Seasons of the Ukulele

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

SOTU 732 – Old Man Take a Look at My Life

Xamar25

OnlyUkeThatMatters

A demo recording of John Lennon's "Grow Old With Me" was released on his and Yoko Ono's album Milk and Honey. Such a sweet meditation on love and aging - got to share a ukulele version with y'all…

CanadaJim

HELLO IN THERE - John Prine

uke4ia

Although I turned 65 a month ago, it hasn't traumatized me enough yet to make me write a song about it. I jotted down some lyrics this weekend that will have to wait for another season before I come up with music for it.

Instead, I realized that "Veronica" by Elvis Costello and Paul McCartney is definitely a song about aging, though it doesn't contain the word "old". It's a song about an elderly woman who's lived a rich, full life that she may or may not remember.

CanadaJim

WHEN YOU AND I WERE YOUNG MAGGIE - George Johnson & James Butterfield

This is the first song that Maggie and I ever did together at an folk club open mic in the early eighties. I played clawhammer banjo and she played guitar. I hadn't started singing in public yet.

potmo

LimousinLil LimousinLil Better late than never, Val and I am glad you got a submission in. Glad your cold is better anyway and you seem to be taking things in stride.

Joko

The Back Page of my Back Pages…
The highly poetic vocabulary Dylan uses inspired me take the extra steps of getting the captions on it.

Our host mentioned ways to improve videos through the algorithm - that's all well and good, and in that spirit, I'll repeat some tips I've mentioned before.
-videos that fall into the "shorts" category will get about 10x as many views as one of your 'regular' videos.

to be a "short", it needs to be <3 min
- it need NOT be a vertical, i.e. portrait aspect ratio video. It can be like the one you see here, a Square video (1080 x 1080). I recognize the uke is a horizontal instrument. If we were the Seasons of the Cello community, we all would have switched to vertical videos years ago. Try square.

CanadaJim

WAVES - Sam Baker

Sorry for crammin' them all in at the end, but I had so many that I didn't want to miss.

UkeCan1

Here's another really cool twofer song by another young man singing about being old and the futility of life.

I tried to do this one yesterday - it's deceptively repetitive and simple-sounding - but it was new to me and it wasn't coming together.

Today I spent way too long working it out, ultimately deciding that chords weren't going to cut it, and it really needed at least the basic riff from each of its three distinct sections. Which, as you know, is a bit above my pay grade. Not to mention it's very wordy!

So of course by the time I recorded, the sunset cockatoos were in full squawk, so you get some Queensland bird noise along with your Cali noise pop.

"Never Ending Math Equation" by Modest Mouse

potmo

Joko I wasn't talking about what a person can do to get their own videos more visibility so much as pointing out that if you are taking the trouble to comment on someone's website to help them be visible that you might as well take the extra half second to also click the thumbs up button. Personally I will wait to go hustling views until I feel like I have something that is worthy of strangers viewing. Of course needing more like five minutes to finish my songs is the real reason if I am being honest. That is good to know. I am assuming that you want me to remove the previous version from the playlist. Nice job! I liked the video/ sides and it was cool that you took the time to do the video and lyrics too.

potmo

UkeCan1 Nice job. The cockatoos were a bit annoying this time. A lot of times it almost seems like they are throwing down a track for you. Bit of a stretch on the aging thing although I guess he is freaking out about mortality and turns to his wise old dad for advice and does not get what he wanted. At any rate, my rule is if you think it should be in the season then I shall make it so. I have yet to see a song rejected by anyone in any season. I am not going to be the one to buck this tradition.

UkeCan1

potmo UkeCan1 Bit of a stretch on the aging thing

The lyrics say (twice) "I feel so damn old". Surely that's a direct hit thematically? It uses the word "old" and an expression of aging. 🤷‍♀️

Unless you meant the DCFC song, which is less direct. There I was going on the idea that the song is in some ways about the prospect of growing old together. That one's less clear for sure.

Apologies for the cockatoos. There's a time of day that they're at their worst, which I try to avoid, but it's the time of day between the workday and dark, so also kind of the best time for me schedule-wise. It's a constant challenge. 🕊

potmo

Thank you all so much for your awesome contributions. I'm sorry to be so late with the wrap up including prizes. I will have it here tomorrow.

potmo

UkeCan1 Yes I meant the Death Cab for Cutie(gotta spell that one out each time; to good a name) song. I wasn't complaining about the cockatoos I was just conceding the fact that they don't always show up to lay down tracks in perfect harmony and sometimes they are just straight up obnoxious. And of course my rule is and shall always be unless instructed otherwise that if the poster feels it belongs then it belongs, provided they give some explanation (which can be totally lame all explanations are accepted). From what I can tell, that seems to be the general rule – I have been here for about 25 seasons now and I havent seen anyone rejected yet. Sometimes I am a trail blazer but not for this.

