Cover-a-Week #12: "I Will Follow You into the Dark" by Death Cab for Cutie

This one's an old favorite, and always makes me think of my loved ones:


http://youtu.be/mpUVpIJjJDg

The original is beautiful; Amanda Palmer also does a haunting rendition on the ukulele (it's a bit different from this one).

Cover-a-Week #1: "Dear Old House" by Amanda Palmer

Here's my first video:


http://youtu.be/R9EgejFjr50

I've said my bit about this piece in the video and in this post. It's one of my favorite ukulele songs, and also my first encounter with the instrument. (And Amanda Palmer is awesome.)

Now I'm trying to decide what I'll cover next week.

Look What I Got for Christmas!

A ukulele!

It's a concert-sized Lanikai (LU-21C). I did my research (looking at online reviews, mostly), and it seems like this is a solid choice for a beginner (good quality for the price, decent sound, etc.).

There's a story behind it. Remember this post (about the Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer show that I attended last month)? If you don't want to read the whole article (it's short, though), the relevant bits are: she performed her song "Dear Old House," which became one of my favorite pieces on the spot (give it a listen below), and then her "Ukulele Anthem," one of the most memorable lines of which explains that it only takes an hour to learn to play the ukulele, which is comparable to the time required "to teach someone to build a standard pipe bomb." I was intrigued. I wanted a ukulele.

Then, my sister asked me what I wanted for Christmas. It appeared that my parents were a bit stumped as to what to get me. Ergo, I asked for a ukulele. They were a little confused as to what the instrument actually is (I don't imagine that "ukulele" is a word one would encounter in the standard Chinese-English dictionary), but I explained that it was a bit like a guitar, only smaller and Hawaiian. They were afraid it would be made of pineapples or coconuts or something [edit: there apparently actually exists a type of ukulele known as a pineapple ukulele], and I think they were secretly a bit relieved that it was a completely normal-looking, if slightly small, instrument. And so we went to the local Sam Ash when I got back to New York, and my father bought me one. I just learned to play "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen. I'm working on "Dear Old House," too, but the chords are harder.

 And that is what I got for Christmas.

The Stanford Daily: Gaiman and Palmer in SF

Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer performed a show in San Francisco last week, and I covered it for The Daily (pretty much exactly what it says on the tin, above):

http://www.stanforddaily.com/2011/11/04/gaiman-and-palmer-read-rock-and-talk/

It was awesome. I want a ukulele.