Global Karaoke Party: British Invasion

Each month we get together online in ZOOM to see how far around the globe we can connect through music. At our previous global karaoke party, nearly fifty participants joined from Switzerland westward over two oceans to Japan. For Sunday 21st June 2020, we are planning a British Invasion (to start at 19:00 BST = 14:00 EDT). Note: this session will be one hour long. Please arrive well before the start time to chit chat and get set up.

Music lovers in the United States coined the words “British Invasion” to refer to songs that originated in the United Kingdom largely in the 1960’s which became very popular in the USA.

Interestingly, it was my fellow ukulele players in Boston that first introduced the term to me, in a carpool to the annual ukulele festival in Hamilton, Massachusetts. They knew the lyrics by heart.

When I asked my English friends about songs of the “British Invasion” they responded by saying they didn’t know what I was talking about. It’s the songs of The Kinks, The Hollies, The Rolling Stones, ….

“Oh! But that’s just British. There’s no invasion. We grew up with these songs.”

I spent most of the summer of 2019 in London, Oxford, Bath, Bristol, and Canterbury gathering songs of the “British Invasion” and learning them from my English friends. Unlike my friends who grew up in the sixties, I had not heard of most of these songs.

Because The Beatles have produced such an encyclopedic volume of songs, I am leaving them out. There’s already a jam session each Monday evening dedicated to Beatles songs, so I can learn more of their songs there.

Here follow just a few songs from my original list (excluding The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who) for the upcoming virtual song session on the longest day of the year – summer solstice 21st June 2020, a day traditionally celebrated around the world as “MAKE MUSIC” day.

You can get the song sheets by googling the song title in quotation marks and “ukulele pdf” or from major websites like ozbcoz.com (for transposable song sheets). The song sheets will be displayed as “Shared Screen” in the ZOOM meeting or ordered in advance as a compiled PDF. The following list has been trimmed down to include only those in the sixties.

1. All Day and All of the Night – The Kinks (original key in F)
2. All I Need is the Air That I Breathe – The Hollies
3. Apeman – The Kinks – Kevin G. (NJ)
4. Catch the Wind – Donovan – Lynn (UK) in C
5. Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying – Gerry & the Pacemakers – Virginia K. (NY)
6. Downtown – Petula Clark (in F) (in C) ** Hope T. (NY)
7. Ferry Cross the Mersey – Gerry & the Pacemakers
8. Game of Love – The Mindbenders
9. Georgie Girl – The Seekers (1966)
10. Hey, Carrie Anne – The Hollies
11. I Only Want to Be With You – Dusty Springfield
12. Love is All Around – The Troggs – Chris A. (MA) – in G
13. Mellow Yellow – Donovan
14. Mrs Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter – Herman’s Hermits
15. Needles and Pins – The Searchers
16. Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood – The Animals – Jerry D. (MA)
17. Pretty Flamingo – Manfred Mann
18. Puppet on a String – Sandie Shaw
19. Silence is Golden – The Tremeloes
20. Something Tells Me I’m Into Something Good – Herman’s Hermits  (1964)
21. Stuck in the Middle with You – Stealers Wheel
22. Sunny Afternoon – The Kinks (original key in Dm) (Bytown) (San Jose) – Anne et al
23. Sunshine Superman – Donovan – John V. (NY)
24. There’s a Kind of Hush – Herman’s Hermits
25. Waterloo Sunset – The Kinks  (original key in Eb)
26. We Gotta Get Outta This Place – The Animals
27. Wild Thing – The Troggs – Sue (UK) in A
28. You Really Got Me – The Kinks
29. You’ll Never Walk Alone – Gerry & the Pacemakers – Maureen D. (MA)
30. You’re No Good – Swinging Blue Jeans

Breaking News!
The Morristown Ukulele Jam (MUJ) has a fantastic collection of songs from the British Invasion — curated song sheets (with strum patterns) and video tutorials. MUJ meets each Wednesday at 7 pm EDT for a thematic jam session in Zoom.