Click the picture to see the video (26MB,
QuickTime)
Brian McKechnie pointed me to this video [26MB,
QuickTime] that he shot of my Baby One More Time performance at the end of
last week’s OPML
Thanks, Brian!
The accordion and I will be at Thursday’s TechTV
Meetup, which takes place at No Regrets, deep in “the dingy alleys of Toronto’s Porn
District”, Liberty Village
David Akin emailed me about this earlier today: yesterday in St. John’s, Newfoundland, almost 1,000 people gathered to play accordion simultaneously, breaking the previous world record of 644, set in Kimberley, British Columbia.
To qualify for the world record, you can’t just have a large number of accordion players gathered in one spot: according to this page
on the St. John’s Folk Festival site, they have to all play the same
orchestrated piece for a minimum of five minutes. The designated piece
is an old Newfoundland folk tune called Mussels in the Corner.
A number of the people in attendance were accordion owners but not
accordion players — many learned how to play the piece just days or
hours before the event.
Congratulations, folks! I would’ve loved to have been there.
[Thanks to David Akin for emailing me about this story!]
[Thank to abnu for the heads-up!] Back when we lived together during our stay at Crazy Go Nuts
University, George and I would stumble across a channel playing a rerun of The
Lawrence Welk Show while watching TV. Rather than quickly flip to
another channel, we’d sit there transfixed, watching this strange
little bit of Americana fixed in amber, and I suspect one of the
reasons was the gentleman pictured below, Myron Floren:
I am the polka king! I can do anything! In the heyday of The Lawrence Welk Show, he was mobbed by fans, just like a rock star!
Myron got his big break in the late 1940’s when he and his wife
attended a Lawrence Welk performance at the Casa Loma ballroom in St.
Louis. Welk invited him onstage to perform a number, and Floren chose
Lady of Spain which wowed the crowed. Impressed with the enthusiastic
reaction and Floren’s playing, Welk invited him to join the band that
night, and in 1950, Floren started a 32-year run on Welk’s show.
Even though polka isn’t really my thing, I am an admirer of Floren’s excellent
playing technique. The man’s fingers were a blur over the piano
keyboard and chord buttons, and he played a mean version of Beer Barrel Polka
(which you might know better as “Roll Out the Barrel”, which is
actually the first line of the chorus). He was also regarded as an
excellent conductor; it’s said he did a better job conducting with his
elbows (since his hands were occupied with the accordion) than most
bandleaders did with a free hand and a baton.
Floren is probably behind one of the major reasons that the accordion
is considered an old folks’ instrument. He cemented its reputation in
his three decades of bandleading on The Lawrence Welk Show,
which got cancelled in 1982 not because of flagging ratings, but
because it was considered “too old” for advertisers. In spite of this,
I owe Mr. Floren a debt of gratitude, for without the image of the
accordion that he firmly implanted in the minds of generations of North
Americans, my own approach to the accordion — as well as those of “Weird Al” Yankovic, They Might Be Giants, Tom Waits or The Arcade Fire — wouldn’t be as special. Without him, we’d be players of yet another ordinary instrument, such as drums, bass and guitar.
Myron Floren died last Saturday at the age of 85 at home in Los Angeles County.
He is survived by his wife, five daughters and seven grandchildren. May
the bellow action be smooth and the reeds be true whereever you are,
Mr. Floren!
I’ll be performing a couple of vaudeville numbers at the upcoming Girlesque burlesque show taking place this Friday evening at the Gladstone Hotel (1214 Queen Street West,
at the corner of Queen and Dufferin). This one’s got a theme that
should be pleasing to all you geeks out there: Science Fiction!
I did a rehearsal with performers Penny Whistleton, Mysterion the Mind Reader
and The Wolfman, and the songs that Wolfie wrote are spot-on sci-fi and
absolutely hilarious! If you’re seeking out-of-the-ordinary
entertainment, this Friday’s burlesque show (featuring Yours Truly)
might be just what the doctor ordered!
