January 1, 2009

Let's hope there are lots of good things for the new year.   First, let's hope the Ottawa bus strike is over soon!   Secondly, I've got to get practicing for my French ukulele CD!

My favourite things:

• Fav. Song: Bach's Prelude and Fugue in C# minor
• Fav. Chips: Cape Cod
• Fav. Christmas Movie: Mixed Nuts
• Fav. Stringed Instrument: Ukulele (and piano!)
• Fav. Country:  France
• Fav. City: Montreal
• Fav. Beer: Boréale cuivrée
• Fav. Bar (Pub): Pit and Pendulum (Nottingham, England)

- petey

December 13, 2008

The snow has hit Ottawa as well as a bus strike! Lately, I've been staying in Aylmer (on the Quebec side) so I can get to work. 

Let's hope this doesn't go on for a month!  I have a Christmas party tonight and I will bring my uke! 

- petey

November 30, 2008

I finally converted my favourite Christmas record The New Christy Minstrels (1963) from an old battered cassette (taken from the original scratchy record sent to me by my brother) to an audio CD.  I cleaned up each song and tried to get rid of the crackling with Roxio software.  As a kid, I always loved listening to this album.  Many of the songs are fast and upbeat and really well done. 

My brother and I always found the album cover funny, because there is a Bob Crane (from Hogan's Heroes) lookalike who is holding a guitar in the front row in the sleigh.

I also found out that the CD has finally been remastered and available on amazon.com but not in Canada yet.  Too bad.

- petey

November 29, 2008

Well, I had an attack of the gout last week that wasn't very funny!  It had been lurking for the past three weeks and the knee and toe pain became unbearable this week.  Luckily, I'm on the mend now after medication from my doctor!   Welcome to mid-life pain!  hehe

On the music front, I've been practicing somewhat for my ukulele CD that I will record in mid January 2009 in the studio.  I just ordered online a new uke for my recording sessions.  It is a Ohana SK-35G ukulele.

The site ukuleleworld.com from Texas is VERY reliable.  I ordered another rock an roll uke from them last summer and have had nothing but the best service. 

- petey

November 19, 2008

It's getting chilly in Ottawa, below zero temperatures.  After all, this is Canada! 

I found this great ukulele site Uke Got Mail where a guy from Hawaii called Aldrine gives video lessons.  OK, so who cares you might ask?  Well, he has this great video lesson with his puppet "Manny the Rooster" sidekick!  I found it hillarious!

Great site and educational too for uke players!

- petey

November 17, 2008

Good news.  I've been working away at scoring my ukulele CD and I'm ready to start practicing.  By scoring, I mean creating lead sheets to the songs with all the complex ukulele chord changes so I can remember what I'm doing for practicing. The CD, inspired by my summer trip to Northern France will be recorded at Liverpool Court Studios in mid January 2009.

Here's the giant L building in Lille, France where I stayed nearby!

- petey

November 12, 2008

Here's a great Russian folk song called All About the Great Wide World I Wandered on YouTube!!!   ВСЮ-ТО Я ВСЕЛЕННУЮ ПРОЕХАЛ

This singer is great!  I'm going to do a version of this song on my French ukulele CD coming in 2009!

I love it!!!

- petey

September 3, 2008

Don't worry!  I'm still around!  I will be writing about my trip very soon!

I'm even working on a CD of 10 songs about my trip to France.

- petey

August 6, 2008

John Cash and myself on a ferry from Dunkirk to Dover!

- petey

Lately, my Canon digital camera hasn't been functioning anymore for some bizarre reason.  Kind of bad timing since I was planning on going to Europe,  but it started to work again just yesterday by magic!  So, I took this shot in Hull, Québec on my lunch hour at work (near le théâtre de l'ìle).  I've realized recently that I like taking pictures of bridges and water.  See my other shots.

Voyeur of Bridges (shot June 27, 2008)

- petey

It's summer!  Solstice has passed, so I'm ready for France!  hehe

- petey

It's the St-Jean Baptiste long weekend in Québec so I will be heading to Aylmer, Québec.  I might catch a show at le parc des cèdres with Oscar B.   Indeed, psychobilly!

Also, I will be attending this Friday's Friends of Finland party at the Billings Estate on Friday night.

