Blue Christmas - Elvis Presley

My version is pretty different. But his is interesting.  More like a jam in this video.

Crybaby - Utopia

Great rock song (from 1984).  Never really understood the tight, almost overwrought production, especially apparent in the vocal and drums tracks.

The 12 Days of Christmas - Allan Sherman

I've always loved this.  A funny slice of the 60s.  And I would love to find a statue of a woman with a clock where her stomach ought to be (the one in the video is kind of lame, although the video itself is pretty fun).

Outside - The Fixx

[link] A couple of my high school friends got me into the Fixx and it stuck with me.  This song is one of their more obscure earlier songs.  Long and atmospheric.  (the only thing sort of strange about this live video is how the drummer is sort of over the top getting into this rather slow and cerebral song)
I used to take naps listening to tapes in those days and the Fixx were very frequent in my playlist.  There is a point where one starts to wake up from a nap and has sort of an altered consciousness.  This is one of the songs that would typically be playing during those moments.  Another Fixx song that tended to occur then was the song Camphor.

Stardom in Acton - Pete Townshend

From 1983.  This song was played a lot on rock radio.  Warmed up to it pretty quickly and I've always enjoyed it since then.  Complex dynamics, behind a pretty simple chord structure.

Yule Log

I remember this on WPIX from my youth.  We never watched it because we always had other sources of music.  I guess people did and now it's a kitchy nostalgic thing.  And of course it's on Youtube like everything else.  It's also a really safe outlet for viewers who are pyros.

Just Another Night - Mick Jagger

[link]  I've always liked this song, and actually most of Jagger's first solo album in 1985.  Great hooky chord progression.  Really that's all there is to it. Probably also hit me at a really formative time.

Christmas songs groupings

I've always mentally formed the following groups of songs:

Up On the Rooftop, Jolly Old Saint Nicholas

Jingle Bells, Sleigh Ride

Winter Wonderland, Let it Snow

I Saw Three Ships, I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day

There are more.  And higher level nesting.  I'll continuing putting this together...

Another Christmas music thing I have

The Nutcracker. Especially Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies. Completely atmospheric. This music is winter for me. Probably just early conditioning, but still...

Snow, Snow! Beautiful Snow!

A lot could be written on this topic. This song is a pretty obscure song sung by school choruses in the early 80s (and I don't know how much longer before that).  I wasn't in the chorus in high school but my older brother Tom was and I remember seeing this song sung by them at least a couple of times.  It made a huge impression.  It became part of that feeling that I described in the last post.  So I have a lot of nostaligia for this piece.
The lyrics can be found here.  I can't find a date or author on this song.

As you can tell

I have a thing for Christmas songs.  I grew up with Christmas music.  When I was a kid there was a real "Christmas Feeling" I used to feel when hearing a lot of these songs (certain versions, certain records my parents had, e.g. Fred Waring holiday records).  It was mixed in with the excitement of getting gifts, but I like to think it was a distinct, special kind of feeling.  I don't feel it so much any more when the holidays come around, but I still really really enjoy playing the music of the holiday season.

New Christmas Learns

Feliz Navidad
Ding Dong Merrily on High
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
Do You Year What I Hear?
Here We Come A-Wassailing
I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas
Here Comes Santa Claus
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
Let it Snow

I Still Do - The Cranberries

One of the only bands of the 90s era that I got into.  This is one of my favorites of theirs.  A sublime song.  They have a lot of really good ones.  Breathy high female vocals will get me every time.

Warp Drive

I love stuff like this:

How NASA might build its very first warp drive

The comments are even wilder than the article.

