Oh, Sheila - Barlow Family General
As heard on RAW Impressions tiny-tunes-tuesday (12/12/23), my version of Ready For The World’s Oh Sheila can be streamed and downloaded below.
Dang, this song is great. It was great when I heard it then, even better when I hear it now. My first impulse was to play it acoustic and keep it strummy and Weed Forestin’-esque. Oh Sheila hit just as I was breaking in my first 4-track, 1985, and it’s not unreasonable to think I was inspired by the fresh melody and two-chord, back and forth swing of the tune. In my memory it was full-on pop with big happy chords. Then I really listened to it. The bass line is awesome. There’s a minor chord lean to the arrangement. RFTW were a band! They could probably do wild justice to some Prince and The Revolution tunes in a live setting.
I was, like many others, thrown off by the English-accent, spoken intro to Oh Sheila. I thought RFTW were a U.K. boy-band. Nope, not at all (I love it when I’m wrong about stuff like this). What I once thought to be an irresistible piece of biz-generated-bubblegum is actually a full-on, mid-west American funk classic. People still think its Prince singing about Sheila E.
Pursuing my tribute, I realized I had to give a nod to the bass-line and fired up the simple iPad metronome app Hey Metronome! Is there any need for anything other than an ultra-simple Four On The Floor beat on any song ever? The answer is no. I subtracted a few notes from the O.G. slapped bass-line. As I was working on it I realized it sounded a little bit like XX, the beautifully spare, lightly RnB infused indie band from the 00s. Maybe I’m flattering myself with that comparison, heck, I -am- flattering myself, such is the joy and grandiosity I feel when recording a song.
I sprinkled in some terrible English accent accents of my own, mirroring the original. Mine sounds more Australian, probably. I talk about it more in the show (I can’t go repeating myself too much here, listen if you haven’t already!).
I’d like to point out that I played the whole song on my un-patented Lou-kelele. Keen fans will know that I have spent years trying to explain how my approach to the ukulele is untraditional and super-cool. Unfortunately holding a ukulele always screams “I’m not entirely serious!”, only Vedder can get away unscathed by the novelty. These days I regret every time I’ve put the word ‘ukulele’ in a song credit. I want to be legitimate!
Pardon me as I broken-record this topic: I string my baritone with classical nylons, the heavy E and A and the thin B and E. It doesn’t sound like a ukelele. It’s a small, easy to play guitar. My mother bought me my first one when I was 18, $5 at a tag-sale (what we call garage-sales and yard-sales here in New England). Recorded, my Lou-kelele can sound like a bass, electric guitar or an acoustic guitar. it’s versatile, it’s fucking perfect. Tuned EBBE, I think it really shines on Oh Sheila. All bow to my 4-string mini-guitar!
I’ll be going on and on, in increasingly desperate tones, about this in the future. For now please enjoy my latest Loukulele creation.
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