For the past 37 years, George Hinchliffe and six fellow musicians have been producing independent music played on the happiest instrument on the planet the ukulele. It's not just the audacity of turning this into a sea shanty, it's the way they do it and make it seem like the most obvious thing in the world. George Hinchliffes Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. They really should leave the comedy alone and have the confidence to let the music speak for itself. One decidedly naff interjection aside, this is just a fantastic performance. The harmonies are just brilliant, and those rolled Rs and Ls come across as the authentic sound of the North Sea. For Pinball Wizard, the UOGB put down their instruments and sang the whole thing a capella. What you get instead is the piece that followed it. Because of that, the riffs aren’t always arranged in the original key but the key that suits the ukulele best. Whatever the experience may have been like in person, it didn't translate well to radio. It’s to throw them in to your playing for a bit of light relief and audience recognition (like the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain on Orange Blossom), to provoke the ‘I didn’t think you could play that on the ukulele’ or just for shits and gigs. Reports said that there were 1,000 uke players there, all joining in. They were trying to assemble the largest ever massed ukulele ensemble to play Ode to Joy. Heaven knows into what genre their music fits, but anarchic, intensely musical, and completely original – the orchestra appears to be a cult.Last night at the BBC Proms, the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain had planned something special. His trademark song rocked yer socks off, made you laugh, made you cry all in an exotic eight minute romp. But George would have rolled, if not rocked in his grave. There must have been three or four hundred people in the hall last night, of all ages, from five to over 70.Īnd just as I thought we’d escaped George Formby, the final encore was I’m Leaning on a Lamppost. Pinball Wizard contrastingly triggers fits of laughter across the hall.
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Sumptuously rendered, for each player has as good a voice as his or her instrument, Life on Mars emerges pure from two verses and then takes on layers of other songs that run concurrently – My Way, For Once in My Life, Some Day I’ll Fly Away that harmonise perfectly with Bowie’s theme. The result is genuinely orchestral, and you can’t quite divine how on earth they do it.ĭavid Bowie is so taken with their rendition of Life on Mars that he’s put a link on his website. Listen to The Dambusters March by The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain with YouTube, Spotify, Deezer, Vimeo & SoundCloud. The texture is as round as a 12 string guitar and the contrasts one instrument makes with another amaze. From Rock Around the Clock to the Dambusters the music was as eclectic as the sounds that the Ukulele can muster singly or collectively. On Tuesday 18th August 2009, at the BBC Proms, the Ukes attracted a sold-out audience more than six thousand people, of which over a thousand brought their ukuleles. It proved to be wall-to-wall, total entertainment.įrom rich humour, to slow nostalgia. Prom Night : Live at the Royal Albert Hall (DVD) In 1985, the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain dreamed of filling the Royal Albert Hall in London with the sound of ukuleles. Sure enough there were six of them – large men and a woman, armed with tiny ukuleles, a guy with an electric base and another with a guitar.Īnd that was the line up at the Cecil Sharpe House in north London last night for the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. Say ukulele to me before and I’d have said George Formby and smoky old pubs browned with nicotine.
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“Try it,” my friend said, “you won’t be disappointed.”
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“Six ukuleles?” I asked, “one’s bad enough.”