I’ve just received an invitation that should result in this year’s appearance on television, a regular part of my life since 1999. It has nothing to do with politics, either — this appearance is about The Instrument that Leads to Adventure and Free Beer: the accordion and rockin’ out on it.
Rest assured, as the World’s Most Humble Egomaniac™, I’ll go on about it well before it airs. More updates as events warrant.
Thanks to Peter Marmorek for the photo!
While I was busy celebrating my birthday last Saturday, others were
celebrating the accordion at the 8th Annual Northeast Accordion
Festival in Minneapolis. Dave “Dave’s Picks” Polaschek sent me this scan [244KB JPEG image] of a local newspaper that covered the event (click it to see it at full size):
I haven’t been practicing as much as I should lately. Getting married
and getting Wendy moved in really disrupted all sorts of routines,
wonderful as both were. I’m slowly in the process of resuming all sorts
of things, not the least of which is a little regular keyboard practice.
Living in a condo complicates the matter; prior to getting married, I
lived in a house that was very well acoustically isolated from the
neighbours. I’m quite sure that even at medium volume, all three
adjacent units would be able to pick up the sound of me working on my
rendition of Neil Diamond’s Cracklin’ Rosie.
I can at least keep my keyboard chops sharp thanks to a pair of
headphones and my collection of old-but-trusty synthesizers — a Korg Wavestation A/D rack and a even more old-school Korg Poly-800
that Steph Fox gave to me a couple of birthdays ago. Perhaps I should
take a peek at some software synths as well — I figure my PowerBook
(1.3 Ghz 12″ AlBook, 1.25G RAM) should be up to the task. Anyone out
there have any favourites?
I’m also getting a little more accordion practice now that I’m back to regular attendance at Kickass Karaoke at the Rivoli.
Wendy likes the opportunity to exercise her lovely singing voice in
public, and those who know me know how much I love being on stage.
Last Sunday’s session was a special treat. We got to take Dave from
Chicago over to his first Kickass Karaoke, and I also got a chance to
meet Bob “Let It Bleed” Tarantino,
one of the better and saner voices in the local right-wing blogosphere.
Carson covered mine and Wendy’s drinks as a birthday present to me
(thanks for the Jagermeister, Cars!) and the wind storm kept the crowd
to a minimum, giving me a chance to go onstage often and experiment
with a few numbers. I tried a couple of new ones, including Wheatus’
high school whine-anthem Teenage Dirtbag and the moshtacular Thunder Kiss ’65
by White Zombie. How Rob Zombie can vocalize through an entire concert
using that voice is beyond me; my vocal cords were shredded after that
one.
My friend and former housemate Paul Baranowski is a developer with Campware, an organization whose purpose is to “develop, distribute, support and implement useful tools for independent news media in emerging democracies.” As such, he keeps up with the literature on Open Source, such as O’Reilly’s book-in-progress, Open Sources 2.0: The Continuing Evolution.
The book’s introduction [link leads to a PDF file] covers the spirit of open source by describing the vibrant gift economy that exists within the annual bacchanal Burning Man, which takes place in Black Rock Desert, Nevada. I attended in 1999 — the year I took up the accordion — and as a result, make a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance on page XXXIV:
Unfettered from monetary exchange, however, most denizens of Burning Man gravitate toward a gift economy. Acts of giving range from the mundane to the extravagant: the accordion player who serenades those in the porta-potty line with his renditions of AC/DC; the massage therapist volunteering her services; the water-gun brigade, spraying people down for a moment of cool relief from the midday sun; or the man who brings along a week’s supply of dry ice so he can serve cold ice cream every day.
Inspired by both his wife Ashley’s take and my quick post on the tunes on his Clark [Hall Pub] Standards playlist, Chris “Turner” Turner has written up notes on his selections. He’s very kind to me in his writeup for Sloan’s unrequited university love anthem Underwhelmed and has one of the most bang-on summaries of Nine Inch Nails’ Head Like a Hole (which at the time, had probably never been played on accordion):
This was a mainstay of the Clark setlist during my first two years at Queen’s and my introduction to industrial. I liked it. It was far heavier than most of the hair metal I grew up on, but (at least on this track) much smarter and more insightful. Plus no clumsy references to Norse mythology or motorcycles.
I’m too tired to do a writeup now, but I have some photos of what
Thursday looked like. There are some previews below, but I suggest you
check out the larger photos in the photo album or as a slideshow. Full details to follow.
Click the photo to see the slideshow.
Click the photo to see the slideshow.
Click the photo to see the slideshow.
Click the photo to see the slideshow.
Click the photo to see the slideshow.
Click the photo to see the slideshow.