The Ukulele Expo's Santa Cruz Uke Fest West in 2004 created a huge spike in the population density of ukulele players around the Bay Area of California for the weekend of April 24. The event organizers' inability to say "no" had led to a staggering immigration of uke performers from the US and Canada, many of whom had high hopes about reaching an audience with their music...but most of whom had no idea that they would be sharing their limelight with a lineup of some 60 other musicians that would take nearly seven hours to get through.

RTU was not untouched by this. With the event originally conceived by the organizers as a special Rock That Uke-themed event, by the time the thing occured, we were relegated to a folding table in a sun-drenched, ceramic tiled room and, in a situation of almost Sisyphean taunting, equipped with a digital projector that had no cords or cables. Which is to say that no screening took place.

But then we were only coming from nearby Sacramento. Many of the performers who had come from a considerable distance were left with no opportunity to defray their travel costs through cd sales... and so they had to scramble to find other gigs in the area during the week.

And so it was that an RTU screening/concert was held in Berkeley at The Starry Plough pub, providing one of the more intimate and select events of this sort we've held. Nerves were frayed, spirits were bummed. But for us, it was still a fun event, as it always is when a number of the artists from the movie generously get together to perform under our banner. The audience certainly enjoyed it.

In keeping with the way things went that weekend, most of the pictures we took on our aged digital camera didn't come out. So we were left to further screw them up in Photoshop when we got home in an effort to make them look intentionally arty.