Post #197814 by professahhummingflowah on Sun, Nov 13, 2005 1:27 PM

On 2005-11-11 13:58, Traitor Vic wrote:
WAITIKI RULES THE AIRWAVES (or the Webwaves, at least) OF AMERICA!!!

And now I just got finished listening, LIVE, to Waitiki on the Flaming Uke! Was that Astonishment that I heard in Uke Jackson's voice as he asked Abe how long he'd been playing Uke and got told "Two Years?" I dunno. There was so much Astonishment in my ears at the moment that I couldn't hear too good...

Hey Vic,

Yup, Abe's been playing uke about two years now. He started April 2003, and made his first concert appearance as a frontman/uke player/vocalist just nine days later, when our pre-WAITIKI band The Mongooses were the featured entertainers for the Boston University Hawaii Cultural Association's annual Hawaiian-Style Lu'au.

I can't remember if we chatted on Uke Jackson's show about why he started playing uke... Basically it was because I couldn't cut it as the Mongoose's uke player, and Abe was trying to explain a particular rhythm he wanted me to strum, but I couldn't get it ... So I asked him to try demonstrate for me on the uke, and not only did he do it, but it sounded really natural -- and he'd never touched a uke really, before that. Long story short, I convinced him to keep the uke for the night and maybe see if he could work up a few tunes. He ended up learning a whole set worth of tunes (including two famous uke show pieces, Jake Shimabukuro's "Tokada" and the Ka'au Crater Boyz "Guava Jam") in just a matter of days. The rest, as they say, is history. We recorded our first album (with Abe on ukulele) "Akamai Brain Collective" just three months later.

Thanks again for listening!