Selecting songs for a select audience: eighties extravaganza

In music, the formal or official term for song selection is “repertoire development.” It sounds sophisticated and significant, and it should be, for it is not trivial at all. Repertoire development refers to creating a balanced portfolio for performers. In programming a concert, it refers to creating an attractive programme for the audience. How does this apply to selecting songs for ukulele jam sessions? In particular, songs from the eighties?

Hanwell Hootie Hangover, The Green W7 Pub in London, 13 May 2018. Photo: Paul Richard James

When I first started attending ukulele jam sessions, I knew only five percent of the songs if lucky. That didn’t stop me from learning the music, for I was there to practise playing the ukulele in a group setting. Having taught music theory in college, I expected the songs to follow chord progressions, that is, music is formulaic and thus predictable. I learned new chords, practiced switching between chords, and expanded my repertoire.

Two years later, I’m on the other side, selecting songs to lead others to play. Newcomers to the ukulele aren’t expected to read music notation or tablature. Knowing how to strum and finger the chords are sufficient. To ask them to sing and play requires selecting songs they already know. Of course, it’s much easier to accompany themselves singing if they already know how the melody goes.

How do you select songs for people you don’t know?

There lies the rub.

The songs you know depends on your age (generation) and location (where you grew up or have lived most of your life). There aren’t many songs that are between instant recognition and having no clue. You’ve either heard it before or never at all. Recognising the song may trigger memories.

Such was the case when I was compiling songs for our next jam session on Wednesday 6th June 2018, boldly entitled “Eighties Extravaganza,” for I am a child of the eighties.

Or so I thought.

Several songs I heard and became familiar with in the eighties were actually released in the late seventies. Do I count these? Queen released “Bohemian Rhapsody” in 1979 and “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” in 1980. Although I dearly love “Bohemian Rhapsody” I decided not to include it because it’s a tad too difficult for our group at the moment. Instead, I included the latter because it was released in the eighties and song sheet doesn’t present too many challenging chords for the average ukulele player.

Of all the songbooks I’ve compiled for my new ukulele club in Boston, I enjoyed putting together this one the most because I knew the songs firsthand. I danced to them. I heard them on the radio while driving. Listening to these songs on Spotify brought back memories of my college years in North Carolina and Montreal, my first solo backpacking trip through Europe, and my first job in London and Singapore.

As I happily jot down the 80’s songs I knew from several eighties chart hit websites, my initial list grew to nearly 60 songs. As we can only sing about 20 songs in any given evening, I had to come up with a filtering method. If I were to choose my favourite songs, they would be

1. All Out of Love – Air Supply
2. Bed of Roses – Bon Jovi
3. Down Under – Men at Work
4. Funky Town – Lipps
5. Girls Just Wanna Have Fun – Cyndi Lauper
6. Give It Up – KC and the Sunshine Band
7. One Night in Bangkok – Murray Head
8. Only You – Yazoo
9. Our Lips Are Sealed – Go Go’s
10. The Safety Dance – Men without Hats
11. We Built This City – Star Ship

Rather than following my usual way of coming up with titles first and then looking for the song sheets, I peered into the vetted songbooks of several established ukulele clubs in London for songs released in the 1980’s. I found only two (bolded) of my favorite eleven from the original list.

The idea for a session of eighties hits came about when I met Nick, a big fan of disco and eighties music, at a Thursday evening jam session at Clement’s Photography Gallery near Broadway (Boston). We chose a mutually convenient date when he could journey down from Cambridge, MA. He gave me the song sheets he created for Strummerville, the ukulele group he leads every other Wednesday evening at the Potbelly Sandwich Shop in Porter Square. He contributed seven song sheets to our 80’s songbook:

1. Crazy Little Thing Called Love, 1980
2. Everybody Wants to Rule the World, 1985
3. Eye of the Tiger, 1982
4. Kiss, 1986
5. Maneater, 1982
6. Modern Love, 1983
7. With or Without You, 1987

Having immensely enjoyed my last jam with Balham Ukulele Society in South London in early May, I decided to look into their 2018 and 2017 songbooks. The song sheets give the year of release at the top along with title and composer (or artist). This additional information allowed me to choose ten songs quickly:

1. 9 to 5 (1980)
2. A Little Respect (1988)
3. Back on the Chain Gang (1982)
4. Come on Eileen (1982)
5. Don’t Stop Believin’ (1981)
6. Hallelujah (1984)
7. Mad World (1982)
8. Summer of ’69 (1984)
9. Tainted Love (Ed Cobb, 1964; Soft Cell, 1981)
10. Together in Electric Dreams (1984)

The other long-established ukulele group in London calls themselves Ukulele Wednesday, and meets in three different locations each Wednesday. I selected nine song sheets from their nearly 300-page songbook.

1. Don’t You Want Me – Human League
2. Down Under – Men at Work
3. Every Breath You Take – Police
4. Faith – George Michael
5. Like a Prayer – Madonna
6. Take on Me – Aha
7. The Final Countdown – Europe
8. True Faith – New Order
9. Walk of Life – Dire Straits

This process left a couple more songs which I found on the websites of Bytown Ukulele Group in Canada and Jim’s Ukulele Group, giving a total of 29 songs for the eighties jam session.

I am especially excited about this event because my college roommate and her husband, also a mutual classmate, are attending with their son who plays the ukulele and lives in Boston. I had followed the couple to their post-docs in Princeton and San Diego and their first jobs in Atlanta, before they became parents. I haven’t seen them since then, so it will be a 22-year reunion!

Wednesday 6th June 2018
7 – 9:30 pm
Eighties Extravaganza
Free Ukulele Jam Session

RSVP on Meet-Up Site to get songbook (PDF) and Spotify Playlist

Note: The photo shown in this blog post depicts the Hanwell Ukulele Group (HUG) based in west London. Joining the group in February 2017 has been a life saver as I transitioned out of my tropical life on Maui, through Utrecht and London, to Boston. HUG celebrates its fifth anniversary on 12th June 2018, with the release of two new T-shirts and a lot of music making. I was fortunate to arrive in London to perform with my fellow ukulele mates in the annual Hanwell Hootie festival and the Hangover (pictured above) the next afternoon.