The Ukeulele Orchestra of Great Britain
It’s 1985 – Wham are topping charts and everyone has enormous hair. The first ever mobile phone (the size of a brick) is on sale and scientists locate the site of the sunken Titanic. Microsoft Windows is launched, and Bob Geldof persuades just about everyone to appear in the biggest line up we’ve ever seen to raise millions for Live Aid. Back to the Future is on our screens, the first episode of Eastenders is beamed into British homes, and what’s THAT coming over the hill? Why, it’s the sixteen-handed, all-singing, all-plucking Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, and they’re coming this way…
Four decades (and 400,000,000 plucks) later they’re still thrilling audiences with their off-beat humour and four-stringed virtuosity from Tasmania to the Arctic Circle, Windsor Castle to Carnegie Hall.
Formed as the antidote to mindless pop, egocentric rock, and the indulgent, bluster of the music business, what is the secret of their longevity? Perhaps it’s the menagerie of voices in a collision of post-punk performance and toe-tapping classics? Or the fact that there are no drums, pianos, backing tracks, guitars, or banjos, no pitch shifters or electronic trickery – just an astonishing revelation of the rich palette of orchestration afforded by ukuleles plus fulsome vocals.
Related