2 possible Christmas sing-a-long gigs coming up

The departmental Christmas party and Ru-Jun's day care room (which I did last year).  For this I don't memorize lyrics.  I have them printed in a binder (and I want to make a few extra copies of the binder for the participants to use).
Here is my song list so far:
Santa Claus is Coming to Town
Frosty the Snowman
I Saw Three Ships
Holly Jolly Christmas
Blue Christmas
We Wish You a Merry Christmas
Jingle Bells
The 12 Days of Christmas
Silent Night
Deck the Halls
Rudolph, the Red Nose Reindeer
Silver and Gold
Silver Bells
Good King Wenceslas
Up on the Rooftop
Jolly Old Saint Nicholas

Save it For Later - The Beat (The English Beat)

From 1983. One of my first introductions to British alt pop.  I always loved this song.  It actually got some play on pop radio in the US (or else I would have missed it until college).  These guys were one of the rulers of college radio in the 80s.  And a great example (although not so much in this song) of ska merging with rock.
The jangling guitar riff and the raspy vocal.  Perfect.

Behind the Wheel - Depeche Mode

Another one of my favorites of theirs.  The video really got my attention.  The atmospherics and aesthetics.  Minimal.  Retro. Timeless in a lot of ways.

Stripped - Depeche Mode

[link] Listened to the 1986 album Black Celebration a lot during my early grad school years.  A great soundtrack to the isolation I was experiencing at the time.  This song is definitely the highlight.  It does a great job of building intensity and then sort of disassembles nicely at the end as well. Totally abstract. Total atmosphere.  Two keys to my personal aesthetics.

Girl Can't Help It - Journey

The musunderstanding and underappreciation of Journey, mostly by non-musicians, has led to them being widely considered merely an historical cliche. This song, from 1986, is one of the many examples of why they are great. Every part of the song is a hook, and the end part introduces yet another hook on top of it all. Steve Perry's towering vocals are masterful throughout, and perfectly complemented by the harmonies. These guys can play their instruments with the best in the business and the production, which takes hard rock and transforms it into accessible pop, is unparalleled.

We Ride Tonight - The Sherbs

[link] Rock radio in the late 70s and early 80s was really diverse.  A lot of really small-following bands had hits and got played.  A lot of these bands were great.  The Sherbs were one of these.

Talking in Your Sleep - The Romantics

From 1983. My first concert was these guys with Red Rider in 1984. I really like their tight, rhythm section driven pop/rock formula. This song has aged well.

Two current things

A. Dust Bowl - I like it a lot.  (I like most of the Ken Burns stuff, even though there are lots of cliches about his style by now).  I learned So Long It's Been Good to Know Yuh, last night.  Woody Guthrie was a really interesting guy.

B. PSY - Gangnam Style; like it, especially the original video.  Good beat; musically it's OK.  It seems fresh.  And it's about a very specific part of Seoul, which is interesting.  There are places in Taipei that something like this could happen with.  Extreme local culture, especially from East Asia, fascinates me...

Ana Ng - They Might Be Giants

From 1988.  I haven't fully embraced TMBG.  Their raw brilliance and genius, in all its prolific display, is undeniable.  Their music is sort of a world unto itself.  A world their devotees would seem to be able to lose themselves in.  One of the former members of Megachild knew all their music and gave me mp3s of most of it.  I've been sort of afraid to go through all of it, actually.  Kind of like how I fear getting into chess.  In order to truly get into it, one must really study it.  Or else it's not doing it right.  Or really unsatisfactory.  Or both.  Or something.

There's Only One Way to Rock - Sammy Hagar

[link] Sammy Hagar had some decent, if mindless (like the genre), in his solo career.  Don't hear much revisitation of this era of rock too much these days.  But it had lots of good moments.  Some of it ages pretty good.

ZZ Top - My Head's In Mississippi

It's hard not to like Zztop.  They're originals, have been doing it for a long time, and represent a direct line to a blues sound that gave birth to and has always underlain rock.  All of this ameliorates the Southern, back country patriarchal, misogynistic urges that their raw sound is also steeped in.
This song is one of their later hits and one of my favorites, although they do tend to repeat themselves in songwriting, playing, production, soloing, etc.

