I’m Honoured

In the process of prototyping an application for Blogware (the blogging tool used in creating this blog) that made use of its stats package, I noticed some incoming referrals from Wikipedia, of all places. It turns out that I’m listed under the “Accordionists” section of the Accordion entry. I’m listed alongside some serious bright lights: Guy Klucevsek, Weird Al, Lawrence Welk and my accordion role models John Linnell (from They Might Be Giants, for making the accordion cool) and Art van Damme and Dick “Daddy-O” Contino (hipster accordion legends, who made the accordion sexy).

It’s sort of odd that I’m listed among these people: with the glaring
exception of me, they’re all pros; I’m an amateur and a seriously
goofball one at that. I’m deeply honoured.

Wikipedia, being a wiki, is designed to accepting editing and
contributions from anybody. One of the necessities of such a design is
a history for each entry, which allows you to see what changes were
made, when they were made and who made them. Thanks to the history page for the “Accordion” entry, I know that a contributor named Bob Jonkman added me to the list on April 13, 2004. Thanks, Bob!

I’ll have to add some people to the “Accordionists” list: Jason Webley and Domenic the Accordion Beatles Guy both of whom have been doing accordion rock far longer than I, Astor Piazzolla, the undisputed king of accordion tango. And I can’t forget my accordion partner in crime, Karl Mohr, without whom I wouldn’t have become the Accordion Guy.