Seasons of the Ukulele

A weekly song challenge for ukulele players - all welcome. Find out more here

Season 705 - High Fidelity… a novel theme

DelGriff

Hello everybody- and welcome to Season 705 - High Fidelity… a novel theme.

First off, I’m not a prolific reader - in the main I’d rather make music. But (a long time) before I picked up a uke and joined the Seasons, I read a good bit more than I do now. And probably my favourite book from those times is High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. It’s a story about a record shop owner in his thirties going through a bit of a crisis after his girlfriend leaves him. It’s a great read, and because of the setting and the situation, it contains lots and lots of song references.

So the main challenge this week is for you to play and sing songs that are mentioned in the book (NOT in the film that followed it, which disappointed me greatly!). Don’t worry - there are apparently 92 of them, so the choice is generous. And to save you the time and trouble of buying a copy of the book and skimming through it to find them all, here is a link to a list prepared by some guy on the internet: click here for High Fidelity song list.

There is also a secondary challenge this week: quite simply, songs that share a title with a book. Some song titles are inspired by book titles, some book titles are inspired by song titles, and sometimes a shared title is sheer coincidence. But as long as there is a song with exactly the same title as a book, it’s fair game for the week - click here for another helpful list! (Edit: As @johnpoole has pointed out below, this list runs to several pages and hundreds of songs, so again there’s plenty of choice! Thanks for that, John! 👍🏼)

There is no song limit this week.

One, and only one, of your entries can be a re-post of an entry from a past Season that fits the theme.

All the usual rules apply - see Edwin’s marvellous FAQ here if you’re unaware of the details.
Originals are particularly welcome - your song’s title must be the same as a published book title, preferably one of your favourites.
Multitracking and collaborations are also very welcome.

Don’t post until it’s Sunday 17th August in Hawaii, and don’t post after it‘s Sunday 24th August in Hawaii.
Most of all: HAVE FUN!

I will listen to every second of every entry and post a comment for every entry on YouTube. If I accidentally miss one, please let me know.

There will be a prize - to be announced later in the week.

PLAYLIST

johnpoole

Good theme mate. Just a heads up Del’s second list is several pages with hundreds of songs. I just thought it was one page at first. So others might make the same mistake. Heaps of good songs.

YorkSteve

Good theme Del! Thanks for hosting.

I will get in early with this one from the High Fidelity song list, by Richard Thompson.

UkeCan1

johnpoole Good theme mate. Just a heads up Del’s second list is several pages with hundreds of songs. I just thought it was one page at first. So others might make the same mistake. Heaps of good songs.

I also found that just about every song I looked up on Amazon has at least one book that shares its name, though they are often not well known ones.

UkeCan1

Well, this would qualify, by virtue of the above observation - yes, both of these songs have multiple books by the same name - were it not for the distinct lack of a qualifying instrument.

We were going to do a third song on ukulele that would have fully qualified, but it was "cut for time" by the host.

I wanted to share this with you anyway, because I'm quite proud of it - the Not Quite 4's barbershop "quartet" debut!

Fellow Brisbane City Sounds chorus members Daisy (bass) and Trish (tenor) gamely joined me (baritone) on one day's notice to sing two songs from our chorus repertoire at the Chapters open mic. We are all relatively new chorus members, and none of us has publicly sung in a quartet before!

We even found a lead, Rosie, but she was unavailable today, and will hopefully join us next time. My iPhone subbed in on lead today, and sings perfectly (though a bit different than we're used to), but not loud enough! I tried holding it closer to the mic but was getting feedback. So if you can't hear the melody among our three harmony parts on the first song, well ... it'll sound more complete when we can do it with a real human!

I think we did pretty great under the circumstances ... it's all up from here!

"I Can't Help Falling in Love"

"Weather With You" - Crowded House

(My friend Nina took these videos, vertically, and because this one is just under 3 minutes, YouTube insisted on uploading it as a short. 🙄)

Today we called ourselves the Not Quite 4, but when Rosie joins us, we'll be a proper quartet, with two members with flower names. So we thought we might choose a suitable floralescent quartet name for the full group. We welcome fun suggestions.

LimousinLil

Bonjour, Cher Monsieur Del … and thanks for hosting! This is an intriguing theme and I have to admit that I have never read even one of Mr. Hornby's books, although I HAVE seen "About A Boy", with Hugh Grant. This is from the first list - the song references from "High Fidelity". The second list is even more comprehensive than the first, but I find it very difficult to believe that there is a song entitled, "When A Man Loves A Walnut"! Anyway ….

