Phew! I think it’s all done.
My original plan to play the 5 or 6 song requests that would trickle in over the course of a single Sunday afternoon was COMPLETELY BLOWN OUT OF THE WATER. Apparently you were far more generous than I thought, because I received a total of 22 requests! A summary of these is below:
- Zmiles requested “Comfort Eagle” by CAKE, and pledged $15
- msm16 requested “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor, and pledged $50
- Karen requested “The Ballad of Day Kitty” by Lou Barlow, and pledged $10
- Julia requested “Somebody Will” as performed by her group Sassafrass, and pledged $10
- Loren requested “Helter Skelter” by the Beatles, and pledged $15
- Frogmistress requested “3 Small Words” by Josie and the Pussycats, and pledged $10
- John Horstman requested “Thanks, Bastards” by Mischief Brew, and pledged $50
- Cunning Pam requested a song by They Might Be Giants, and pledged $25
- David Hart requested a song by 16 Horsepower, and pledged $40
- Momo Elektra requested “The Last Unicorn” by America, and pledged $10
- Nicole requested “The Pedestrian” by Foxboro Hot Tubs, and pledged $10
- Danny White requested “Glory Hallelujah” by Frank Turner, and pledged $10
- InkRose requested “Hard Believer” by First Aid Kits, and pledged $10
- Pandademic requested “Levon” by Elton John, and pledged $50
- Riptide requested Thin Lizzy’s version of “Whiskey in the Jar”, and pledged $10
- Armored Scrum Object requested Gary Jules’ version of “Mad World”, and pledged $10
- Robin requested “Eleanor Rigby” by the Beatles, and pledged $30
- Johnny Vector requested “Surrender Dorothy” by his band Naked Singularity, and pledged $33.33
- Mike requested a song by David Bowie, and pledged $35
- Brad Self requested “Highway 61 Revisited” by Bob Dylan, and pledged $10
- Ryan requested a song by Stan Rogers, and pledged $10
- I was sadly unable to play jolo5309’s requests, as they were too complicated. I encourage him to submit a new song for his $10 pledge.
Combined, y’all raised a whopping $463.33 for the Secular Student Alliance. Truly impressive!
I’m waiting on JT’s numbers to see if a) he and his readers managed to raise more than $537.67, in which case we will be performing Queen’s “Under Pressure” as a joint endeavour.
Congratulations and thank you to everyone who participated!
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Aw, crap. You’re done? I just decided what tune I wanted you to learn and perform. Anyway, if you’re interested, here’s a tune I’m willing to pledge USD 500 to SSA if you learn it and perform it. It’s one of my favorite songs, and it’s one of the few songs I know that makes professional jazz singers blanch and change the subject because it’s so difficult. It’s definitely a $500 song. Also, if you learn it, you’ll be a better musician, so it’s win-win all around.
“All About Ronnie,” written by Joe Green. You can swap pronouns in the lyrics as needed, or not.
Like any jazz standard, there’s no “original” recording, but Chris Conner’s recording is canonical: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13T2SiP6qRA
Here’s another YouTube from your backyard — the Vancouver Community College Jazz Orchestra has performed it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gGqX9W0RRM
You are cooler than a banana split with five cherries on top! The TMBG song you picked wasn’t the one I was guessing you would do, but it was a great selection nonetheless. I hope you enjoyed learning and performing all these songs as much as we enjoyed listening!
For a pledge that size I will definitely comply with the request. You’ll have to give me some time – jazz guitar is tough and it will take more than a little bit of practice.
Dang I need to come up with $500!
Wanted to request that you and JT sing a duet of “I’ll Never Tell” from the Buffy musical episode.
Cause I’m evil like that. But also broke :/
You did an excellent job on every song and I am really impressed! They were all enjoyable and it was a lot of fun to watch the videos. Congrats on the amount you raised!
I donated 40 bucks.
I would be good with a prairie rock band, not Nickelback, but maybe something by Streetheart, Northern Pikes, Queen City Kids or the like.
Would Wide Mouth Mason qualify? I have recently rediscovered them and I love them to bits.
I just went ahead and made the contribution in the agreed-upon amount. It seemed wrong to make my contribution based on you learning The Hardest Song I Know. Best use of money I’ve made in a long time.
You’re not off the hook, though. I still want my song. And you’ve got a great voice for jazz, if you want it.
(I had a cat named Oberon — Ronnie for short — and I sang him this song when he was dying of kidney disease. But I never could nail the pitches.)
I got my hands on a chord chart, and I’m going to devote some time this week to learning. Luckily, the band is on hiatus for the next couple of weeks so I have a bit more free time.
Saskatoon bands always qualify!
John, in Saskatoon
I know the perfect song, and I will have it up ASAP.
Are requests closed?
Cause I have a song if you’ll take a pledge for $20…
/innocent
Yeah, the pledge drive closed last weekend.
I might do a repeat of this for another charity sometime in the fall, so hang on to your bucks.