AtDDtA1: An Enthusiastic Ukuleleist

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

   "After dinner and Evening Quarters, the boys dedicated a few
moments to song, as a group differently engaged might have to prayer.
Since their Hawaiian escapades a few years previous (The Chums of
Chance and the Curse of the Great Kahuna), Miles had become an
enthusiatic ukulelist ..." (AtD, Pt.I, Ch. 2, pp. 14-5)

Come to think of it, if anyone really belongs in the Paranoids, it's
Zoyd Wheeler:

     Night fell like the end of a movie. The alcohol flowed torrentially,
 and soon it was necessary to switch over to a reserve tank of 
inexpensive vodka, located in the wing. Some passengers fell 
unconscious, some glazed out, others kicked off their shoes and 
partied, notwithstanding the grim shielded troopers working slowly, 
methodically among them. As Zoyd was segueing into the main
title theme from Godzilla, King of the Monsters (1956), he was 
distracted by a voice somewhere behind and slightly below him. 
"What it is, bro! Ok if I---sit in?" He saw somebody in a blond 
hippie haircut, floral bell-bottoms, and tropical shirt, with a dozen 
or so plastic leis piled up around his face and shoulders, plus some
pitch-black goggle-style shades and a straw hat, holding a 
banjo-ukulele of between-the-wars vintage. The hair turned out to 
be a wig, borrowed from Gretchen, who had also suggested Zoyd 
for sanctuary.
     "Man's after you, eh" smoothly, finding a lead sheet with, 
inevitably, uke diagrams on it. "How about this?"
     "Uh-huh!" the strange ukulelist replied. "But it'd be easier---in the 
key of G!" Ukulele talk, all right, the new sideman proceeding to turn 
in a respectable rhythm job on the old Hawaiian favorite 
"Wacky Coconuts," though when Zoyd took the vocal he got confused
enought to go back to the tonic and wait.


        Can't ya hear . . . them . . .
        (vumm) Uh Wack-ky Coconuts,
        (hm) Uh Wack-ky Coconuts,
        Thumpin' in a syn-copated island,
        Melodee . . .
        Con-tinuouslee. . . .

        Yes one by one those
        (vum) Wack-ky Coconuts,
        (vum) Wack-ky Coconuts,
        Fallin' on m' roof like the beat of some
        Jungle drum . . . (mm!)
        Vum-vum vum!

        Why won't those
        Ol' Wack-ky Coconuts, find some other place?
        Why should I remain in Wack-
        Ky Coconuts' embrace? Must be wacky 'bout

        (vum!) Wac-ky Coconuts,
        (vum!) Oh, those loco nuts,
        They're the coconuts
        For me!

Vineland, pgs. 65,66