Friend Andy sends along this version of Sultans of Swill, er, Swing, and it’s so much improved from the original that it’s bringing me around to the tune. Of course, in the past, we’ve had a little trouble around here over varying opinions about the original. These variations generally have two types; my opinion, which is correct, and everyone else’s, which is wrong. I take no offense at the general public’s stubbornness in this regard; I’m right, absolutely and indisputably, about so many things, and all alone in this rightness, that I’ve become used to it. Go ahead, ask me if I’m right about everything. I’m typing on the Intertunnel. Of course I’m right about everything. It’s science.

Anyhoo, back to the execrable source material, made magnificent. You see, the real problem with the original SoS (see, the song is an actual cry for help, not music) is the thin, reedy sound that Mike Knoblauch gets with that borrowed guitar and rented amp he’s obviously got. But this guy, in Mom’s basement, learning songs no one wants to hear, that will be performed never, in front of nobody, except the Intertunnel, which at this point is just flunkies at the NSA and grannies looking for additional pictures of cats while being shown hoverround ads on their Facebook page, is really getting that big, beefy sound the song requires. It’s the quality of the instrument that carries the song, really. Only the finest recycled plastic, smelted in the open air somewhere in some Fuking province in China, most likely, will be able to deliver the resonance and tone the song requires. It’s lucky that he was able to string his instrument with that clear plastic wire before his little sister’s orthodontist got hold of it and used it to make her braces, too.

I’m not sure how long the song actually is, because I always turn it off well before the end, but I got the impression that the original song is longer than this gloss on it. I figured that out because occasionally, when I’d turn the radio back on, hoping to hear something… else, the song was always still playing. I think this fine ukelelist, um ukelelier, er, ukeleptic heard his mother calling down the stairs to play Freebird, and stopped. Shame. It could have been epic.