UkeFoote

I'm working on a new one but it's a pretty big production and probably won't be done til tomorrow, but in the meantime here's a reprint from Season 598-599: Black Sabbath's The Wizard. RIP Ozzy Osbourne.

Thanks for hosting, Del… super theme!

Bystander

Thanks for hosting Del, super theme with tons of great songs to choose from. Unfortunately I still don't have any time to record anything new or participate in a season as I'd like to. Anyway, here's an old one from Sotu 620, the George Harrison composed ' Something '

Nearsighted-Lemon-McKay

When I saw this song on the list, it brought me back to my doo-wop days of the rock and roll revival of the late 60's-early 70's when it was the signature song of my group.

Tell Laura I Love Her

Photo of Buck Shot and the Moving Targets performing the song in 1973

AlanDP

This one is on the second list. I suspected this would be a song that no one has ever heard the intro from, and youtube found copyright-protected material in it, but only the chorus, not the intro, LOL. Most people probably know this best from being used in the movie Casablanca, but it actually first appeared 11 years earlier in the musical Everybody's Welcome. I know it best from being the theme song from the British television series of the same title.

DelGriff

DelGriff One, and only one, of your entries can be a re-post of an entry from a past Season that fits the theme.

Here’s my blast from the past - I did this for Season 545 just over 3 years ago. One of my fave songs of all time, and imho one of my best ever covers - sounds best through headphones.

When Love Breaks Down (SOTU 545 & 705) - Prefab Sprout cover

TCK

I got you- a blast from the past.

From the Goodreads list, Page one. Waterloo Sunset, The Kinks

johnpoole

One from Goodreads. One of my favourite Billy Joel's. A bit jazzy. "New York State of Mind". A few books with this title. I noticed many duplicate book titles. I think I'd want my novel to have a unique title but a lot of people seem to want a particular title no matter how many have gone before with the same.

My favourite on the Goodreads list is 'Norwegian Wood' by Japanese author Murakami. Very good novel and the song and Beatles love are integral to his story.

dr_mitch

Thanks Del - I love the theme. And High Fidelity is the ultimate book about music geekdom.

Though for my first song I went for the secondary option - Bright Eyes. Of course, from the animated adaptation of Watership Down, which traumatised me and many others as a child. That alone, of course, wouldn't make it eligible, but a quick search found several books with the title Bright Eyes.

Enough waffle - here it is.

(Edit: I've just spotted it on the High Fidelity list. Doh!)

dr_mitch

And another one from me, this time mentioned in High Fidelity (though probably disliked by the narrator) - Hi Ho Silver Lining from Jeff Beck. And so far both videos I've done this season have received copyright notifications. Maybe I can make that a personal challenge - all copyright notifications on my videos this week.

DelGriff

And here’s one from the Goodreads list. Did I ever mention that the first proper gig I went to was a Tears For Fears one in Margate, in 1983? They didn’t play this song as it was written and released two years after that. And did I ever mention that I loved the 80s? ;-))

Baritone uke here with synth bass and organ, homemade drum track, digital wind instrument, and some vocal harmonies in the choruses.

Shout - Tears For Fears cover (SOTU 705)

AlanDP

Here's one from a previous season. Seven years ago when we were doing songs from "The Simpsons."

johnpoole

Galveston is a crime thriller novel I found on Amazon. I like this one I did in a previous season. It has good film footage of Galveston post the cyclone of 1900.

LimousinLil

Hello again, Del! From the Good Reads list, this book, written by Jonathan Gould, was - strangely enough - about the Beatles! (And I've just found out that it was also the title of a book by Molly O'Keefe.)

CanadaJim

SPOON RIVER - Michael Smith
The late Michael Smith was inspired to write this song by the SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY. Michael played at our local folk club in the eighties and I asked him about his inspiration for several of his songs (not SPOON RIVER)
and he had some interesting, but very tenuous inspirations. I have read Masters' book, but was not reminded of Michael's song. I have done this song a few times before, but not for a couple of years.
Thanks for doing this Del.

Spoon River Anthology, by Edgar Lee Masters, is a collection of short free verse poems, originally published in April, 1915, that collectively narrates the epitaphs of the residents of Spoon River, a fictional small town named after the Spoon River, which ran near Masters' home town of Lewistown, Illinois.