The Floating Cabaret

Pia Tedesco in Madrid Spain just put on a CABARET FLOTANTE. Cool idea on a hot day.

more pics

Uncle Bill in the Big Apple

Nice bit in the Star Bulletin yesterday about Bill Tapia's appearance at the recent New York Uke Fest. His next goal? To play for the President. Maybe some should start a Facebook page for that... Link

Missed Opportunity

Imagine, if this guy had decided upon a ukulele rather than a mandolin, he might actually have been employable. Link

Jake's Just a Poor Boy, Nobody Loves Him

Jake's been working on Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody for some time. Here 'tis!

cover it

So, I’m sittin’ at Louie’s Bar and Grill. Friday afternoon. Not much happenin’ in Ukuleletown on a Friday afternoon.

Lotta talk about doin’ covers of songs and getting’ hassled or booted off YouTube. Of course, last time I looked, YouTube wasn’t chargin’ people to look at the videos. Learning and playing other people’s songs is the lifeblood of musical knowledge.

The problem seems to be putting them on YouTube in a (semi) permanent format for all the record company business lawyers to see.

Let ‘em sort it out. Big record companies are dyin’ and frantically trying to keep control of something they never really had any control over in the first place. Music is air to musicians. Just lean back and breathe deep.

This is Miss Zooey from Australia doing a brilliant cover of Ke$ha’s Tik Tok:

Where the Uke Have We Been?

Welcome back! If you're a regular reader of Ukulelia, you no doubt noticed that we haven't posted anything new for some time, and that the blog was entirely down for a couple weeks.

What happened? Well, suffice it to say that Ukulelia (which we're proud to say was established long before most folks knew what a blog was) had been published by an ancient method (by internet standards) and we had to forklift the whole shebang over to a new protocol in order for us to keep publishing it.

Alas, what had been promised to be an easy and smooth transition was not, and it took some time for us to work out the deets. We have much more work to do to repaint and rewire the hale, but at least we're back!

I would like to thank the following Friends of Ukulelia who helped us navigate the arcane windings of the changeover:

• Jim Bradbury, who keeps the web flame over at The Sierra Club, and knows more about the Beatles than a uke player should
• Adrian Cotter, the genius behind Dopey Dopey Dodos, the swell new game for your iPad.

Ultimately, the credit goes to Ukulelia Founder, Mark Frauenfelder. Mark started Ukulelia as an outlet for his personal ukulele fanaticism, and has generously allowed Craig and me to edit the blog while he was busy with things like building Boing Boing, editing MAKE Magazine, and writing more neato books than you can shake a stick at.

We're thrilled to be back. Thank you for your patience, and please tell everyone you know that Ukulelia's back!