Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Stephin Merritt "This Little Ukulele"



Stephin Merritt has been eschewing the ukulele a bit of late (he's been playing the bouzouki in recent performances). Maybe he feels he's becoming overly associated with the uke. He strikes me as being deliberately resistant to categorization, so perhaps he felt he was becoming overly associated with the uke. Frankly, I don't believe he cares what anyone thinks. The recent cries that he's "sold out" by lending his talents to one or two recent TV commercials don't seem to affect him in the least.

Merritt has a new CD out (Distortion). Here is an interview with Faith Salle on Fair Game.

And here he is performing "This Little Ukulele". If you want to skip the interview (don't), the performance begins about 6 minutes in. Merritt plays an 8-string (thanks, HH) Mele Concert. (Aha! this explains the unique timbre.) "This little ukulele tells the truth." Indeed. Link

(h/t: Uke Hunt)

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

6-string? I count 8 tuning heads.

Anonymous said...

Crappy interview, but he's a difficult interview in any case.

Gary said...

My bad, HH. I'll correct. Gp

Gary said...

I should make dumb mistakes more often. At least it generates comments!

Gp

Anonymous said...

Gary sez: "I should make dumb mistakes more often. At least it generates comments!"

Aha! Is that the secret?

I'll head back to my blog right now and edit in some booboos.

BTW... I thought it was a pretty good interview. If you're going to be an interviewer and insist on interviewing the "tough" ones, p'raps being prepared and adjusting your rap to the interviewee's rap might be the plan.

Gary said...

HH are you referring to the video interview or the Fair Game interview?

Which did you think was more interesting?

Anonymous said...

If Stephin REALLY doesn't want to be interviewed...and that's what he always projects...perhaps he should stop doing interviews. But, of course, he DOES and this is a silly game he plays that I, for one, find irritating. Like his car commercials.

Gary said...

Suppose he doesn't mind being interviewed: he just isn't interested in what he's being interviewed about. What would that interview be about?

 
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