If you plan to attend next Tuesday’s open mic night — a.k.a. “Geeks and Guitars” at the Press Club (850 Dundas Street West, between Manning and Euclid), you have an assignment.
Make sure you are familiar with these two chords, E and A:
Those two chords are all you need for a number of songs, including one I’d like to try: The Gourds’ version of Snoop Dogg’s Gin and Juice.
After a long period of relative inactivity, I’m getting back into accordion practice and plan to play way more often this year. It’s time to kick the ol’ squeezebox old school!
“That’s the last of the boxes, Mom!” I said as I walked through the front door of my parents’ house. It was spring cleaning day, and my job was to take junk out of the basement and bring to to Goodwill.
The older British man sitting in the kitchen looked at me with a somewhat perplexed expression as I poured him his cup of tea. He was my sister’s friend’s father, and he had come to pick up his daughter’s belongings. She had no place to store her stuff while she was off in Nairobi, and my sister had volunteered the space.
“Oh,” I said, realizing what he was looking at, “the purple hair. It’s an experiment.”
“It’s…er, jaunty,” he replied. “Really comes out on a sunny day like today. You don’t find it…shall I say, career-limiting, do you?”
“Not really. I’m a computer programmer, and I run my own business with a friend.”
“And your clients?”
“They don’t have a problem with it, either. In fact, I think it reassures them. They’re not just buying our services, they’re also buying a bit of that Wired magazine image, too.”
He smiled, and Mom entered the kitchen.
“Joey, is that accordion in the foyer yours?” she asked.
“Yes it is. Isn’t it a beauty?”
“It’s nice. I didn’t know you played.”
“I don’t. Not yet, anyway. Karl and I are going to try busking on the street today.”
“Really? What will you play?”
“I know some chords to some pop and rock songs. Simple stuff. We’re just going to try it out and see what happens.”
“Who’s going to sing?”
“It might have to be me. Karl seems to know only the lyrics to his own music.”
“You? Sing? Uh-oh…” she said with a smile.
As sensational as the topic of cyberbullying is in light of the Kathy Sierra incident, I believe it’s still the exception rather than the rule. Here are the statistics on threats I have received:
Number of times I have received threats because of my accordion playing on the street: 6 since May 1, 1999, the day I first took the accordion out on the street.
Number of times I have received threats because of my blogging: 1 since November 10, 2001, the day of my first blog post. The threat (a vague one at that) is chronicled in the article At Last, My Blog Lands Me in Hot Water!.
Number of people who’ve taken joy in my misfortunes online: Only one that I’m aware of. She wrote in response to the article What happened to me and the new girl (or, “The girl who cried Webmaster”), one of my weirder moments. Go read the article if you’ve never done so before; I’ll write more about the online schadenfreude later.
Update, March 14, 2007: D’oh! I completely missed this comment for the original post — Kim Scarborough was actually the first person to point out where the “Stretch Accordion” picture comes from. My apologies.
Hanan Levin emailed me and let me know where the “Stretch Accordion” picture comes from: it’s a piece titled Virtuoso by visual artist/avant-garde musician Christian Marclay for this exhibition:
Thanks, Hanan!
I’m going to have to learn how to leave tips that scream “Accordion Guy appreciates your service!”, like the one in the video below:
Other interesting cash origami can be found at this article on the Personal Finance Advice blog.
Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.