"The Sour Apple Serenader"

This is a Diddley Bow that i made with an Altoids "Sour Apple Chewing Gum" tin. Sweet aint it?!

Well, forget the sweetness.... Marko and René rigged it up with a Piezo element (click on the image to ZOOM and notice the jack in the tin) and then plugged it into an amp and DUDE, you can make some bad-ass noise on this sucker. Thanks to Rikke for advising me about which pickup to use and where to find them. Check out the video below to see & hear Marko demonstrating it using various effects and techniques.

A little aside... This project completely opened my eyes to electronics. While looking through electro catalogues i found components with which you can build your own radio! Oh man, i am so going to build my own radio.

This Diddley Bow and many more musical wonders and curiosities are available at the The Jumping Flea Makers Market. Oh, and soon to come, 'The Sour Cherry Singer'!

And the winner is...

At the 'Ukulele Jamborees' we always give away prizes. The last edition was held at SPAM, a warehouse for vintage/design interior wares and goodies. So we gave all our prizes a SPAM theme. 3rd prize: A can of SPAM, 2nd prize a Makala Ukulele & a can of SPAM and as 1st prize a Diddley Bow made from a can of SPAM.

When the number was called out for first prize the winning ticket holder, Erik & Nanette Borgman and family, weren't there. (They had to leave early to get the kids home so i agreed to let them have some raffle tickets and take down their email address in case they won, something i usually don't do because it's more fun and less hassle to give the prizes to someone present.) Anyway, when the audience found out the winner wasn't present they began to, 'Boooooooo'. (They booed us!) Well, we had to take action and decided to draw another ticket for a winner in the house and make another diddley bow for the Borgman family. Thus, Everybody wins...YEAH!

When i contacted the Borgmans they wrote back that they were delighted that they had won. (Apparently they kids let out a shriek of gladness!) But, there was just one thing.. they were vegetarians and found the SPAM can Diddley Bow a little sad. Completely understandable. So, i made them one which is much more appropriate for a vegetarian family. 'The Cherry Tomato Singer' made of tomato puree cans which you see here. CUTENESS! Click on image to ZOOM.

Erik picked it up this week and adored it. I've since received an email from Nannette saying how happy they were with it and they will be sending a family picture along soon. By the way, just to give this story a completely radical twist, it turns out that Erik Borgman is a Ball Artist! "A wha'?", you say. "A Ball Artist", i say. Check him out. He has more balls than most...

Wham-Bam-Spam-A-Lam

Click on the images to ZOOM! Or, even better, visit The Uke Box's Flickr to view the complete set of photographs
On April the 16th, 'The Uke Box' hosted the 12th edition of the Ukulele Jamboree and HOLY HAWAIIAN ISLANDS did we put on one hell of a ukulele party. I'm not kidding y'all. You probably wouldn't imagine that you could have a ukulele blow out...but we did. This show was held in SPAM which is a big warehouse filled to the brim with beautiful vintage/design furniture en goodies. You can imagine what an incredible setting this was. Which reminds me, let me first say THANK YOU to Sandra & Marcel, the very brave & ever charming couple who run this amazing shop. René 'Polygoon' Verberne was our announcer and set the mood perfectly with his vintage style showmanship. As always, we kicked the Ukulele Jamboree off with a Ukulele Intervention (Ukulele workshop for aspiring ukulele players). Folks could rent a uke and play along. And, as an extra bonus, we had Ukulelezaza give a more advanced workshop concerning right hand techniques. Although this was quite difficult material, the participants were really hanging in there with him. Great sight to see about 50 folks bent over their ukes with looks of such determination. Afterward, 'Zaza WOW-ed us with a performance that made us all want to set our ukuleles on fire. Our STAR of the evening was Miss Shelley O'Brien from Canada who performed with such joy. She really does, that girl beams when she plays. We were incredibly privileged to have her here in Rotterdam to play us songs from her new CD, 'You, Me and The Birds". Thanks BABE! We also had an Open Mic, which is one of my favorite parts of the show. Yvonne, Sim, Sira, Jeff & Henk entertained the hell out of us. Unfortunately due to the length of the extra workshop earlier in the evening we got pushed for time and weren't able to get everyone on stage who wanted to play. We really hated that that happened. Our sincere apologies for this. Next time we'll be absolutely sure to get you all in. Here is Jeff performing "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down And Write Myself A Letter"...
A new addition to the Jamboree was the exhibit of 12 beautiful artist's edition ukuleles created by 8 artists. René Verberne made some fantastic carousels and turntables which enabled us to show the art work on the ukes from all angles. (Thanks Buurman!) The Jumping Flea Market was also set up so that folks could purchase ukes and other nifty musical gadgets such as toy accordions and washboard ties. And how in the world do you wind up a night like this? With a Big Damn Performance by The Big Damn Ukulele Band of course. Oh, and Rene played his tooter!
But, the coolest part of the evening? All the folks that attended this party. Nearly 150 of you showed up and ukulele-d, sang along, laughed, danced and had fun. And, another thing that made me extra happy was the photographers and videographers that came to record this wonderful evening. So, to Rick Witlox & friend, Lex Zonneveld and Ruud Mooij i would like express my gratitude. Oh, and many thanks to 'The Beast from the East' and Alex who worked the bar and the market. Lastly, thanks to all of our ukulele friends that make our projects so wonderful. We hope to see all of you at the next show!

May i have a little rant?

Yes i think i may...

All of you folks shouting 'Boycott BP'. Yes, do that. 
But do this too...
Put on a sweater when it's cold instead of cranking up the ole' heater, get rid of your big ass cars, ride your bike to work and campaign for safe biking roads so that you are able to do so, recycle, reuse, downsize, buy less. And, when you do shop, purchase local products from independent merchants whenever possible and support responsible companies.

Come on folks...it's not about one damn stinking company. It's about a whole hell of a lot of stinking companies and more importantly it's about us. About the choices we make every damn day. You can't support these crap companies and then when the day comes when they've ruined your little piece of paradise on earth turn around and start bitchin'. We have to start conserving more energy and start using and developing safer energy sources.

Hey, I know this ain't easy. I don't win at all of these things all of the time but boy i sure do try. If we'd all wake up and love this beautiful earth, we'd have a whole different ball game going on.

 Okay, i'm through now. Thank You.

Hey Strangers,

YIKES!...It has been nearly a month since i posted something here on the blog. But, this doesn't mean i've been slacking off. On the contrary, there are so many wonderful things going on i just haven't had the time to post them. Besides the wonderful stuff, i'm also renovating a house which is of course incredibly time consuming.

But, getting back to the wonderful...We had an amazing 'Ukulele Jamboree' in April. There were nearly 150 people there! I'm still editing the photographs and video which will be posted soon. At this Ukulele Jamboree we exhibited 12 Art Ukes which you can still see at SPAM till the end of next week. A selection of these ukes are also available via The Jumping Flea Makers Market. Stop by and take a look. Oh, and be sure to read the description of the ukes. They all have a great story.

Well, that is it for now. I hope you are all enjoying the Spring. Thank you for stopping by! X, Shelley.