Rock That Uke
Wednesday I went to the Alamo to see Rock That Uke, a documentary about devotees of the ukulele. I picked up a uke as a souvenir of a trip to Hawaii a couple of years back and nowadays find myself playing it more than the guitar (I think it fits my cramped bachelor-pad lifestyle better) so naturally I had to go see the show.
The movie is a romp through the minds of a dozen or so "alternative" ukulele players, in the sense that they aren't playing traditional Hawaiian music. There are several punks, some composers of serious music for toy instruments, a guy who plays his uke through fifty effects pedals and six amps (meaning its character as a sound source is pretty well lost -- it could as easily be a kazoo, a tin can or a rock), a retro queen of the double entendre, a singer-songwriter who feels the uke represents his personality better than, say, a guitar would (no bottom, perhaps?) and one fellow who coyly refuses to say whether he believes the ukulele was invented by space aliens. Very inspirational -- it made me want to rush out and order a Konablaster.
To add to the fun, Rock That Uke is touring together with some ukulele music videos. If you only watch one online video this year it should be the Ukes of Hazzard's masterful "Gay Boyfriend". Also worth a look is Sonic Uke's manifesto, "Tiny Bubbles".
Austin, of course, has plenty of bands featuring the uke, notably the Asylum Street Spankers, White Ghost Shivers and Shorty Long. That raises the same question I've asked about tango and the commissioning of new scores, performed live, for old silent movies: are these things happening in every hipster town or do they earn Austin points for its self-conferred title of Live Music Capital of the World?