Season 594 - Berries, fruits & Japan

[Canada Jim]

SAKURA / さくら さくら / Cherry Blossoms
Google tells me that Sakura was composed by Yokoyama, Shin-Itchiro.

 

[charldene]

 

[SumiUke]

I’ve been lurking on SOTU for a couple weeks. I’ve finally got the courage to record and post.

Here’s a song by Halsey from 2019. She has a sweet reference to a sour apple right at the beginning.

I’m hopping this embedded video works!

Halsey : Finally // beautiful stranger

 

[mountain goat]

a simple little improvised original i recorded this morning
as the sun was shining in at a nice angle in the lounge
in loving memory of my mum and her Japanese cherry tree
which flowered every year on her birthday xo

 

[mountain goat]

an original song for the season
and one i've always been quite proud of.
i'm at the 8-song limit now so thank you again Ylle
for hosting and for such an inspiring theme!

 

[YooperGirl]

Hi Ylle!
Such a neat theme this week! Here’s my entry: Dreams by The Cranberries. They are one of my absolute faves and this song is my favorite of theirs. I downloaded the Acapella app that a few people have been talking about lately and played around with layering today…a work in progress.
The clips in the video are just of a random rainy day here recently.

 

[Mark Suszko]

I don't know Japanese, I had also wanted to do "Ue o Muite Arukō", but too many others got there ahead of me.

But I had another song in my back catalog, and this contest and the chance to win that prize had me dig it out and re-make it for this contest, not easy because tornadoes took out our power here for five days, just got it back July 4th. Excuse the clumsy pronunciation; I threw this together in two days and did my best with phonetic cue cards.

I enjoyed a lot of Japanese anime' back in the 80's and one of my all-time favorites is a series called "Bubblegum Crisis", AKA "Knight Sabers", about mercenary women wearing advanced power armor, who battle evil robots and corporate villains in the Big City of Neo Tokyo of the far future. The show was highly inspired by the original Blade Runner, ( they basically ripped it off directly) for this TV show. We could only see it thru bootlegged, pirated VHS tapes traded at Sci Fi Conventions, but it was nothing like anything else on American TV.

This song is from the first episode, where one of the lady mercenaries leads a rock band called Pris and the Replicants, when not battling evil or repairing motorbikes. Called "Konya Wa Hurricane" (There's a Hurricane tonight), it tells of ennui, despair, desire, fatalism, disaffection, and the struggle to make a human connection in a world of cold technology... but you can dance your ass off to it! It sets the mood for the whole series in a dynamic montage of hard rock and heavy combat. My cover is a poor imitation; you should check out the link I'll provide to the original, but here's a ukulele cover I made in Garage Band and Final Cut, with public domain cosplayer footage as my "actors". I set it up to sound best when heard on headphones. Or doing 80 with the windows down. I hope it amuses you and gets you to check out Bubblegum Crisis!

 

[Mark Suszko]

Here's the original I covered:



And the live artists that did it for real:

 

[UkeCan1]

YouTube just randomly showed me this video this week, about the history of this Disney character I'd never heard of, the Orange Bird, and how he's making a comeback. It included a cover of this sweet Orange Bird theme song, with chords and lyrics in the comments.

Orange Bird was a '60s creation of Disney and the Florida orange juice industry. Along with his costar, then hit singer Anita Bryant, he made TV ads for Florida orange juice, had rides and merch and all kinds of stuff at Disney World in Orlando, and had both a Little Golden Book and a complete record album sharing his story. He was quite the big star.

Then one day Anita Bryant decided to become a vocal public crusader against homosexuality - she was famously hit in the face with a cream pie for it in the '70s - tanking her career, and Orange Bird's along with her.

In recent years, five decades later, Orange Bird has been making a comeback ... as a queer icon! And the LGBT+ community has been reclaiming this sweet song, and the cheerful quirky little silent citrus spokesbird it extols.


I'd intended to make this video from my verandah when I got home, but found myself at my friend Carina's birthday party, on her extensive lemon orchard property, with two gorgeous orange trees full of fruit behind me. So of course I had to do it there!

I had a drop-in visitor midway through, my impromptu backup singer Victoria.

 

[UkeCan1]

Victoria backed me up on a second video shortly after the first, my 595 entry - Chuck Berry's only #1 hit, carefully selected to qualify for both themes.

But the real star is the peacock behind me!

 

[kolibri]

Hello all!
Sunday just started in Hawaii and that means the last day of Season 594 begins. The playlist is up to date: 83 songs from 36 Seasonistas so far. I have really enjoyed listening to your entries. I appreciate your fine song choices and musicality, and also the little extras like playing a special ukulele, playing among the fruit trees or wearing Japanese clothing items.

