(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang – Heaven 17 – Ukulele Chords

I’m working on a songbook of Country tunes from the 1940s and 50s at the moment. But in the meantime, something completely different!

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This one popped up on a playlist recently, and despite having heard it multiple times over recent years, I suddenly had the thought that this could maybe work as a uketune. Well why not – a synth-based, percussion-heavy chant with bass breakdowns – that’s an obvious choice for a ukulele-based singalong, surely!

Well, why not. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, as the saying goes. So here it is.

Fascist Groove Thang was the debut single from Heaven 17, their first release after the break-up of the original Human League. Like now, the early 80s were not a nirvana of rubik’s cubes, day-glo clothing, deely boppers and legwarmers. There was some serious s**t going down – strikes, terrorist attacks, riots, unemployment, Thatcher, Regan, and the ever-present threat of nuclear war. It was against that backdrop that this tune arrived.

The record company (Virgin) and the band were both convinced that the tune had the potential to be a huge hit, and initially the record stared climbing the outer reaches of the chart. But stalled just outside the all-important top 40, Radio 1 DJ Mike Read took against it, prompted largely by the line “Reagan’s president elect/Fascist god in motion“, and proceeded to get it banned. Taking with it any chance of it breaking through as a hit (Read did a similar thing a few years later with Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Relax, but that time it back-fired spectacularly!).

However the song’s longevity has proved remarkable, covered by both LCD Soundsystem and Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and – specific references, aside – the song is still (unfortunately) very topical. To quote joint songwriter, Martyn Ware – “That which used to be hidden from view in the past has now been normalised“.

And the song sheet? Well here it is. To be honest, I’m not totally sure whether these are the “correct” chords. There’s a version on Ultimate Guitar, but I’m not convinced that it’s right. There’s no sheet music out there. And I’ve tried various apps to decipher it and they come up with varying results. But I’m pretty sure that these work, even if they may not be “accurate”. I’ve veered between thinking this could be a real banger, and thinking it could be a car crash! So give it a try – what have you got to lose! Enjoy!

Fascist Groove ThangDownload

Flaming Sword – Care – Ukulele Chords

I’ve just finished reading Paul Simpson’s Revolutionary Spirit., and I’d highly recommend it, particularly for anybody who has an interest in the late-70s and early 80s Liverpool music scene that centred around Eric’s. But it is also a very honest tale of a talent that never realised his full potential, and of somebody who seemed to constantly want to sabotage his own success.

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Simpson was a co-founder, along with Julian Cope, of The Teardrop Explodes. He formed his own band, The Wild Swans, who have been critically lauded but never had any success (apart from, somewhat bizarrely, in the Philippines), and backed out of this collaboration with Ian “Lightning Seeds” Broudie just as they were completing their debut album.

As a key figure in the scene that gave birth to Echo and The Bunnymen, Wah!, OMD and others, including The Lotus Eaters (who were formed when The Wild Swans decided to sack Simpson, their lead singer and founder), and dubbed at the time the best voice on the scene, Simpson could be bitter. But his story is anything but – a tale populated with great characters and ridiculous scenes, an individual who is aware of what he has squandered, but has come to terms with it (and there is a new Wild Swans record due next year).

If you’ve ever heard a Paul Simpson song, chances are it’s this one. Not that you may realise it. Flaming Sword was what they used to call a “radio hit” – played to death on Radio 1 on its release in the spring of 1983, but the great listening public chose not to pay attention. Peaking at number 48 in May of that year, it then proceeded to sink without trace, although Broudie did record a version with The Lightning Seeds. With no effective band to promote the record, the album wasn’t released, and it wasn’t until 1997 that a compilation of the Care recordings finally crept into the sunlight. But it is definitely worth checking out – Flaming Sword is (in my opinion) the best track on there, but there are some other great tunes from the band-that-was-never-to-be.

So here’s one to sing with gusto. The song sheet is quite straightforward – with the exception that it’s almost impossible to do without incurring some flattened chords. This version is true to the original key, although the recording is at a slightly odd speed which means it doesn’t quite sound right. I’ve also tabbed out the very simple intro / instrumental riff to sit over the top of the chords. Enjoy!

Flaming SwordDownload

Mr Pharmacist – The Fall – Ukulele Chords

I’ve never really got on with The Fall. On paper they should be something I enjoy. But they’ve always felt like hard work to me, and, well, you know – life’s too shorts. But recently a couple of tracks have come across my radar that have been more than passable, and one of those is making it’s way onto these pages.

