It was a serious instrument in the earlier part of the 20th c., but then people started bringing crappy souvenir-models back from their Pacific vacations. Apparently some of those earlier crappy ones are quite valuable in collector circles these days. Who'da thunk? Now there’s that amazing Jake Shimabukuro, stunning people with what can be done with solo uke. I figure a couple of weeks of practice I should be able to do something like his version of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” : )
There are also some great guys I found on youTube a while back doing a freaky-good ukulele+synthesizer version of Tubeway Army’s “Are Friends Electric?”—a song I only knew because Robyn Hitchcock did a cover version of it a few years back. Gary Numan meets the ukulele!? Marriage, or train wreck? I personally love it.
My buddy Ted Nunes and his lovely bride Carrie met me over at the Guitar Center at 100 Oaks, to help look over and play some ukes, perchance to purchase. Ted’s in a group called the Ukedelics. I was thinking about spending maybe $100 bucks or so. Got Ted to play several, check out the sound, because he can actually play the thing...I just want to learn. So natch, I fall in love with the most expensive, loveliest one they have. Budget, schmudget. And Carrie was sympathetic to my penchant for the aesthetic over the practical, being a talented jewelry designer and aesthete herself. Pix of the baby below!
She’s spalted koa wood. Has beautiful purfling (wink, wink, knowwhatimean?), actually it’s the binding around the edge of the body, which is abalone, as is the name on the head. OK, maybe it’s fake abalone, I wouldn’t know the diff, but it looks lovely. They didn’t have cases OR gig bags that worked, so I’m carrying her around in the original cardboard shipping box, like a guy off the Greyhound in Nashville. Hell, she don’t mind...the girl knows I love her. She’ll have a case as lovely as she is, one day.
