Season 270 - Be-Cause

Okay. Here's one more, also Mellotron-ified. This is a Split Enz song called "Message to My Girl" that they played at Sound Relief in Melbourne in 2009. Perhaps Pa or Rustyy went to this concert?

 
Sheena (Is A Punk Rocker)

So, from the sublime... to the cor blimey...!!

Live Aid and its 1986 follow-up, Sport Aid, inspired in the UK the creation of two biennial charity fundraising events: Comic Relief, a telethon founded by screenwriter Richard (4 Weddings and A Funeral) Curtis and comedian (& now distinguished Shakespearean actor) Lenny Henry, for comics to do what rock stars had done (and comedy is/was the new rock'n'roll); and Sport Relief – basically a weekend of sponsored sports events nationwide, be that running, swimming, cycling, hula-hooping, pogo-sticking... Comic Relief is staged in odd-numbered years, Sport Relief in even-numbered years.

In 2015 the Comic Relief telethon raised just shy of £99.5million; in 2016, Sport Relief, £72.5million (http://www.sportrelief.com/), so it's a big deal. While sponsored races of course take place in local recreation grounds and sports facilities up and down the land, since 2014, the big showcase events have been held in the Olympic Park. Music is a big part of this, used both for encouraging participants and entertaining spectators while nothing much is going on (which is generally the case in most road races).

The pUKEs were approached by Sport Relief 2016 to participate in the third day of the Olympic Park festivities, Sun Mar 20. Because of the setting we were going to have to do an almost all-acoustic gig, which we don't often do, and we practiced like mad to get it together. We were all really quite excited about the gig, even though it meant getting up at sparrow's fart on a Sunday morning, all proudly wearing our band T's.

It was perhaps the strangest gig we've ever done - and you can imagine, we've set the bar pretty high on strange gigs!

The QE Olympic Park is big, over 560 acres, containing the Olympic Stadium, Pool, and Velodrome. We were asked to do three sets at three different locations to be assigned to us on the day. Our initial assignment was the Velodrome, but instead of playing inside to an audience, we were sent outside to the VeloPark (it was 9:30 am and freezing, to perform for the cyclists using the road race circuit.

Our first 'gig' was to give the participants in the cycle 'road run' a send-off (so many cyclists turned up to participate, they were sent off at two minute intervals in groups of twenty). But instead of putting us in front of the start line so we could play to the cyclists, the organisers set us up on a stage parallel to and 20yards back, so we found ourselves performing to a load of backsides disappearing into the distance at 2-minute intervals!

When that set was over, we went inside into the Velodrome in search of warmth and sustenance, but we only had a few minutes before the organisers arrived to send us to our next spot (we only had 25 minutes between sets, so between striking the first set & collecting all our gear, hauling it on to the next spot and setting up again, there was virtually no time at all). This next 'venue' was even more bonkers than the previous one. They set us down in the middle of the road circuit (you can see it on this map - we were right in the little quadrilateral between the pink circuit and the yellow loop). This time, we're playing to no-one except... whoosh! There goes a group of cyclists down the track.... and, two minutes later, whoosh! Here they come up the back straight , and whoosh! They've gone again. And of course, we're acoustic, so what sound we do make is travelling nowhere.

That set over, we'd only just made it back to the Velodrome, when we were sought out and sent out again for our final set, this time to just outside the Olympic Stadium - over half-a-mile away - and remember, we've only got 25 minutes between sets! When we get there, we can't find anyone to tell us where exactly we're supposed to set up! We in the end find our spot, but the event we're supposed now to be entertaining - a sponsored run - had started two hours previously, so once again we ended up performing to the breeze; as about the only participants remaining for us to support were the proverbial one man and his dog!

A gig, we all swore after, of which we shall never speak again!

Anyway, we opened with this one, the first track on our album and an opening number in many of our sets. And this is my final number for you this week.

 
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Great to see Surly-Mac doing his stuff in the seasons. He explains why John Hiatt is an artist who can be shared this week.

This is Face of God from the album "Terms of My Surrender" - Scott does a great job on the title track - HERE.


Dammmm.... great percussive uke blues here AND you did the 'break time' to perfection - Fine song choice for you... and you KILLED it! (That's old-man-American slang for: "performed with extraordinary skill":bowdown::bowdown:) Terrific stuff!:cool:
 
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Day 6 is coming to a close now for me and we're 79 vids into the Season. (It'll be 80, as soon as Paul gets the audio worked out on his last post.) So many fine performances were made and benefits mentioned; I am so thankful.

As we move into our last two days, I hope that those who have't joined us yet will consider making a submission and that those who have already appeared at our great Seasons concert will consider returning for an encore.

Thanks so much! See you tomorrow! Linda :)
 
Hey, there's no sound on your vid redpaul. (Sorry I tend to forget real names.) Probably, um, Paul, lol :)

Thanks bones (☺) - don't know why this keeps happening to me (unless it's YT's way of telling me I'm rubbish ☹ ). 'Fixed'* now - so you can judge for yourself.