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The first tune that struck me as rather good was Bill Is Dead, a somewhat atypical tune from 1990’s Extricate album, which is a more reflective and melancholy take than should be expected of The Fall and is – in my opinion – all the better for that.

The second was Mr Pharmacist. As it turns out, this is actually a cover version, the original being by a band called The Other Half, a late-60s garage rock band from San Francisco. In the 1980s the song got added to a volume of the famous Nuggets series, which compiled/rescued obscure garage and psychedelic rock songs from the 1960s and brought them to a totally new audience. Whether Mark E. Smith picked the tune up from there (The Fall version came out the year after the Nuggets volume was released) or whether it was one that was familiar to the band beforehand I can’t say. But The Fall version is very good – their raw and aggressive sound allied to a great little song that doesn’t hang around. Tight and economical – does what it needs to do, and not hanging around afterwards.

And here is the songsheet. It’s a simple enough song that relies on a chugging chord-based riff, and definitely benefits from playing those chords as barre chords. I’ve transposed it down a notch to make it easier to play – capo 1 if you want to play along to the original, although The Other Half version is in exactly this key, so you play along to that without the capo. They potentially tricky bit is where the rhythm changes at the beginning of the instrumental. It sounds like it’s speeding up, but it’s not – it just moves to a different, more urgent rhythm. Anyway, make what you will of this – but enjoy!

Mr PharmacistDownload

Here Comes Your Man – Pixies – Ukulele Chords

Pixies are a band that seemed to have passed me by. Despite Doolittle being “one of the quintessential albums of the 1980s” (it says on Wikipedia, so it must be true), I somehow seemed to have missed them in my musical journey, despite multiple friends recommending them.

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Today’s post isn’t acknowledgement that I’ve finally righted that wrong. But this tune popped up recently and it struck me that this would probably make a great Uketunes tune. And so here it is.

Pixies are probably the ultimate alternative US rock band of the late 80s, and were a huge influence on the explosion in that scene that took it mainstream during the 1990s. Something of a pioneer in the “loud-quiet-loud” dynamic that almost became a cliché, the band blazed a trail through the scene during the late 80s and early 90s, before an acrimony broke the band in 1992, ultimately splintering off into a number of also successful bands – bassist Kim Deal joining Throwing Muses’ Tanya Donnelly in The Breeders, and main songwriter and singer Black Francis spinning things round to have solo success as Francis Black.

Doolittle, the album that Here Comes The Man comes from, has a much cleaner, more produced, and more commercial sound than the band’s previous records, and was the first to get an international release. Featuring singles Monkey Gone To Heaven and Debaser alongside Here Comes The Man (an “unusually jaunty and pop-like song”), it was their first record to achieve commercial success, and is widely acknowledged as an artistic peak for the band.

And so to the songsheet. The song structure and chords are relatively straightforward – I’ve kept it true to the original. I’ve also tabbed out a couple of the main riffs, which again are – I think – quite easy to pick up. Other than that, give it a try. I think you’ll enjoy!

Here Comes Your ManDownload

Let’s Do Rock Steady – The Bodysnatchers – Ukulele Chords

Some songs take a bit of wrestling with to get a song sheet that works. Some just fall into place naturally. This one is definitely in the latter category.

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The Bodysnatchers were a seven-piece all-female band that briefly rode the original wave of the 2 Tone ska revival in the UK in the late 70s and early 80s. Their first gig in November 1979 was supporting Shane MacGowan’s pre-Pogues band The Nips, their third was playing at Debbie Harry’s birthday party, and they played support on a number of tours for the likes of The Selecter, The Specials and The Go-Gos.

However, the band split in late 1980, having never recorded an album, leaving just a couple of singles and a few tracks on the soundtrack to the 2-Tone movie, Dance Craze. Let’s Do Rock Steady was the hit, albeit not a massive one (it peaked at number 22 in the charts). A cover of the 1967 original by Dandy Livingstone, the Bodysnatchers’ version has had a surprisingly enduring afterlife considering it’s relatively moderate success, and is far and away the definitive version of the song.

After the split the majority of the band went on to form the more successful Belle Stars, with singer Rhoda Dakar going on to a number of collaborations with The Specials.

This is a very simple, 3 chord ska tune that really only has two verses, and a very regular chord pattern throughout. The strumming pattern is something like -u-u-udu, but does need (ideally) to be played with dampened barre chords to give that choppy ska/reggae beat. This one is fun, so enjoy!

Let’s Do RocksteadyDownload