The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain Medley (“Melange”)

I’ve seen the Grateful Dead with 70,000 sweaty fans on LSD and danced to Springsteen live for 4 hours But I’ve never seen Sympathy for the Devil glide into You Sexy Thing via Time Warp and Hey Jude, all on four ukuleles. Melange is a musical stunt that somehow sticks the landing.

By way of comparison, I recently tried a medley of Rock Lobster into Along the Watch Tower with just 2 other guitarists and failed miserably.

Thanks to my cousin from another mother Nancy Scott for showing me this over Thanksgiving.

Watch “Melange”

Ratings:

• My Rating: 92/100
• IMDB Rating: na
• Rotten Tomatoes Ratings: na

Release Date: August 18, 2009

Songlist

1. Sympathy for the Devil (The Rolling Stones)
2. If I Were a Carpenter (Tim Hardin)
3. Save the Last Dance for Me (The Drifters)
4. Time Warp (The Rocky Horror Show)
5. Hey Jude (The Beatles)
6. Under the Boardwalk (The Drifters)
7. You Sexy Thing (Hot Chocolate)
8. Heroes (David Bowie)
9. Angels (Robbie Williams)
10. Walk on the Wild Side (Lou Reed)

Songlist with Lyrics and Timestamps

And here’s my best take on roughly where each song begins with the lyrics. It’s super-hard

1. Sympathy for the Devil – Starts right at the top with the lyrics “Please allow me to introduce myself…” (0:29)
2. If I Were a Carpenter – Around 1:13, lyrics like “she has tried baby… don’t you know I love you”
3. Save the Last Dance for Me – Around 1:39, lyrics “You can dance every dance…”
4. Time Warp – Around 1:28–1:32: “step to the left, step to the right” are the Time Warp choreography references.
5. Hey Jude – Implied around 2:54–3:05 with humming and “na-na-na”-style melody
6. Under the Boardwalk – I found this one harder…but it seems to be in there subtly.
7. You Sexy Thing – Very clear at 2:37: “Do you sexy thing”.
8. Heroes – 3:05+: lyrics like “nothing will drive them away, we can be heroes…”
9. Angels (Robbie Williams) – 3:41: “She offers me protection… I’m loving angels instead”
10. Walk on the Wild Side – Implied later in the instrumental blend around 4:08–5:00 during the musical layering.

If you enjoy the The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain they have a YouTube channel with many more songs here.

It includes a lot of other covers like Highway to Hell, Life on Mars, Ode to Joy, Heroes, Sweet Dreams, Should I Stay or Should I Go.

Thanks for reading!

Rob Kelly, Chief Maniac, Daily Doc