Bruner Blog

Sean Harvey is a genius. Good buddy, colleague, buddy uke master, he performs a bluesy original here, “Crime Pays,” recorded in my apartment with my Flip camera earlier this evening. It’s hysterical. Please click through to its YouTube page and give it 5 stars, favorite, leave comments and tell all your friends!

OMG, this is so fantastic. I do a version of Lullaby on Birdland on uke, but I’m nowhere near as good as Mina. Her garbled English makes the performance that much more adorable.

How could I not have posted this earlier? A UkeTube classic.

Normally, I don’t post UkeTube videos of instrumentalists, as I’m a singer/strummer myself. (Which reminds me, Joe Strummer of Clash fame got his start in music during his hippie youth busking on the streets of London with a ukulele, a factoid I picked up in the documentary Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten.)

But, I do keep track of hot ladies of ukulele, and Brittni Paiva qualifies. She’s cute and she’s a shreader on the uke, as this terrific rendition of Over the Rainbow attests.

SweetAfton23 is back with an original!

It frightens me more than slightly that I feel a special bond with people such as this gentleman.

Rock legend George Harrison was a great proponent of the uke. Here he is with some small orchestra in a charming rendition of “Between The Devil and The Deep Blue Sea.”

Lil Doctor Sparkles sing “There’s A Special Place” in Golden Gate Park, SF. Amazing to think this guy only recently got around to moving to San Francisco.

Surfing around looking for another good UkeTube vid, I came across a uker new to me who goes by the UkeTube handle of f3rt. He’s quite the talent, as he boldly demonstrates in my favorite uke performance of the day, a rendition of John Cage’s classic composition 4′33″. It perfectly suits my mood tonight. Some might argue it is the composition best suited for the ukulele, though not me.

If I were a teenage girl, I’d throw my underwear at this guy in concert. Mark Occhionero is my uke hero. This song in particular was a kind of inspiration for me. I can play it, and it’s probably my best song, but mine’s a far cry from his version.

Bosko & Honey are too cute for words. Add to that uke virtuosity, and they may well be the reigning strummers of the Southern Hemisphere (based in Australia, such that they are). Unfortunately, they don’t include the name of this song in the clip.

Curiously, it appears they borrowed their name from some 1930s cartoon characters I’ve never heard of.

The problem with any blog stunt like my recent pledge to post a UkeTube video a day (for an undetermined period of time) is that now I’m tied to the computer to actually post every day a ukulele video from YouTube. It’s not that there aren’t enough — that was my original point, that there are limitless numbers — but I have other things going on in my life and finding the time to post daily is a drag.

Tonight I’m going to see Ween, who I suspect will not be playing ukulele (though you never know with those guys) and my work calendar is packed today, so I begin the day with this ditty from actor William H. Macy, doing a send-up on his co-stars in last summer’s comedy Wild Hogs. I didn’t have any desire to see the film (despite my other big hobby lately being motorcycling, but that’s a story for later blog posts), so this isn’t a plug for the film. The chords he’s playing are nothing special, but his strumming technique is slick enough that I suspect he’s actually not a bad uker. Anyway, seemed like a good idea to pepper this thing with some celebrity strummers to inspire the tots. Enjoy.

A uke classic, among the many I’ve been tasked to learn by friends, performed by Kermit and friends.

Last night I was looking for a uke performance of Crazy, and instead I found this wonderful performance of a song I’d never heard of called “Tom Cruise Crazy.” Everything about this clip is fabulous: the performer’s ineffable adorableness; her seemingly effortless uke chops; her star-in-waiting voice, and the song’s hilarious lyrics. The song is not hers but that of another talent I’d never heard of before, Jonathan Coulton. I haven’t explored the rest of the guy’s catalog yet, but I look forward to doing so.

The performer, Sweetafton23, tells us relatively little about herself on her UkeTube profile, aside from that she lives in the LA area. In response to my gushing comment on another of her song posts, she replied with a few details: she is indeed a bewitching temptress; no, she’s not a professional performer; no, she’s not planning any NYC gigs in the near future, and, worst of all, no, I can’t bear her children anytime soon (she did leave the window for hope, though!). (That last line I think I’m over-playing lately. But, you see it’s funny because I’m a man, so I can’t actually bear children. Right?)

UPDATE: Yikes! I’m old and creepy! I am suddenly and completely cured of my crush on Sweetafton23 when I came to the conclusion last night, after Googling up on her a bit, that this delightful little talent is something like 17 years old! I found posts where she was talking about looking forward to getting her driver’s license! Aaaaaaaa! Now I have to focus my obsession on my jealous awe at her ukey genius.

A friend crashing at my place for a few days suggests I start a site HotLadiesofUkulele.com. My ticket to fortune, perhaps? There are actually quite a number of them, but not to take anything away from Sweetafton23, I’ll save other links for later posts. Meanwhile, I’ll make that a new tag.