Alsatian Cousin - Morrissey

One of my favorites.  Very simple construction.  Really like what they did with it live.  This song cuts and drives.  Acid in a love=hate wound.

This Charming Man - The Smiths

Really one of the best pop songs of the 80s.  I could listen to Marr's guitar all day.  And for some reason, Morrissey's lilt never wears out on me either.

Red River Valley

My cover of the classic cowboy and folk song.  You can also see here why I'm not able to make a lot of recordings these days.

Getting Jiggy With It - Will Smith

[link] These were probably more or less throw away songs for Smith, but I like this one, Miami as well. I like him on screen as well. Smart, funny, just kind of the whole package.

I Can't Find My Baby - Lisa Stansfield

From 1989.  Another one of those pop songs that I have a thing for. 

Evolution in Pokemon

is actually metamphosis.  Ru-Jun is really really really into Pokemon for a while.  Which is cool; Shian-Ren and I liked to watch the early episodes when we were in grad school.  I'm not worried about the show's use of the term evolution right now.  Ru-Jun will learn the real meaning of evolution soon enough.  Right now we're having a lot of fun with Pokemon.

I'll Drink To You - Duke Jupiter

[link] Were big locally in Rochester in the 80s.  Fun song.  Chorus is a great hook. Co-genric with Huey Lewis, I would say.

King For A Day - Planet P Project

From 1983.  I really liked this song, which briefly got airplay on album rock stations.  It's all about the chord progression (gets quite repetitive though).

Don't Pay the Ferryman - Chris De Burgh

From 1983. This was played incessantly on rock (and maybe pop) radio. My friend Scott was obsessed with the song. Seems to have aged OK, not great.

Her Head's Revolving - The Three O'Clock

[link] One of my all time favorite bands.  No one sounded quite like them.  The high male vocal, the instrumentation, the songwriting.  Hooky and bright.  Takes me away to around 1990.  Another one of the bands my friend Dave K in Durham (and later in Madison) introduced me to.
This song has power.  Hard guitar work.  Interlaced keyboards.  Nice breaks.

Neal and Jack and Me - King Crimson

[link] In the late 80s, early 90s I was somewhat into the album Beat by King Crimson. Late stuff from them. I never really got around to investigating their earlier, apparently more influential material.

New established songs

Please Come To Boston
A Girl Like Jesus
Stickleback
Blue-footed Booby Blues

What to do with my music

If not for dad and husband responsibilities, I would have been out with my uke this past year singing folk songs with the OWS people.  In the future I'll have some more time.  I think I'm going to have to get out and start singing for the Earth.  Might be just me in a lawn chair along the state highway somewhere with a sign and my banjo.  But it's gotta be done.

Banjo set so far

Camptown Races
Country Roads
Walking the Floor Over You
On the Road Again
Frankie and Johnnie

Jolson

Weirdly fascinating. And the blackface thing. Apalling but has a huge long history of nuance, appropriation and counter-appopriation. Culture is complex.

Mandinka - Sinead O'Connor

[link] This whole album was a huge breath of fresh air in alternative rock when it came out in 1987-1988. Her voice, the rhythm tracks, the production on these songs were just amazing. Big influence on me in my college years, when I was starting to write songs.

Blue Kiss - Jane Wiedlin

Always my favorite Go Go.  Love the vulnerability in her voice.  It contrasts her strength and confidence as a writer and performer.

Sandy

Yesterday and today we've been dealing with Hurricane Sandy passing through these parts. Very scary wind gusts and we list power for about 5 hours yesterday evening. But we are OK. Today will be some cleaning up around the yard and hopefully back to a normal schedule tomorrow.

Galbi - Ofra Haza

[link] Israeli singer Ofra Haza, who died in 2000 of cimplications from AIDS, was huge on college radio in the 90's. She probably would have been even bigger today had she survived. Her stunning voice and exotic (to the western ear) genre stylings are perfectly suited to the way world pop has gone since then.