Thank you for the wonderful videos and comments! We've still got time to play more songs about berries, fruits and/or Japan. And if you find a song that suits both Season 594 and the next, Graham's Billboard Hot 100 Season 595, please bring them, too!

 

[Mark Suszko]

Flatbaroque, very nice job!

 

[Mark Suszko]

Great sound!

 

[Mark Suszko]

I wrote an original today, fairly quickly. This is about an annual event held in my hometown. The watermelon is technically a berry, not a melon. But I guess either way it's a fruit. Watermelon farming is a really big thing around Stockdale, mostly the type called the Jubilee Stripe. A couple of other types that are also grown are Charleston Gray, which is a smaller, pale green watermelon with darker green "veins," not really "stripes," and the Black Diamond, which is very dark solid green in color and much more spherical and less oval than most watermelons. They're all good to eat!




Every year in the middle of June
When the heat is enough to make you swoon
People come from miles around
And line the main street through the middle of town
Some of them get the storefronts' awning
If they get there early when the day is dawning
That's the only way to get some shade
If you want to see the big parade

It's the Stockdale Watermelon Jubilee
There's people coming as far as you can see
There's the Watermelon Queen on a big float
And the 4H Club with a prize-winning goat
At the Stockdale Watermelon Jubilee

The parade starts away uptown
Where old folks can watch them moving down
Sittin' in their front yards sippin' iced tea
That's how they celebrate the Jubilee
Some congressman is waving his hand
But everybody's list'ning to the marching band
They ain't even down to Main Street yet
But this is as good as it's gonna get

At the Stockdale Watermelon Jubilee
There's people coming as far as you can see
Yeah, the marching band is giving their all
And there's Farmer Bird on his old Farmall
At the Stockdale Watermelon Jubilee

Later on, at the rodeo grounds
Everybody's gonna gather 'round
Just to see who's gonna be the best
At the watermelon seed spittin' contest!

It's the Stockdale Watermelon Jubilee
There's people coming as far as you can see
Eatin' barbecue, sittin' in the shade
Drinkin' watermelonade
At the Stockdale Watermelon Jubilee

This was really pleasant and entertaining. Good work.

 

[Ms Bean]

Ylle asked for mangoes, but I haven't seen them on the playlist yet.
Mango Walk is a traditional Jamaican folksong, and I am glad that Wilfried Welti has included an arrangement in his free e-book, Erste Übungsstücke für Solo Ukulele.
Check out his ebooks:http://www.ukulele-arts.com/?lang=en

 

[TheOnlyUkeThatMatters]

One great berry song came to mind for me, and it's not the only version here this week...



And there are links to three Japanese songs I recorded for previous Seasons at the end of that video - and thank you to my community college Japanese language instructor for teaching me two of them over twenty years ago!

owarimashita

 

[uke4ia]

I nearly let the Season pass without doing an anime song, but managed to get one done at the last minute. This song translates to "Please, God". It played over the closing credits of the anime "Kamisama Hajimemashita", which translates to something like "My Debut as a God". The show is also known in the U.S. as "Kamisama Kiss". Most anime songs fall into the same few styles -- I like this one because it doesn't sound like any other I've heard, though that's hard to capture on uke. The singer on the original was Hanae (there's a link below).





Hanae - Kamisama Onegai

 

[UkeCan1]

I managed to squeeze this into the waning minutes of daylight and hours of the Season. I thought I was done, until Sabine's mango song put a bug in my brain that took hold of me and needed to be done.

Mango made me think of "Mambo No. 5", in which the male singer lists all his girlfriends ... and I thought it would be fun to do with fruit. So here's "Mango No. 5".

Of course I made it work for 595 also, by finding a natural spot for the words "single" and "hundred", and attempting to keep it to 100 seconds (well, close).

Verandah Jam day 39 part 2.

 

[Ms Bean]

Glad I could inspire you to do one more, Wendy!

Here's more cherry blossom, in an arrangement from Roger Ruthen.

https://pdfminstrel.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/sakura1.pdf

I thought I could do an sung version based on the sheet music here, but I think the piano shore is not in the public domain.

Sakura Sakura - Japan

Mama Lisa's World presents thousands of traditional kids songs from over a hundred countries and cultures! We also feature a major collection of Mother Goose Rhymes, global recipes, holiday traditions and lively conversations about childhood around the world.

www.mamalisa.com

 

[Ms Bean]

An original with strawberries, peaches, dates (although it's not really the fruity kind), pomegranate, watermelon and apple pie. I'm wearing another Studio Ghibli movie top, Chihiro or Spirited Away.

Spirited Away - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org