Where No One Has Gone Before

I remember when it all started. It’s been almost two years now. We were all so young and innocent. So full of hope and promise. There were really only a “handful” of people posting ukulele videos on youtube. I remember seeing mercedezzz version of ‘I Will Survive’ on banjo uke and thinking to myself how cool that was. Hell, I could do that! I know a ton of old songs that I could cover on the ukulele, and be just as cool as her! (at the time it didn’t even occur to me that she has more talent in her little finger nail than I have in my whole body, or will ever have for that matter). So I bought a banjo uke and did a lame cover of ‘Black Peter’ by the Grateful Dead. It sucked. But it didn’t matter. No one else had done it. There was nothing else to compare me to. I was breaking new ground. I was the Meriwether Lewis, the Earnest Shackleton, the Sir Edmond Hillary of the banjo uke. A week later I bought a Fluke and started covering just about any old tune I could think of. Again, I was the Christopher Columbus the Robin Knox Johnston, the James T. Kirk of the ukulele.

But now it’s all been done. Now whenever I think of a song to cover, I do a youtube search to see if it has already been covered. Usually it has. Even really obscure songs are used up. (I spent seven weeks learning “Overture" from "Tommy” by The Who, only to find out it has been done on the uke. Really? Tommy? Are you fucking kidding me?) A lot of the time the song I want to do has been done by someone I know. This is where things get really complicated. I am left asking myself; should I do it anyway? Should I cover it again? Do I give them credit in the sidebar? Do I post it as a video response? I surely don’t want to look like I am trying to “out-do” them (not like I could). What is the protocol here? Damn it, it used to be so easy.