Season 362 - Travelling with the Wilburys

DelGriff said:

Great theme Mads - George Harrison and Jeff Lynne, in spite of their success, are still two of the most underrated musical talents this country has ever produced. If all goes to plan I might surprise you a bit with one of my songs this time - not sure how legal it’ll be, but then again that’s never stopped the bad boy of the Seasons, Trent, from chancing his arm! Hope I’ll manage to do it now!

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Uhh, interesting. Looking forward to hearing that... You can even make it legit by including one of the famous names or pretend that it is about travelling...

As I hinted earlier, I may be pushing my luck with this one - but please hear me out, Mads, before you make a judgement call on the legality of this.

Released by George Harrison in 1970, I would have been 4 years old when I first heard this one - my Dad had it in his collection and played it a lot, and I loved it. I still do. In fact it could possibly be my favourite song of all time!

When I was in my mid-twenties I played keyboards and wrote songs in my spare time - for no reason other than I loved doing it. I wasn’t in a band - I had a synth which I linked up to an Atari ST computer with MIDI leads and used some basic sequencing software to multi-track. I never sang, although I did write some words for some of them. I never attempted cover versions of any songs except for this one. A few years back I found the audio cassettes with some of my songs on and converted them to mp3 - this was one of them.

So here is my instrumental synth cover version of George Harrison’s ‘My Sweet Lord’ from about 1990(?) to which I’ve just added a basic uke track this evening in an attempt to make it legal for the season. I’m not convinced the uke track actually adds anything musically bar legitimacy (hopefully).

Whether this deemed legal or not, with our wonderful host’s special permission I’d like to do a uke only version of this with some vocals later in the week? Pretty please?



Btw the pictures are just a few nice ones from my own collection - no real link to the song.

My Sweet Lord

DelGriff said:

Released by George Harrison in 1970, I would have been 4 years old when I first heard this one - my Dad had it in his collection and played it a lot, and I loved it. I still do. In fact it could possibly be my favourite song of all time!

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Del, I'm with you on this. I would have been 5 when it came out, and I love the song as well. I've always thought of it as a bit of a meditation, with (corny as it sounds), the key change as nodding at a bit of spiritual progress...
William (BJ)

Love 'My Sweet Lord' or 'He's So Fine' if it indeed is the same song. Used to play it in my bedroom as a teenager in the George Harrison version.

Approved...

And by the way, all the songs until this point should be on the playlist by now.

362-Sunday 1

I've always liked this tune.

Great theme, Mads! I LOVE The Travelling Wilburys, and, in particular, "Handle With Care" .... thank you Rex, Fil and Haberkow! I had a booster pneumonia jab on Friday and now seem to be suffering from, er ... pneumonia (or, at least, a REALLY bad cough). Hope to be able to bring something before the week is out, though.

One of my favorite Tom Petty songs, used the banjo uke on it, and was going for something Bluegrass-ish, but I think it came out more Americana-ish. You decide if it worked or not. Like "The tide is high", which I did a few weeks ago, this is another song I wish Dwight Yoakam would have covered.

Have a nice monday everyone. Apparently this is the bleakest day of the year, known as blue monday so I will leave you with this cover of ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ featuring an array of stars. Maybe Prince is doing the greatest guitar solo ever, starting at 3.57 and where did that Telecaster go in the end? Did it simply fly up to George up above...?

I've done this Tom Petty song twice before. The most fun was with my son, Curt, playing the cajon I made for him.
I bring it to season 362 on my vintage banjo ukulele....it sure is loud.

It's probably no secret that I'm a massive Tom Petty fan, here's one from his 1989 debut solo album Full Moon Fever. The original is paying hommage to Buddy Holly I think, well it's in A at any rate.
The Wilbury that most people forget is probably Jeff Lynne, he co wrote most of the songs on this album and was the main producer.