potmo

Final Wrap up

The Prizes
- Sponsor: Sabine
  - The only reason I offered prizes was to pass along Sabine's (@msbean ) generous prize to me. I probably shouldn't have split up the prizes because maybe they are too chincy now. But I announced it and I am poor so there you have it.
- MVP Canada Jim
  - This was no contest as canadaJim ran away with it! 9 songs! Needless to say, there was no loss of quality.
  - alandp gets an honorable mention here. He gave us five tunes. He uncovered an interesting piece of US history and shared his findings. And he stepped out of his comfort zone with an alan parsons project number but it didnt seem like he had stepped out.
- Favorite Performance: Jim "Veronica"
  - Very close runner ups
    - "Ironic" Alanis Morissette
    - "Martha" Tom Waits
    - "When you and I were young Maggie" Maggie and Jim
    - "When I'm Sixty-four" Brian
    - Old and Wise alan parsons project
    - Little Old Lady from Pasadena Val
- Favorite Song: "I wanna be sedated" by the Ramones performed by Ralph. Everyone will probably hate me for this, but this award is based on the song not the performance and I happen to love that song even more than the beatles and elvis costellos songs.
  - Runners up
    - "Blue Eyes Crying in The Rain"
    - "Old Man"
    - "Veronica"
  I want to give a shout out to three seasonistas who, from my perspective, are "Hall of Famers" or deserve a lifetime achievement award. Those would be Jim, Alan and Wendy. These folks are so consistent in both quality and quantity. It is easy to take them for granted. I was worrying about Wendy because she "only" posted 3 times. Of course 2 of those 3 were twofers. I also love that she will do any song from any time period and every genre.
  
  Another shoutout for the following vocals
- Ralf on the Lennon tune hitting it,
- My very own sister Tamar in Blue Eyes Crying in The Rain,
- @uke4ia Jim for Veronica and
- last but certainly not least Canada Jim's better half, Maggie. What a sweet collaboration! And what a sweet couple!
What I learned
- House of David
  - Alan's find about the bizarre Michigan cult. I hope nobody minds that I added that to the playlist.
- Berni turned me on to FAWM. What an interesting event!
- New songs to me from
  - John Lennon
  - Merle Haggard
  - Townes Van Zandt
  - Tom Waits
Highlights
- My sister Tamar returning with 3 songs including a birthday tribute stanza
- The House of David story
- This visual gem from Joko's My back
- And of course it goes without saying that all the great songs and performances were a highlight as well
Stats
- 37 songs
- 20 contributors
- 4 Beatle's performances (3 songs)
- 2 E Costello submissions in the same season!
- 2 originals
- 1 collaboration
- several multitracks
- We had 2 songs repeated (When I'm 64 and My Back Pages one Bob version and one Byrds version) but both were radically different and all of them were good.
- I think we covered every decade between 1920 and 2005. There was also some old folk songs from way back when
- We covered a lot of genres. A musical, old and new folk, pop rock prog rock ,punk rock , classic rock, "new wave", country.
- Maybe I am just noticing it since I am paying extra attention this week, but I cannot believe the list of Male songwriters.
  - Bob Dylan (x2)
  - Cat Stevens
  - Elvis Costello (x2)
  - Merle Haggard *
  - Jerry Jeff Walker
  - John Lennon *
  - John Prine
  - Neil Young
  - Tom Petty
  - Townes Van Zandt *
  - Willie Nelson
- On the other hand we only had one song from a female and it was ironically sung by a male. Ironically the song was called "Ironic", which ironically is not about things that are ironic.

Lowlights
- I missed Joo and Sabine. I love Joo's creative energy and am always happy to see Sabine sneak in at the last moment
Wendy only 3 songs. SMH
Tamar copyright issues. As was discussed my sister kept getting dinged for Blue eyes crying in the rain. She sent me the song and I tried it too and it wouldnt let me publish it either. Later, she discovered that there was only part of the song that was being contested. I wonder if shorts are monitored more closely or if it is just Tamar's clear distinct voice that makes it easier to catch.

I am so sorry that this took so long and is so long. But there you have it. It was a great week. Thank you all.

DelGriff

Hard to remember a more comprehensive, thoughtful and detailed wrap in the whole history of my time on the Seasons - well done and thank you, David @potmo !

CanadaJim

What a great wrap David. You've really set the bar high for the rest of us. . . and apologising for taking 3 days to do the wrap.
Thanks for being a great host and for the lovely remarks to me and my darlin' lovely wife. Hope to see you Saturday.

potmo

CanadaJim Ha ha. It's only fair since you all set the bar so high for me with the actual point of the thing which is the songs.

LimousinLil

That was an amazingly comprehensive wrap, David … thanks for the week!

UkeCan1

David @potmo , sorry I'm just catching up now on your amazing wrap.

I did four songs for you (not three) … and all of them were twofers - two for 731 and two for 733.

I worked on some others for the days in between, but some weeks I just don't get them all done.

Great hosting, and thanks for the kind shout-out.

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