No visit to Halifax is complete without a stop to the Lower Deck pub for a pint (or five), and no rock band is complete without an accordion. A fortunate combination of the two came about when I went to Halifax to help run TechDays there in early November, and it resulted in the performance recorded in the video above, in which I joined the band for a rousing and drunken version of Steppenwolf’s classic, Born to Be Wild. Let this be a reminder to you: the accordion is not just a machine that creates music; it also creates serendipity.
Oddly enough, the band had never played the number before, but that never deterred them from doing so in front of an audience, and they played it as if it were a well-established part of their repertoire. This is not the first time that this has happened either – the Zaitchik Brothers, the band at our wedding reception, had also never played Born to Be Wild before, but we brought the house down. I’ll have to post a video of that one sometime.
I think that there’s something so basic, so primal, so inherently rock-and-roll-y in Born to Be Wild that it’s encoded into the genetic memory of rock musicians and hence they can play it on command without having rehearsed it.
3 replies on ““Born to Be Wild”: Jammin’ with the Band at The Lower Deck, Halifax”
Looking forward to the day when the tracks from my Polka Haunt Us project are standards in the collective unconscious as well!
Different cast of characters (mostly). Much more booze. Same level of enthusiasm!
[…] It’s become a tradition that whenever my coworkers and I are in Halifax to hold the TechDays conference, we head to the Lower Deck – one of this fine city’s drinking establishments — on the evening of Day 1. Regular readers of this blog will remember last year’s performance, where I joined the band for a Blue Rodeo number followed by a rousing rendition of Steppenwolf’s B… […]