Chap Hop! Ukuleles! WAR!

This is kind of weird.... so, I've meaning to write a post for a while about ukuleles. No, really. I find it is impossible to feel sad when someone is playing a ukulele, particularly if it is 20s-ish music. For example, this is a delightful song I stumbled across on youtube.

Then I was reading The Chap, one of my favorite magazines of all time (on their website), and they mentioned Mr B the Gentleman Rhymer, who is performing at this year's ball. I remembered him because of the Chap Manifesto, which he set to rap in honor of the publication's tenth birthday. Anyway, here is one of his videos:

I think his banjolele is quite catchy, but apparently there is already a king of chap hop, and he is Professor Elemental. Here is what he has to say:

And the response? I think it's a response....?

Apparently some of the fans are pretty die-hard, but I like them both. Although, Prof. E. does have an album called Indifference Engine, so that gets him brownie points. Anyway, there is one thing we can all agree on:

Nashville flood!

This is a story that has gotten almost no coverage, even though it looks like it will be more economically devastating than hurricane Katrina. The Cumberland river has overflowed its banks, and reached the thousand year flood level! People were rowing canoes across the stage at the Grand Ol Opry. The people there have been amazing, pulling together, helping each other, getting things done. There hasn't been any looting or things of that nature.

However, the devastation is real, and a lot of bands are trying to raise money. But some bands are out of luck. The Outlanders had their bus flooded, and most of their gear was destroyed. Abney Park's Captain Robert has this link on his livejournal, about where people can send donations, mostly of supplies, leather, brass, machine bits, etc. You can send donations of money to help out the whole city and surrounding areas at the links on this site.

Mysteriously Steampunk Old Cartoons!

So I was looking up "Come Take a Trip in My Airship" on youtube, because it's an awesome song, and a picture on deviantArt reminded me of it. It was a popular song in 1904, and it's a very cute love song. I found a few videos of a singer named Billy Murray singing it on old phonographs (odd, because the song is from a girl's point of view), and I also stumbled upon this cartoon.

There's this one too, which has the whole song with the lyrics, and is on acid. At 2:48, the adorableness begins, but the whole cartoon is pretty awesome. I like that the second cartoon has it as a duet. Johnny Cash sang it too, but not all the verses. Who would have been a good singer to sing the woman's part with Johnny Cash?

Here's another video using the song, with some really great old airship clips!

New Abney Park Album!

After long weeks of waiting, I finally received "Aether Shanties" the new Anbey Park CD in the mail (It's the first album of theirs that I actually got the physical CD for). It's quite good. Not as industrial or tribal sounding as some of their other stuff, but all the tracks definitely sound like them.

There is a steampunky version of the traditional pirate song "The Derelict", with all the verses in their gruesome glory, and they wrote their own pirate song too, "Aether Shanties". It's definitely my favorite song on the album. They have another pirate song, "Ballad of Captain Robert", that is on Youtube from an acoustic set at a convention, and I think they should put it on a CD in the near future.

There is even a Steampunk anthem! That's right! It's called "Throw Them Overboard", and it pretty much sums it up. Any anthem that say "newfangled" is all right in my book, dang-nabbit!

One thing that came as a nice surprise were a couple of 1920's sort of jazzy numbers. When I heard them, the first thing I thought of was a sort of Bertie Woosterish character in a garish club full of aeronauts, but that is probably because I have just begun reading all the P.G. Wodehouse I can get my hands on. It makes me want to write a story I have had in my head for a while...