The Battle of New Orleans - Johnny Horton

A blast from my childhood.  One of my Dad's favorite songs.  Just learned it (pretty easy).  I'll have to play it for him sometime.

Don't Let Him Go - REO Speedwagon

A blast from my hard rock past.  I like the rhythm - very tight on the bottom between the rhythm guitar, bass, keyboards, and drums.  The little keyboard figures in the chorus have always been infectious for me. (Although you can have the solo.)

Camptown Races - Johnny Cash

One of Ru-Jun's and my old favorites.  I like the lyrics of this version and Cash's facial expressions are great here.  The people in the background are funny.

Lady - Little River Band

From 1978. A blast from my youth.  Deep pop atmospherics here.  High narrative content in the chord progression and instrumentation/production.  Particularly in the verse.  In the chorus, the vocal harmonies take over the song (in a good way but the atmosphere isn't there like in the verse). The jazzy verse-break about 2/3 of the way through sort of reduces the impact for me.  But it was an arrangement of its time, so that kind of thing probably couldn't be avoided...

North, South, East, West - the Church

One from the times of Saturday nights alone with a 6 of Rolling Rock, writing and sitting on the back steps of the apartment in Durham.  Kind of which I knew how to play uke back then.

Considering a banjo set

Songs like When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again and Frankie and Johnnie.

Soma Holiday - G.O.L.

One of the find from my since-2007 or so exploration of ambient (thanks to Groove Salad).  There is so much good stuff meshing in this song: low-mid tempo, juicy synth bass line, reggae-ish keyboard beat, beautiful synth washes.  Lush yet despondent vocal.  It doesn't get much better than this.

Steel Town - Big Country

The cover track of their best album (IMHO).  Great great great work. Listened to it incessantly in 1984-1985. Huge influence of mine.

Hard to record

In the evenings these days. Too little time and Ru-Jun is too demanding of my time most nights.

Walking the Floor

Here's my cover of the Ernest Tubb classic.  I first saw this song in the movie Coal Miner's Daughter, performed at the Grand Ole Opry by Tubb himself IIRC.
The string situation is not good on the banjo uke.  I think it can sound a lot better than this.  The kazoo is a custom made one made for me by Doc Kazoo.

Banjo uke

With some help from the store I bought it from (Elderly Instruments), i was able to get a string set that sort of works. The high strings are too tight and the low strings are too loose such that things don't want to stay tuned at all, but I have to play around with it more. The few moments I had it in tune it sounded cool. I had no idea my tuning would be so problematic for this instrument.

Jackie Blue - Ozark Mountain Daredevils

From 1975. Another song that takes me back. Never saw this band on TV or anything before. Interesting that the drummer does the lead vocal. In tge video you can see how restrained the composition and playing are for rock. I really like the transition between the minor A part and the major resolution in the B part. Nice songwriting.

Blister

Played Stickleback and BFBB for my intro bio class today (about 330 students were present) and it went pretty well.  I'll try to get the Echo video clips and put them up on Youtube.  Only thing that went wrong, which I realized a bit later, was that I gave myself a blister.  I was using the acoustic electric, which I'm still not used to and my hand was sweaty.  I guess I should get used to this, from what I've heard from guitarists I know.

Theme 1

Something I've been jamming on recently.

I'm Not in Love - 10cc

This song (from 1975) always struck me as innovative for pop of the time.  The structure of the song is pretty conventional.  The production seemed pretty experimental for pop.  It hasn't aged badly, in my opinion.

Dave Loggins - Please Come to Boston

Always liked this song.  From 1974.  I spent a lot of 70s listening to top 40 on an AM transistor radio something like this one.

Picked up a Beatles song

Eight Days a Week.  Pretty easy learn.  Everybody knows it.  I've always liked their earler poppy stuff better than their later, darker, complex stuff.

