Every other week I tend to use my Saturday blog post to make a note of the songs I’ve led at the Saturday sing around but there wasn’t one today (the church hall had something else booked). However, there was a party at the same church hall last night which had some cross over with the regular crowd and guests were invited to bring musical contributions. To that end, I took my ukulele along.

When my first turn came I pulled out an old favourite, “Enjoy Yourself”, which seemed like a suitable light-hearted choice for a birthday party. For my next go, I went a little more jazzy and picked “Fly Me to the Moon”, which has a few more chords in it including the luscious Fmaj7 and one that I needed to revise before I went (Bm7b5).

There weren’t a lot of musicians there so my turn came around again quite quickly. For this one, I decided on “The Twelve Days After Christmas”, which puts a twist on the popular Christmas song. It was worth enduring a few groans at the start for bringing out a yuletide tune, not least because I need to practise that one a bit for a gig in early December.

Finally, as the sing around portion drew to a close, I played “The Weight” by The Band. Some have interpreted it as a loose retelling of the gospels and there are certainly lots of biblical names in there. However, I think there is more weight in the explanation that it simply tells the story of someone who sets off to do someone a favour and then, in the quest narrative tradition, they get passed from pillar to post. Verse five says “I do believe it’s time to get back to Miss Fanny – you know she’s the only one who sent me here, with her regards for everyone”. You take the load off Fanny and (and, and – rising harmonies!) you put the load right on me!