First, let's have a round of applause for Arlene, who so capably filled in for me last time while I was under the weather. These summaries will show us what we did and how well or poorly it went. If we last another ten or twenty years, we'll have an institutional memory of this fine organization.

On this night the players were Liz, Joe, Jim, John, Vin, Suzala, Ken, Jim, John, Larry, Keith, Frank, Dave, Jen, Arlene and Nathan. Here's what we played and who chose it:

Fortunate Son, Creedence Clearwater Revival, 1969 (Vin) Ken wasn't able to locate the chord sheet that Vin had created for the last jam so this was a holdover from the "protest songs" session.

This jam session was all about Animal Songs.

Octopus' Garden, Beatles, 1969 (WendySue) Most of this was the friendly C Am F G7.

Crocodile Rock, Elton John, 1972 (John) I remember some of these lyrics to be nearly unintelligible when the song first came out. Elton John has some issues with diction. (Try deciphering the words to Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting.)

Lil' Red Riding Hood, Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs, 1966 (John) This went pretty well, though the chords didn't always align perfectly with the lyrics. I hate when that happens, but I do love this song. Best of all, we got to howl. We don't howl enough as a society, so I take advantage of every opportunity.

Ragtime Cowboy Joe, Bob Roberts, 1912 (Arlene) Fun melody. A rush of syllables. Very nostalgic. No one really knew the middle bit, though it looked easy enough.

Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport, Rolf Harris, 1963 (Tom) For you fans of evolutionary oddities, this song has a clever verse about monotremes (egg-laying mammals).

"Mind me platypus duck, Bill.

Mind me platypus duck.

Oh, don't let him go runnin' amok, Bill.

Just mind me platypus duck."

Home on the Range, 1873 (Tom/John Devine) John played a good harmonica bit along with this one. I noticed a difference in this song compared to the previous one. This sounded good as a singalong. In the kangaroo song, the chorus was good, but the verses, sung on the record by a dying man, pain in his voice, was sung by us in the same cheerful way as the chorus. At a future nursing-home concert, I'd go with "Range" over "Kangaroo" unless we designated one of us to play the part of the dying man, and the rest of us did the chorus.

Dead Skunk, Loudon Wainwright III, 1973 (Arlene) An appearance by Wainwright in the seventies on Saturday Night Live is what got Jim to take up the guitar.

Stray Cat Strut, Stray Cats, 1983 (John) These guys hit big in 1982 with Rock This Town. At first I thought they were Brits, but they're from Massapequa.

Hound Dog, Elvis Presley, 1956 (John) The Germans have an expression for this song that we've heard more than any other by Elvis: ausgespielt. It means "played out." Can't they play something else for a change? However, I've found that when learning to play such a song on an instrument, it can have a new life.

Puff the Magic Dragon, Peter Paul and Mary, 1963 (John) We were discussing the underlying meaning of the song. It's been said to reference marijuana (puff, drag, Jackie (rolling) Paper.) Songwriter Peter Yarrow denies the drug interpretation, saying it's a song about lost childhood innocence.

House of the Rising Sun, Animals, 1964 (Ken) Part of the British Invasion, along with the Beatles, Stones and the Dave Clark Five, this monster hit put the Animals on the map.

Daydream Believer, Monkees, 1967 (Jen) At first I wondered what this has to do with animals, but it's the name of the group. (I had the same thought about the previous song.) Also, there is a bluebird and a steed I had overlooked. Why do you think Jean was drowsy and despondent? The song came off well, except we couldn't figure out how to end it. It's a common problem.

Teddy Bear, Elvis, 1957 (Vin) Here's another I was tired of, but it turned out to be one of our best efforts of the evening, the only trouble that we kept running past the "tacet" stop sign. We tried it a second time and made some improvement but couldn't quite manage the final line.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight, Tokens, 1961 (Vin) Very easy, but no one dared try the falsetto.

Swingin' On A Star, Bing Crosby, 1944 (Joe) A mule, a pig, a fish, a monkey. I vote this the most "on theme" song of the night. I knew this song from a 45 we had by Big Dee Irwin and Little Eva from 1963. It was slower and heavier than the hit from Der Bingle.

Bye Bye Blackbird, Gene Austin, 1926 (Dave) This is the perfect singalong song. Around every late-night fire it's mandatory. The chords proposed by Dr. Uke were really complicated, so much so that we didn't even try it. I'm gonna fish around on the computer and see if this can't be simplified.

The Unicorn Song, Irish Rovers, 1968 (Nathan) We tried this before on Irish night. Along with Puff the Magic Dragon, it should have been forbidden because neither are real animals. Somehow this got past our normally alert judges.

Piggies, Beatles, 1968 (Dan) Here's another example of a song that doesn't translate well when played by a big group. I practiced this for a week and a half, trying to nail down all the subtleties of George Harrison's phrasing, but it was all lost in the sauce, as we used to say, overwhelmed by a dozen voices and instruments. It's often hard to tell, when picking out a song, what's going to work well in a group, and what is better played alone, in your basement, for your own amusement. This is key when finding appropriate songs to play at our next sold-out concert. The Kinks say you've got to "give the people what they want."

I'm A Believer, Monkees, 1966 (Suzala) We ended on a high note, Our Fearless Leader picking an upbeat crowd-pleaser, written by Neil Diamond. He wrote one other hit for them: A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You, practically a carbon copy of his own hit, Cherry Cherry. The Monkees had some great people on their team, including Carole King, Harry Nilsson, and their biggest song suppliers, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart.

For our next session, Dave chose the theme of "that which is above us," (I'm paraphrasing), such as, but not limited to any mention of the sun, the moon, the stars, Jupiter and Mars, other astronomical objects, the sky, satellites, clouds, rainbows, a Saturn 5 rocket, the universe, astronauts, the Milky Way, flying saucers, and on and on, ever upward. There should be lots of songs to pick from.

-- Dan.