driver."

greenie44 - Lonely Avenue - Fantastic singing there, Rick! And a great job with the multi-tracking and processing the ukulele sound. Great job on this.

greyghost - Highway Song - Great as usual, Luis! I've got to say that I don't remember Blackfoot at all from the '70s. I looked them up and found the band still exists, with founder Rickey Medlocke only acting as producer, and an entirely new set of band members put together in 2012. I've never heard of a setup like that before.

Barbablanca - Thundering Down the Interstate - Oof! That's the road I drive down bringing my daughter to and from college. I think that's the hardest I've ever heard you rock, Berni, and I love it! It makes me want to hear a whole set from your band. I'm a little surprised that "Interstate" is a word that would make it into your songs -- I wouldn't think that the word would have much meaning in Europe.

PlastikUke - Streets of London - A lovely version of this. Well done. I can't really see the uke, but I'm going to guess it's smaller than the one Lil played this song on. And congrats on graduating from Hogwarts! You're not a Hufflepuff, are you? Because, just theoretically, I might have written a song about Hufflepuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXiqAc_-RqY

bonesigh - 12th St. Rag - Very nice, Janet. A high contrast between your take on this song and Rex's, which was more like the Johnny Marvin version. I like both the fast and slow versions of Scott Joplin's rags.

bonesigh - Tobacco Road - And the crowd at Newport went crazy when Janet went electric! This is really great, Janet. I love the energy and multi-tracking and the vocals and the everything.
 
Yes, at this ridiculously late date it's time to finally bring Season 260 to a close! I apologize for how long this has taken. I have no good excuse.

There were 96 entries from 53 participants, and I thank you all. It's a constant amazement to me just how good all of you are. To the folks who have been here from the first year or two of the Seasons, I can see how all of us have improved since we've been doing this. (If you want to improve your playing and singing talents, please join in and do this for a while!) And for those who started later, and the newcomers, I'm very impressed with the overall talent level of the Seasonistas.

I used Random.org to choose the winners of the three T-shirt prizes. The winners are:

greenie44

Harry122

greyghost



I will send the winners a PM for you to choose your T-shrits.

Thanks again to everyone for taking part in Season 260!
 
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