- petey

Friends, Romans, Countrywomen! Call me mad, but here is the la crème de la crème of rocker ukuleles that I ordered online from ukuleleworld.com from Texas from cooleroo Ray T. Cone!  It's a Les Paul style rock and roll concert ukulele.  I just received it and it is fantastic! 

On the ukulele front, here's a great CBC RealAudio report on the ukulele for Ottawa locals called Taking musicals instrument seriously. Please scroll down on the page and avoid the dead wild turkeys! Good grief! hehe

- petey

Hi gang!

I've just received this great ukulele book for the classical music lover or musician!   John King really did the uke justice with his arrangements. This is in my top 5 of best ukulele arrangements of all time!  I never joke about quality material like this. It even includes an audio CD.   Here's the amazon.ca link.

cheerio,

- petey

MP3 sound sample

I've just bought a new Washburn soprano ukulele to add to my uke arsenal!  hehe  Its sound is much better than the Mahalo ukes and I will use it for recording a CD.   

Here's an MP3 sound sample from a ukulele site of the Washburn.   Nice sound!   It's very funny that I have also a Washburn electric guitar that I used in my band the Vee Gates 20 years ago!!!   So, my musical efforts are now doomed to failure!  ;-)  hehe

I also received some Swiss German ukulele books with songs in German, Italian, and French.  That's very Swiss of them!  hehe  I like to collect certain types of beginner books for the ukulele.

***

Hopefully,  the weather will finally warm up in Ottawa.  I've been watching lately the DVDs of that old 1970s show of KUNG FU.  Interesting stuff.  I saw them originally when I was a kid so I'm seeing them now as an adult.

cheerio,

- petey

I've made more hotel bookings in Northern France.   Things are really shaping up. I hope this trip will inspire me to write some songs on the ukulele.

I watched two highly enjoyable old French films last weekend:  La Dilettante and Merci pour le chocolat.

Catherine Frot is my favourite actress!

- petey

I've been sick recently but now I'm back on the mend.  My European trip for July is really shaping up and I've bought my ticket.  I'm looking forward to seeing old and new friends, and being in France and Germany for the first time.

I will be attending some music shows in France as part of le festival de la côte d'opale.  Here's the site with the schedule of artists. I'll be seeing a show in Calais (Benjamin Biolay), and Dunkerque (Camille).  Others to be seen ad hoc.

I'm really looking forward to browsing this sheet music store in Lille and buying a few gems!

cheerio,

- petey

I'm a big ukulele fan and player as you might NOT already know!!!  Well, now you do!  No more excuses!  It's a great little instrument and I've collected a few colorful ukuleles myself in my closet arsenal!  I've bought tons of books and love seeing the instrument being played in old movies.  I've also found a few great ukulele teaching links below.

Here's Marilyn Munroe - Ukulele Clip (from the film Some Like it Hot) - though I don't hear the uke in this clip at all!!!

Here's some great UKULELE LINKS!!!

• Curt Sheller's ukulele articles, lessons, and publications (he's very theoretical and good once you master the ukulele basics and want more depth)

• Jumping Jim's Beloff's Flea Market Music site (Jim's a ukulele guru and I own most of his books)

• Michelle Kiba’s Ukulele Chord Chart (all the basic chords you should know - in PDF)

• Pineapple Pete's Uke School (includes free lessons, finger-picking lessons, and good comparisons of the guitar versus the cheap ukulele, and the better quality ukulele)

• Tying / Changing Ukulele Strings (how to tie those pesky strings that rarely break)

• Ukulele Boogaloo Songbook (lots of free songs with lyrics and chords)

• Ukulele Cheater Theory (in PDF)

- petey

I have a 4-CD collection called "La bonne chanson" that I bought a few years back that I've only lately listened to!   It's a great collection of French Canadian / Québécois songs!  It was based on a song project by the late Père Charles-Émile Gadbois.  In 1937, he founded what he called "LA BONNE CHANSON" of "wholesome songs" for the general Quebec populous.  He produced a songbook that contained the melody and lyrics to  "Les 100 plus belles chansons" in French.  Remember, this was meant to be the 1930s morality.

Louise Courteau is the official successor and promoter of Abbé Charles-Émile Gadbois' great oeuvre of its time!

This is a great work of its time not to be forgotten!