BFBB video

[link] Finally got a chance to record it this evening.

BFBB full lyrics

When you're out there every day
Flying above the waves
With fish as your pay
And there's no other way
You've got the blue-footed booby blues

And then you go home
You feed the hatchlings some bones
Your mate's been with them alone
In the nest on the stone
You've got the blue-footed booby blues
Yeah you've got the blue-footed booby blues

[chorus]
So Blue, So Blue
Why is the world so blue?
The sea and the sky
My feet and my eyes
There sure is a whole lot of blue

The horizon doesn't move
Some days you win some days you lose
It's all you can do
You're just a spot against the gloom
You've got the blue-footed booby blues

The days just advance
And you finally get your chance
To do your little dance
But you've lost the romance
You've got the blue-footed booby blues

[chorus 2x]

The Model - Kraftwerk

[link] It's hard to do much else in a genre after its inventor pioneers it, defines it, and elaborates it close to its complete potential. 

My Little Stickleback

A song that goes back even before Megachild, when the basement band went through a bunch of names. Just picked it up on the uke.  Here are the full lyrics:

V1
Little fish about three inches long
That's the reason why I'm singing this song
Kinda ugly and it's got big eyes
And it's got - three little spines

V2
Alaska's got a lot of lakes
Thousands of years ago the glaciers made them
And from the ocean little fish came in
In each lake - It's happenin'

Chorus
Oh, my little stickleback
You truly amaze me
On, my little stickleback
How you evolve so rapidly
Oh, my little stickleback
Evolution is so cool

V3
Up in the water there are many dangers
That's why they've got these little pelvic spines
And they've got armor plates too
If you lived up there - so would you

V4
Down in the bottom you don't need armor
Not many predators can find you there
So all the plates of the ocean cousins
Disappeared from the benthic dwellers

Chorus

V5
Someday soon we'll understand
The genes and processes that made you so grand
All these adaptations gave you such fame
Gasterosteus aculeatus - remember that name

Chorus

BFBB

The Blue-Footed Booby Blues is a song I wrote for Megachild.  It was pretty easy to learn it on the Uke but it was a little short (the Megachild version has a guitar solo).  So I wrote another stanza:

The horizon never moves
Some days you win, some days you lose
And it's all you can do
You're just a speck in the gloom
You've got the blue-footed booby blues

Seattle - Public Image Limited

This song was a revelation when I discovered it.  Great hard rock high end, beautiful mid tempo dance groove. Lydon's voice is the complementary acid edge of the buttery rhythm track.

Imitation of Christ - Psychedelic Furs

Earlier and rawer Furs. The live version is very similar in sound to the studio version. All the shards of the raw production, especially the whirling guitar grind and the throbbing sax, create a live garden of murk for the song to slither through.

Love My Way - Psychedelic Furs

From 1982. Every once in a while the pop chart is absolutely right about a song. This song is unconventional enough in structure, lyrical phrasing, and instrumentation that its hook became an instant classic.

Another for the set list

Evangeline by Icicle Works. Learned and memorized. The vocal nuance is the key to that song.

99 - Toto

From 1979.  Another really nice rock/pop song from this era.  Toto went on to huge heights in the early 80s.  This song disappeared compared with Rosanna and Africa (the latter of which the instrumental part presages in a huge way).  But still highly listenable at this distance.
The D&D swords & rings imagery on Toto albums was always curious, since it didn't seem to have any referents in the songs (or at least the familiar ones).

Nostalgia

For some reason I was thinking of this today.  One time my Mom brought one of these Kingsway Florentine chess sets, not in great condition but still a good set, home from a rummage sale at our (then) church (she was working there and she picked it up before it went on sale).  It was very cool and my brothers and I played with it, although we may not have played any chess with it.  Feeling a lot of nostalgia about objects from my childhood these days.  ebay is a great place to see what this stuff actually was and look at it again.

