January 2009, Roger Greenawalt and David Barratt declared that by 2012 they would re-record each and every one of Beatles’ 185 recorded songs – on ukulele. Being a ukulele lover in general and specifically a great fan of Brook Adams’ highly memorable covers of, to name a couple, Django Reinhardt, Metallica and Jimi Hendrix, I immediately took a fancy to the idea.
Now the project has been under way for 6 months and I have to say that the results are impressive. Generally speaking the covers are great and some even surpass the originals. Excellent job!
“But 185 songs?”, you may say – “…on ukulele?”. Luckily they didn’t mimic aforementioned Brook Adams. He gave us a variation of songs and put them in an unfamiliar setting. The range of styles and the limited number, made it work and very well so, indeed. It wouldn’t work with 185 songs. Instead Greenawalt and Barratt teams up with a multitude of musicians and it is they who are doing the actual cover – featuring Greenawalt on uke on all songs. That works. That works big time. Greenawalt, by the way, did something similar before, playing all 185 songs at a concert in benefit of fellow ukulele player, billionaire Warren Buffet.
The new project is based around a weekly recording accompanied by a causerie on said song and its history. These writings are hilarious! They alone could justify the project.
I urge you; go have a listen and a read. It is absolutely brilliant.
I may be transgressing the boundaries of this blog, writing about something so definitely not digital, but it is after all my own set of rules I am breaking.
CD drive
Wifi
Flac audio
Digital IO
Ogg-Vorbis
uPnP support
Video