While taking AKMA and Margaret on a tour of College West, AKMA was telling me about his surprise at how much I like AC/DC’s Back in Black (presumably based on his reading this article). I was about to answer when we passed by a sidewalk patio where my friend Erik Mohr,
his wife Tanja and some friends of theirs were enjoying a late dinner
and some drinks. Erik called me over to their table, introduced me to
his friends and asked if I could play a number for them.
“Any number in particular you’d like to hear?” I asked.
Erik turned to his friends. “He doesn’t do polka, but rock. He can play anything,” he said, which isn’t true.
“Okay, then…how about some AC/DC?” his friend asked, apparently believing that he’d thrown down a gauntlet.
“Sure,” I said. I could see AKMA rolling his eyes.
I started into You Shook Me All Night Long
which always gets laughs from new listeners and got the rest of the
patio either singing or clappong along. During all this, AKMA captured
a moment, pictured below:
Click the picture above to see the photo from AKMA’s Flickr collection.
As for AKMA’s musical tastes, you can get a feel for them by checking out this blog entry of his.
(AKMA, dude, you’re probably an AC/DC fan who doesn’t even know it.
I mean, you throw the horns…even in church! If that’s not an AC/DC
fan, I don’t know what is!)…
Documented proof that AKMA throws the horns. “Hells’ Bells…Satan’s comin’ for you…” Click the picture to see the original photo from AKMA’s Flickr set.
I’ve referred you to Human Events Online’s list of the “most harmful books of the 19th and 20th centuries”. I’ve also referred you to the counter-list posted on the blog Ghost of a Flea, which lists what the Flea considers to be the most helpful books of the past 200 years. For the record, I agree far more with the Flea’s picks.
However, the books on both sets of lists are about Big Ideas:
large-scale concepts that often touch on our lives in a rather indirect
fashion. “Yes, John Maynard Keynes, Charles Darwin and John Stewart
Mill have all been important thinkers,” you’re probably thinking, “but
will they help me find a new job, get in shape or…you know, meet chicks?“
Okay, maybe you’re not thinking that. I’m not (anymore). But those of
us who are still eligible bachelors probably are. Looking through their
C.S. Lewis, they’re probably screaming “Dammit, Clive! Less tape, more screw!“
A friend of mine — a charming, perfectly nice, well-educated gentleman
to whom I’ll refer to as “Diego” — if asked to compile a list of
candidates for most harmful books of the 21st century (yes, it’s a
little bit early, but why wait?), would say that this book deserves the
number one spot:
Diego claims that He’s Just Not That Into You
has poisoned the dating landscape. The basic premise of the book is
sound: if a guy doesn’t put much effort into the relationship, it means
that he’s not into you. The problem, Diego says, is that the book
(whose popularity was no doubt helped by the fact that one of its
authors wrote for Sex and the City) has raised the bar on what one has to do to prove that he’s truly “into you”.
“Returning her calls, dinner and a movie — those used to be the
baseline,” he said, “but not anymore. Everything has to be a event. If
you haven’t somehow planned a date to be some kind of production, they think you’re just not trying hard enough anymore.”
After saying this, he put a bid on a hot-air balloon ride for two at the auction at the singles charity event we were attending.
A couple of women approached me at that point and asked if they could
touch my accordion. This led to a conversation to which I invited
another single gentleman friend of mine — whom I’ll call Bilbo — to
join. These days, I use the hook-up powers of the accordion to benefit
my single friends. The Universal Code of Dudes demands it.
Without the accordion, that conversation never would’ve happened. Yes,
I like to think I’m a sharp-looking fella who was snappily dressed at
the time, but it was a singles event where another fifty or so guys
were — depending on your tastes — equally handsome and stylish. If
the accordion didn’t give me some kind of edge and the ability to turn
ordinary evenings into unusual events (here’s an example), I wouldn’t drag its thirty pounds of bellows, reeds and mechanics whenever I went out on the town.
Maybe Diego’s right.