Escape (The Pina Colada Song) - Rupert Holmes

And of course, this classic pop song of its time seemed to disappear for the 80s and 90s.  But it never gets old and stands up to the test of time.  Still sounds great...

Steal Away - Robbie Dupree

Here's a song I would put in the same genre as the previous song, and from the same era (1980).  Really nice pop/rock.

Sweetheart - Franke and the Knockouts

From 1981.  Bought the 45 rpm vinyl single.  Very typical pop/soft rock sound of the time.  This, and their look, has not aged very well.  Definitely a piece of the period.

Uke stuff

Is still happening. Just no time to make vids these days. Hopefully some new ones before too long...

Power - Cassandra Complex

From 1987.  The late 80s is rich territory for keyboard driven gothic pop.  It wasn't virgin territory by that time, but from this distance, even the later bands into the movement bring back the time well.

One Story Town - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

Great song from the Long After Dark album, my favorite of theirs.

Manna And Quail - Caterwaul

[link] One of the better goth-alt rock bands that came out of the late 80s.  Siouxsie influenced but tighter and more polished in production.  Need to listen to more of their stuff...

Who's Behind the Door? - Zebra

[link] New Orleans hard rock band that relocated to Long Island and may still be around.  I've seen their stickers on cars.  I really got into the first album (and one song on the 2nd album, "Bears") in the mid-late 80s.  It's got a lot more hooks than most hard rock/metal and the ballad parts are really nice, not cliched like the hair bands that were about to emerge a bit later.  Just enough of a prog component to be interesting.

Breakin the Law

Or the user agreement, at least.  I never give my birthdate to places like FaceBook.  And they of course want my real name and data. Now they are starting to ask people if they know whether friends of their are using their real names. They have a right to kick anyone off that they want to. They can claim me as a user, but they cannot claim my real name and data and keep me as a user.  That's the choice.

Beds are Burning - Midnight Oil

Speaking of driving songs, or at least driving videos.  Here's one.  Saw these guys live in the late 80s.  Excellent show.  The drummer had a section of culvert pipe behind him that had a mic in it.

Driver's Seat - Sniff 'N' The Tears

Great late 70s song.  The chord progression is a rel-minor, 5,4 (e.g. Cmin, Bb, Ab) which is a staple of mine.  It's the hookiest progression in pop/rock.  The use of keyboards/synthesizers and their fusion with the guitar track, so that both are vital but neither dominates, is adept.  The understated vocal and the effects on the vocal track combine with the rest to make for one very atmospheric rock song, as well as an excellent driving song, of course.

I Want Your Love - Chic

No one did disco better than Chic. The bass lines are the essense that disco pulled out of funk and the rhythm guitar, almost machine-like in its tightness, pulls everything together.  The brass part at the end also takes the best out of that element and smooths it right into the mix.  Nile Rodgers, the guitarist, still works and was one of the essential pop producers in the 80s.  Right up there with Prince and Michael Jackson in terms of prolific pop geniuses.

The pirate idiom

Pop culture is over pirate-ized right now for sure.  But One Piece and Pirates of the Caribbean are two examples of extreme creativity in the theme.

New Years Day - U2

Iconic song.  One of several from that time for U2.  In my opinion, their sound peaked with War, Boy, and October (i.e. all of the stuff that hit in the US during the first few years when they became known).  After The Unforgettable Fire (1984) their stuff became a lot less interesting.  But their popularity continued exponentially for a long time after that. Was a pretty easy learn and it gives me shivers to play it.