-pierrot

Winter is slowly fading away.  The streets are now empty of snow, but certain parts of the city near the river are experiencing flooding.  I live on the 19th floor nearby so I never have such ennuis!  hehe 

I've been ordering quite a bit of discounted French pop sheet music from Quebec's PartitionExpress the last few days!  Why so cheap? Are they going out of business?  Not sure.

Well, it's been a weekend of cloudy skies and rain.  I just watched my DVD of Twice Tales Told with Vinnie Price today.  Basically, they are Poe-like stories written by Nathaniel Hawthorne.  I found that they were superb!!!  As good as Poe!!!

-petey

I finished the book The World Without Us by reading it at lunch over many weeks while listening to some Bach (Well-Tempered Klavier) on my Zen V mp3 player.  The book was about, if all humans disappeared, and how nature would take over all the infrastructure that humanity had built up.  E.g. how long would it take our bridges to fall down, etc...   interesting concept but it got somewhat boring in parts.   So, I picked up the new mini Edgar Allan Poe light biography Poe – A Life Cut Short.   Not bad.   I need to finish it first to comment on it some more.   After all, I have to buy books like that since I have the oldest Poe fan site on the internet!  I love reading about Poe!!!

On that very same Poe front,  I have been befriended by a Swedish artist based in Poland called Per O G Dahlberg. He does great Poe illustrations and has just released a Poe-inspired book!

***

Here' s an insane twist on my musical plans -- I plan on going to England, France, and Germany this summer and I want to bring along my purple ukulele.  Well, I can't find a hard shell case anywhere in this city of Ottawa for the plane trip or in CANADA for that matter, so I've just ordered one online from England!  hehe  It even comes with a uke!   Indeed, it's the same cheesy Mahalo brand!  hehe   So, that means I will be bringing the case back to England!!!  How ironic!   Maybe I should have just had it delivered to my friend John in Nottingham and get it there?  Nah!!  I'd rather play it on the train from Heathrow to Nottingham and disturb the general British public!  hehe

-petey

Sorry for the prolonged absence, it's just this LONG WINTER will never end and it's sickening!  My friend John (in Nottingham) even suggested I come to England for a jaunt down to France,  but I'm not in the travelling mood during cold weather.  We will put off the trip until late June or July.  I just got my passport so I can now officially travel en outre mer.

Speaking of travelling, I'm no fan of gallivanting around the world and causing all that pollution on a regular basis.  I'm not an eco wimp since I don't mind wasting things in my own way, but air travel is bad, bad, bad when consumed on a regular basis.  I think we should limit our trips somewhat.  I haven't taken a plane since 1989 and that was to England to visit my friend John in Nottingham.  No, I'm not talking about that type of international travel abstinence of years gone by, but just have a little more care.  Just don't go somewhere because you can suddenly get a cheap plane ticket and take a quick week off.

Enough rant for tonight!  hehe  Despite all, this summer, I will be hitting Nottingham (England) to visit my friend John Cash, then we'll go to Lille (France) in a car, concluding with a jaunt to Cologne (Germany) on the train to visit my German comedian friend Sascha Sass!  Sascha hopes to take me on a tour down the Rhein!  Wunderbar!

Other News: I  recently saw a film called The Darjeeling Limited with my friend Hélène (from Aylmer, Québec).  They featured the French singer, Joe Dassin's song Les Champs Élysées in the movie.  I had never actually heard it before and as we waited for the credits, we found out it was a French version of an another song Waterloo Road.  So, I did a bit of Sherlock Holmes and found some versions of it on the web.

• Jason Crest (myspace audio version of the English song)
• Joe Dassin - YouTube song in good quality with custom video
• Joe Dassin - YouTube live on stage version

I prefer the French version!!!!!!!!

Also, I just bought this sheet music collection that includes that great song that I will learn to sing and play on the ukulele for my summer trip to France!   hehe  Even though I will only make to Lille!  hehe

-petey

Here is another shot of winter in Aylmer, Québec !  Almost a record snowfall this year!  These snow banks are almost 2 metres high!

-petey

Here is another film called Gorilla at Large that I just received.  I'm a B-film nut.  I love that title line:  Get out of his way - before it's too late!

Here's a crazy clip from the flic...  is that the same film????
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35zuaikJvCM

- petey