Via Language Log, another example of the excellence of the Internets: The Beatles Complete on Ukulele. This is a project by the artist and music producer/writer David Barratt to create cover versions of the entire works of the Beatles to a punishing schedule of one a week, and the project title underplays the variety and quality of the covers, done sympathetically and creatively (and not just on ukulele) in association with largely little-known musicians. They're all freely available online - so far 82 of the canon of 185 songs completed - posted in blog format with a slightly off-the-wall essay accompanying each piece. I highly recommend thm.
Particular picks: the current post, a very bright and upbeat cover of I Should Have Known Better featuring Samantha Fox; Papa Dee's reggae version of Blackbird; a charmingly simple acoustic version of All You Need is Love with Nikki Gregoreff; Bruisercharles's downbeat minor-key version ("The atmosphere is one of Tim Burtonish dread") of Maxwell's Silver Hammer; a vintage-bluesy Lady Madonna with Amanda Homi; Yesterday given a radical spin by Colton Ford; Deni Bonnet's plaintive violin-accompanied gender-reversed Please Please Me; We Are Soldiers We Have Guns's adaptation of Fool on the Hill as it might have been sung by ABBA; and a remarkable adaptation of Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da as an anguished monologue - Samuel Beckett meets Under Milk Wood - by Victor Spinetti.
You can listen via the Flash player embedded below; or go to thebeatlescompleteonukulele.blogspot.com for the full annotated versions.
- Ray (sorry about the formatting, but Blogger insists on stuffing the extra spacing above the embedding code).
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Hey - thanks for the piece.
ReplyDeleteThanks for dropping by. I'm blown away by the sheer ingenuity and excellence of the collection. Great work from all involved.
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