*I say fixed, but for some reason the sound's got real crackly, like it's clipping, which it's not in the version I can hear here, but which I can't upload
 
This thread had me googling charity and good cause events by Ukulele clubs and theres some amazing amounts and donations being raised out there for every cause you can think of. Its fantastic to see the work being done out there and on such a large scale ........the humble ukulele really does bring happiness. :cool:
 
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This thread had me googling charity and good cause events by Ukulele clubs and theres some amazing amounts and donations being raised out there for every cause you can think of. Its fantastic to see the work being done out there and on such a large scale ........the humble ukulele really does bring happiness. :cool:

You're so very right about that, Marc. (Hope I spelled that correctly?) The uke brings and happiness and ukers spread it in many, many ways. This is true for other musicians and performers, as well, as this thread has shown. :)
 
I did not do the work of determining exactly what benefits the Neville Brothers have played at, but I know they do a ton of these gigs, especially when connected with their home town of New Orleans.

And I could not possibly pass up the chance of doing a live collaboration with some of my favorite people in the world - The Ukelites! So, we give you Tell It Like It Is!

I'm going to post this in Seasonistas playing with other Seasonistas too, and the first person who can identify where this video was shot gets a prize. Really!

 
Emperor's New Clothes - An Ukulele Cover for week 270 of SOTU - Just Be Cause

This has always been my favorite Sinead O'Connor song plus I have always a bit of a crush. She is truly a beautiful lady.

Sinead O'Connor performed at a cancer benefit concert in honor of David Bowie. This was also the same time that she went missing for 24 hours and friends and fans were worried she may have tried to kill herself.

On that happy note... ENJOY!

 
I was playing around with my Mellotron effects box and found that with the brass sound, I could slow down the attack so the brass sound comes in a second after the uke sound. Then I ran the whole shebang through the distortion effect I like to use in my MOX6. The sound was so much fun, I had to find something to play using it. So what was that other set of chords I had printed out yesterday? Turns out it was "Against All Odds" by Phil Collins (played at Live Aid). There was no way this sound would make any sense with this particular song. Until I jammed on it for 10 minutes, and then it seemed like the most obvious match in the world.

The t-shirt I'm wearing was designed by manfrog. I bought it on Redbubble. It has a double helix of tiny ukes forming dioxyribonukuleleic acid.

 
Happy Earth Day from a very rainy Long Island. I thank those individuals who posted and commented today. I've really enjoyed the music and reading about the performers. Tomorrow will bring a close to Season 270 at midnight Hawaiian time.
Wishing everyone a good evening! Linda
 
Back in the 90s, I played in a band called the Halo Benders. In 1994, we played a benefit for Hands Off Washington to raise money to fight an anti-gay ballot initiative. In 2010, we played our last show in Olympia, WA, a benefit for Friends of Mia, raising money for local families dealing with childhood cancer. At both shows, we played this song.



For me, playing benefit shows was and is the best part of making music. Thanks for an amazing Season, everyone!
 
The Racket Downstairs For the Guilford Fund For Education

Howdy Seasonistas!

Long time no post. 2017 has been very busy for me, and although I haven't been around in the Seasons, I have been on musical adventures. My band, The Racket Downstairs was offered a slot in music series at a local Guilford eatery called The Marketplace. We were actually uncomfortable asking our friends to come out and pay to see us, so we decided to make it a benefit concert for the Guilford Fund For Education. We had never played more than three or four songs at a time together, and it was a bit of a challenge to put together a full set. In two months we put together a set of sixteen songs, eight covers and eight originals. On the night we added a spontaneous performance of Johnny B Goode to honor Chuck Berry who had passed that day. The evening was a huge success. We sold out the venue and actually had to turn some people away. Some of them stayed and listened from the sidewalk. It was an absolute blast! Irene took a lot of video with help from the other band wives, but it has taken a while to get edited. Thanks to Linda for giving us the excuse to get some of it done. :) Hopefully I will get back to the Seasons soon, although we have just secured another gig, so here we go again. :)

 
The Bridge School was started by Neil and Pegi Young in 1986 when they couldn't find suitable placement for their son, who suffers from cerebral palsy. It's goal is to allow children with severe speech and physical impairments to participate fully in their communities through the use of adaptive technologies to help them communicate. Every fall they throw a benefit concert at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, CA. In 2008 we had just moved to the Bay Area after grad school and some colleagues of mine had a couple of extra tickets. We have since gone nearly every year, partially because I want to see Neil every year and partially because Mrs. Pavement is a speech and language pathologist who thinks the Bridge School does good work and is worthy of support. Wilco, who I would also gladly see every year, played this during that first BSB show we went to in 2008.



I also like to think that it expresses some of the sentiments we think of when we play and submit to the seasons.
 
I have a song ready to go for this season. However, I've ended up being busier than expected over the last few days, and we are about to have a scheduled blackout here all day, so I don't think I'm going to get it recorded in time. Thanks for the inspiration to try a new song, and I'll have to save it up for a future season. Unfortunately I don't think it was played in Boardwalk Empire :(
 
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