The three

Neil Diamond songs I mentioned earlier are in development (Cracklin' Rosie, September Morn, Forever in Blue Genes)_ They have pretty simple structures and limited number of chords for the most part.  Fun to play and people will like them. One problem is that the studio versions of these songs fade out.  Neil's TV appearances, which are the youtube videos I've been studying, also just fade to applause. So I have to figure out how to give them hard endings.  I'm still experimenting with all three of them...

an alternative dream job

One of my top dream jobs would be to be an independent paranormal investigator in a small town.  I don't believe in any of the phenomena but they are really cool as stories.  Especially UFO stuff.  Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster and stuff like that, also ghosts, are somewhat less interesting.  William Gibson's short story The Gernsback Continuum has an interesting treatment of paranormal sightings as pop-cultural semiotic ghosts.
I also am intrigued by political conspiracy theories.  These I find much more chilling because they are based on series of events and people that in many cases are real.  Many conspiracy theories, while not likely to be true or explanatory as wholes, have threads of true history running through them.  It's interesting to unravel these and think about why the theory developed.

The Flat Earth - Thomas Dolby

One of my favorite songs ever and one of his very best. Just realized watching The Two Towers tonight that the descending line of the orc/evil theme of the LOTR movies is very similar to the first phrase of the bass line of The Flat Earth.

Hyperactive! - Thomas Dolby

Dolby's version of funky dance pop. He brings his rich, bass-driven hooks and atmospherics to the song.  The transitions are really well done, even if the lyric quality kind of falls of toward the end (just before the flute solo).

No Rain - Blind Melon

Most of the instrumental jams of Megachild over the year ended up sounding something like this 1993 song.  Pretty simple song, with one of the most delightful videos ever.

Groovy Train - The Farm

A fun song from 1990.  Picked it up in iTunes some time ago.  Probably doesn't repay too many plays.  But sounds pretty good every once in a while.

Burning Down One Side - Robert Plant

The first song on his first solo album.  I really like his first four solo albums; kind of lost track after that.  It's a different sound than Led Zeppelin, but still very hard edged, both instrumentally and vocally.  This song got a lot of airplay on hard rock radio of the day.  The album (casette) was one of my first purchases after buying my first stereo.

E A D G

That's the tuning I settled down with the strings I have.  The high one is tight and goes flat quickly.  The others are loose, which means I need different strings for this tuning.  Sounds pretty sweet and is fun to play though.  Not as much sustain, but the percussive qualities are great of course.  Working on some known and new folk songs.  Such as Old Dan Tucker. Lew Dite's work has been an inspiration ever since Ru-Jun and I started watching him when she was less than 2.

woops

This arrived today.  Tried to use the strings it came with to do my B E A D tuning.  Broke the top string.  I have other strings in the office.  No big deal.  But I can't get it up to a B or even a C up top.  So for now I'll do a G C F Bb tuning and see how that goes (might be better for singing some songs; others will be worse).  I can probably work with the vendor I bought it from to get a set of strings for my unconventional tuning.  This is a beautiful instrument that is going to be very fun to play.

Hella Good - No Doubt

This song is indeed hella good.  Great mid tempo rock groove.  The empty space in the mix provides for great atmosphere.  Saw it first as a video, which strengthened the impression.

I Don't Remember - Peter Gabriel

From 1980. One of my favorites of his. Very driving, which overcomes the lack of contrast between chorus and verse. I had not heard this version before. Interesting but disturbing video.

key changes

Key changes in songs are interesting, but they're a bit of a pain when playing them on the uke (at least for me; they wouldn't be much of a problem for me on keyboards).
I was watching the video for Neil Diamond's Cracklin' Rosie (1971) and there was a lot of room noise so I couldn't really hear the key change.  So I googled "Does Cracklin' Rosie have a key change" and found several references confirming that it does.  One was an entire blog on songs with key changes.  Cool.

Forever in Blue Jeans - Neil Diamond

Another one I'm nostalgic about.  From 1979.

September Morn - Neil Diamond

From 1979.  I was 12 and still listening to a lot of top 40 on AM radio.  This song got played incessantly and it makes me pretty nostalgic hearing it now.  Top 40 was much different then.  Much more diverse.
Might take a stab at this song on the uke.  Could be a fun play...