I did this one a couple of years ago, for a Season where we had to pick the greatest song ever. I took Frank Sinatra's word for it, and chose this one. It's still up there I reckon, and George was my favourite Wilbury.

Ring Them Bells

"Ring Them Bells" is a song from Bob Dylan's 1989 album "Oh Mercy", which was recorded in between the two Traveling Wilburys albums. I don't really know what he's talking about half the time, but something keeps drawing me to this song.

The instrument I'm playing is a McNally Ukulele Strumstick. It is tuned like a standard ukulele, but with metal banjo strings.



- FiL

Here is a song I just wrote about one of the most well known Wilburs that ever lived, even if he did most of his famous travelling a few feet above the Kitty Hawk sands.

Technically, with this one, I wanted to see if the story (told over several verses, like an old time ballad) could keep the listener's attention, despite the fact there is no chorus. Do let me know if you think it succeeds.... or not.

Incidentally, the final verse was inspired by something Orville (who lived till 1947) stated in one of his last interviews. But I am sure Wilbur, who died in 1912, would have shared his brother's revulsion.

Hope you enjoy:

A song written by Stephen Foster and published in 1864 shortly after his death, recorded by Roy Orbsion.

When I was a kid, my great-grandmother had this curious little instrument called a Magnus Chord Organ. It was electric, and had a big fan inside that blew constantly when you turned it on to blow air through the plastic reeds of the organ. Or perhaps it sucked air through the reeds, I'm not sure exactly. So it was sort of like a big electric melodica. Anyway, I know more or less how it worked because I had to take the back off a few times to dust it out. It had no volume control. It was just kind of loud. It had a series of buttons on the left side of the keyboard, white buttons on the top row and black buttons on the bottom row. You would pull down the white buttons to play major chords and push up with your thumb on the black buttons to play minor chords, and then with your right hand you would play the melody on the keyboard. When she died, I inherited this organ and all of her books that went with it. This was one of the first songs I learned to play on it. Whoever it was who did these simple arrangements for all these songs really liked to use major IV --> minor iv --> I for the ending cadence. I didn't even go and listen to Orbison's recording of it. I just did it the way I remember it from having played it a couple hundred times by the time I was 10 years old.



P.S. I promised I combed my hair before I made this video. Sometimes it just doesn't do any good.

P.P.S. Here's a video of someone playing one, but this one is a little fancier than the one I had. His is a stand-alone instrument, but the one I had didn't have its own stand. It was more portable and you could just sit it on any old table wherever you wanted to play it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igc2cMiE-m8

Well I guess you asked for it, here is my take on While my guitar gently weeps, I had ideas and they sort of worked in this one-taker .

An original about traveling.



Well it's a cold, cold day in Winslow, Arizona
Watching the other truckers drive away
I ran out of time in Winslow, Arizona
Got nothing but time to kill through the overlay

There's snow on the corner in Winslow, Arizona
No pretty girls around to look at me
Too cold to stand on the corner in Winslow, Arizona
Just stay in my truck burning diesel so I don't freeze

Winslow, Arizona I ain't got much use for you
You're just another town I'm traveling through
This truck stop here in Winslow is the loneliest place to be
When there's a thousand miles of roads between you and me
There's a thousand miles of roads between you and me

Now I'm driving away from Winslow, Arizona
Nothing but static on that old CB
At two in the morning it's a dark road to Lantana
More miles between where I am and where I want to be

Winslow, Arizona I ain't got much use for you
You're just another town I'm traveling through
Running this western relay, it seems to have no end
Looks like I'm going back to Winslow again
Looks like I'll be stuck in Winslow again

362-Monday

Jeff Lynne, ELO.

Another Tom Petty song, I think I've done this before but slowed down with a distorted plugged in uke and harmonica.

This is my all time favorite Tom Petty song. I did it quite awhile back, but I'm glad to dust off and do it again. I need to keep it around because the few times I did it in front of people it got a really good response. and I've kind of forgotten about it till now.