"Over the Rainbow" Conservative teens singing and having fun.

youtube ^ | 2/12/11 | freemike

[freemike]

My son has a few friends and they go around singing at coffee shops, stuff like that. Yeah, they know they won't be making American Idol. But they are good conservatives all and are out having some fun. I always like to try to give them a few hits on their youtube videos if I can. (by the way, my son stood up to his teacher last year when she said all Tea Party people are racists. He did so well she eventually apologized to him within a few days) Here's the video

[freemike]

Yeah, I don't know what it is about the ukulele, seems to be making a comeback with the youth today. Whenever I think of the ukulele, I think of Tiny Tim, but apparently it's the thing today. He's pretty good with it.

[MarineBrat]

Nice! Sounds like they were influenced by Israel Kamakawiwoʻole.

Aloha Nui Loa!

[freemike]

Wow! He’s really good! Thanks for posting that!

[aruanan]

Whenever I think of the ukulele, I think of Tiny Tim, but apparently it's the thing today.

I think of Israel Kamakawiwo'ole. He's probably equal to at least 6 Tiny Tims. He was really good.

[fightinJAG]

I like!

[MarineBrat]

Wow! He’s really good! Thanks for posting that!

My pleasure. I had to give it a good listen-to while I was at it. :) I'm certain that your son and his friend have been influenced by Izzy, which is a very good influence to have in the world of ukulele. I enjoyed their song, and I'm sure Izzy would have liked it as well.

[fightinJAG]

One of my favorite contemporary Hawaiian pop singers:

Justin Young

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any links to MP3 samples, but I'm sure they're out there.

[MarineBrat]

One other thing, as I have a special affection for the ukulele. If your son hasn’t listened to Jake Shimabukuro, he should give him a try. Jake’s widely considered to be the greatest pure ukulele player ever.

[freedumb2003]

How sad he died so young and for such a sad reason!

When I first heard that version, I was absolutely riveted!

It still moves me and if you listen closely, you can hear the wistful sadness that was the life cut so short.

[tunedin]

I don’t always agree with Beck but I think we might be looking at the next great generation. My own young teen stood up to her science teacher who couldn’t explain why he believed in global warming past “just because” and then took on her social studies teacher who denied that progressivism and socialism had any similarity.

If only they could vote.

[doesnt suffer fools gladly]

That was amazing! I’ve heard that version before, and I just love it. Great job. I’m trying to sign up at youtube to post a compliment. Congrats to you on raising a good son. Conservative is an added bonus. ;)

[aruanan]

How sad he died so young and for such a sad reason!

I heard that the first reason given turned out not to be the actual reason or that they later discovered he had something else that would have been fatal but I cannot remember what any of it was.

When I first heard that version, I was absolutely riveted!

Yep. He definitely had IT. Now that I've been going through my Brazilian popular music of the 60s-80s I've been hearing other instances of the same thing. And the funny thing is that you can have two people who may have the same wide vocal range, sing perfectly on pitch, and with the same degree of fluency, but one of them will have IT and the other won't (I'm thinking folks like Justin Bieber, Christine Aguilera, Gloria Estefan, Mariah Carey, all just human instruments with a good vocal apparatus, but nothing at all sublime). On the other hand, you can have folks without anything particularly outstanding in pitch and range (like Chico Buarque, Ellis Regina, Ivan Lins, Wilson Moreira, Nelson Sargento, Tom Ze, Milton Nascimento, Joao Bosco, Beto Guedes, to name a few) but whose music and performance are stunning. Too much pop music now has a "sum of the parts" formula with a list of parts that is so narrow and so niche-targeted (children with no background in music) that it sounds, though bright and colorful and rhythmically busy, as plasticized and composite as a cootie toy.