Here’s a blast from the past: me with purple hair, rockin’ out at Queen’s Park on Saturday May 1st, 1999:
I had no idea what was coming up next.
Yesterday marked the 9th anniversary of my playing the accordion on the street for the first time. I’ve got a longer entry about that fateful Saturday, when my friend Karl Mohr and I took our accordions out on the street that morning and ended the day as goth rock stars, and I’ll post it this weekend.
Photo by Richard Lautens, Toronto Star.
I’m not the only accordion guy in town, and I’m glad to see some younger folks taking up the instrument. Here’s an excerpt from a Toronto Star article titled Squeezing Life Into His ‘Hood:
Ronen Segall uses his bright red accordion to inject life into his Huntley St. home near Bloor and Sherbourne Sts.
The 25-year-old is an information technology employee by day, but come the weekend he’s an accordion-squeezing entertainer. French favourites are always a crowd pleaser, he finds.
Segall played the piano for years but he was looking for a more portable way to share his love of music. He picked up his 48 bass-button piano accordion in Kensington Market about a year and a half ago.
He admits it takes a sense of humour to walk the streets with an accordion. But he is a social guy.
“I like talking with people. I think this breaks the ice.”
Segall can be hired to play events but doesn’t play for money on the street.
To earn cash as a busker, you need to crank out the show tunes, he explains, and he prefers songs from movies such as Amelie and the Oscar-winning tune “Falling Slowly” from the film Once.
Segall likes to play music on a stone bench in front of his home. “I think it adds a nice atmosphere to the street.” When he plays it’s common for people to stop, start a conversation and occasionally dance. “Old folks love to dance,” and a French tune is almost guaranteed to get them stepping, Segall says.
You can catch Ronen at the corner of Bloor and Brunswick on weekends or at Crêpes A GoGo in Yorkville. I salute him with a filet mignon on a flaming sword for his keeping the accordion alive!
[Thanks to vinyl demon for pointing me to this story!]
Eva sent me a note about this video, which features an accordion performance about the chemistry behind the coffee experience:
Accordions, coffee and science — three things I love!
For the curious, here are the lyrics to the coffee song in the video (the tune used is from Where Do They Make Balloons? by They Might Be Giants):
Coffee is acidic, its acidic taste comes
From acids lending protons to receptors on the toungue.
Longer roasting, finer grind, and brewing much more hot
Usually brings out more of the acid coffee’s got.Coffee has over 800 aromatic compounds
But only a few of them make the coffee smell, it’s found.
Compounds called the furans are the largest group, you see
They’re colourless, volatile, and smell quite caramely.Coffee, coffee is fun to drink.
Coffee, there’s more to it than you think.Compounds that contribute to bitterness include trigonelline,
Furfuryl alcohol, quinic acid, and caffeine.
Bitterness in coffee is associated with
More dissolved solids, and roasting for too long.Caffeine’s formula is C8H10N4O2.
It is coffee’s stimulant, my favourite molecule.
It bonds to the adenosine receptors in the brain,
Blocking the adenosine and keeping you awake!Coffee, coffee is fun to drink!
Coffee, there’s more to it than you think!
It’s a gorgeous spring day here in Accordion City. Now that I’m working at b5media, which is a stone’s throw away from my old busking haunt at Queen and Spadina (you can see a panoramic view of the corner here), I think I might take the ol’ office accordion (yes, I actually do keep a spare accordion at the office) out for some rockin’, street musician-style!
I’ve got plans to expand the repertoire by learning a number of songs from the videogame Rock Band, along with others — if you’ve got suggestions, let me know in the comments!
In the spirit of rockin’ out on the accordion, I’ll close with this photo of the accordion-powered gypsy punk band Gogol Bordello:
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia, by way of Boing Boing.
Someone I know by way of Miss Fipi Lele took the “I Walk the Line” photo of me and with a little Photoshop, gave me the Abbey Road treatment:
The Abbey Road cover features the Beatles walking in the other direction, but thanks to the power of Photoshop (well, actually Adobe Fireworks), it’s easy to flip the photo:
Photo by Sean Galbraith.
A couple of days ago, Sean Galbraith was cleaning out his parents’ house and came across his mom’s old Hohner Verdi IV accordion. She told him that it had one oiwner prior to her and she believes it’s from the early 1960s. She hasn’t played it in about 15 years and suggested that Sean find a good home for it. Sean sent me an email asking if I’d like to adopt it, and without hesitation, I said “YES!”
I dropped by Sean’s place last night to pick up the Hohner. I brought a pair of accordion straps, which was a good thing, as the original straps have long since worn away to almost nothing. I gave the accordion a test play and Sean took some photos, two which are shown here.
Photo by Sean Galbraith.
The accordion has a single set of reeds (no switches) and a full 120 bass buttons (which provide two rows of bass notes, major, minor 7th and diminished chords). All the keys and buttons seem to work, and I’ve been able to get decent volume out of it. Although it needs tuning — it has been lying dormant for 15 years, after all — it has that Hohner sound. I need to book some time to take it up to Caringi Accordion House in Woodbridge and have Mr. Caringi give it a tune-up.
The Hohner’s going to be an excellent addition to my collection. Sean, once again I’d like to thank you for thinking of me when you found the accordion. Rest assured, it’s found a home where it’ll be loved…and played!
Just as Big Gay Al has a gay animal sanctuary (see the Big Gay Al’s Big Gay Boat Ride episode of South Park for the whole story), I have a sanctuary for accordions…gay or straight.
If I ever release an album, this Johnny Cash-a-riffic photo that Morgan Johnston took of me in Austin will have to figure into the album art somehow:
Photo by Morgan Johnston.
Click on the photo to see it on its original Flickr page.
