Season 414: Coin of the Realm

Quick! No tiime to edit! They're calling my flight to Hobart!
 
One of those perfect "learn the ukulele" songs - two chords, C & G, start on C and change chord every time you sing "money"

 
I recently treated myself to a second hand i-pad. Which I purchased, mainly to get to grips with Garage Band. So, I was creating as I was learning to use the App and found myself working on a very 80s feel piece when this theme was announced.

With the tune in my head, I awoke yesterday morning to the line "Blame the 80s for the mess we're in" sung to the first line of the verse. I jotted down a few notes about my memories of the "me" decade and the rise of "Greed is Good" as a philosophy. Then later in the day. The idea for the chorus came into my head and the song then virtually wrote itself.

While there have been no shortage of financial philosophies that worshipped Mammon, none has had the impact on our world that Monetarism has had. No financial idea has been more insidious. Its rise gave us the swing to the extreme right of the Republican Party in the US and decades of Conservative rule across the EU (including Britain). Its promise was that the wealth created by cutting back on social concerns would enrich the rich and then trickle down to everyone else. It certainly did the former, but totally failed to deliver the latter. Yet, still there are those who worship it like a holy text. Do we never learn?

Hope you enjoy:

 
Ahoy everybody and happy new year and thank you for a brilliant 2019, ukuleleing together.

I have not been active so far this year. I was traveling without my Uke so I could not record anything, then I wound up getting a Banjo and have been busy trying to learn how to play that thing so the uke took the backseat when I returned home.
The first step towards becoming active again is taking part so here is my rendition of Bon Jovi's Blood Money song from the film Young Guns II
 
I got beat to the post again this week by Steve, but I'm still throwing my version of Pay Me My Money Down up. I multi-tracked two ukuleles and the vocals and harmonies, back up by Band in a Box. I even pulled out Moore Bettah this week. Hope you enjoy...

 
This was one of my favorite songs of 2017, by Chris Ardoin and NuStep Zydeco. I love the blend of zydeco, rock, and hip-hop.


 
Before Tom T. Hall became a country recording star, he was Tom Hall the songwriter, because he doesn't actually have a middle name or initial. He wrote a song called "DJ For a Day" that Jimmy C. Newman had a big hit with, though at the time he wasn't yet using a middle initial. So Jimmy Key, Newman's business partner/agent, gave Hall a job as a songwriter and he wrote a bunch of other songs that Newman recorded. Key thought that his artists' names would sound better with a middle initial, so he gave Jimmy Newman the middle initial "C" for "Cajun," even though his real middle name was Yves. And when Tom Hall began recording himself, Key gave him the middle initial "T" because he liked the sound of it. This song is from back when Tom Hall was not yet a recording artist and Jimmy Newman hadn't yet begun using the middle initial "C."

 
And, hello, yet again, Jim! I seem to have got myself firmly entrenched in the Depression era, and this song, from 1933, was one of the first to come to mind for this week ... it took a while to find any chords, though. The film that accompanies the song is of traffic in Beverley Hills in the very early 1930s. I left the sound of the cars in there because I thought it lent a sort of period feel.

 
A Treasure Chest - that's a kind of money, right? Reflections of the tourist dollar as I work on my Tasmania Song... I think in the time it took for this to render and upload, the rain has paused... Back on the road!
 
Gonna try to jump on if possible, Jim. Still recovering from the fall. If I can get enough air to croak out a tune, I have several in the queue.
 
Gonna try to jump on if possible, Jim. Still recovering from the fall. If I can get enough air to croak out a tune, I have several in the queue.

If you're having trouble singing, feel free to play an instrumental. We'll be happy to have you back.
 
This one was released in the year of my birth. It’s the seasons debut of my new Freshman 8-string electro-acoustic tenor uke - looks great but only has one string (G) an octave lower, so I’m looking to change one of the others down an octave for a fuller, bassier sound. Hang on to the end of the video for a closer look. :)

 
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