…is now available for the first time in photo album or slideshow form.
Category: Accordion, Instrument of the Gods
For those of you who do not live in Accordion City or its environs,
you might not be aware that The Maple Leafs won the playoffs against
the Ottawa Senators on Tuesday. This city is famous for loving its
hockey team as a mother loves her ne’er-do-well son, so even though there’s a long way to go
before the end of the playoffs, the streets went wild with the sounds of revelry.
Paul and I decided to enjoy some of the post-victory partying, so we
decided to go out, find a bar and hoist pints of ale with whatever
celebrants we could find. We walked south on Spadina to recharge our
wallets at the nearby ATM when we ran into the first partier of the
evening:
“Duuuuuuuuuuuuude!”
The streets were filling with cars full of fans waving Maple Leafs
flags, honking their horns and yelling “Go Leafs go!” I managed to whip
up more than a few into a frenzy of screaming, honking and high-beam
headlight flashing by playing the “Spanish Bullfight Chords”
followed by the “Charge!” theme on the accordion. I got an even better
response by playing the theme to Hockey Night in Canada, [261K MP3] which might as well be our second national anthem.
The bars on Queen Street were a little quiet for our liking. This
shouldn’t have come as a surprise, as Queen Street West is home to
hipster/live music bars, not sports bars.
“We need a bar where a man can drink plebian ales, wear his baseball cap backwards and enjoy the company of comely puckbunnies,” I said in my best beer commercial voice.
“Hooters!” said Paul.
“You, my good friend, are a genius.”
You’d think that Hooters (where I usually meet our family’s
insurance agent Art — it’s his favourite place to meet with his male
clients, including Dad) would be packed on a game 7 playoff night.
However, that wasn’t the case; only a handful of tables were occupied,
and they were all being watched over by a couple of waitresses with
little to do.
We looked across Adelaide Street and saw that the Fox and Fiddle was
hopping. We went inside and took a couple fo stools at the upstairs
bar. Paul noticed that the stage was set up for a band and pointed it
out.
“I wonder…” I said, looking around until I saw the poster: “JAM NIGHT: Bring an instrument or come sing”.
Bingo.
The band was called Sonic Playground,
and their first set consisted of pop and rock cover tunes, all played
note-perfectly. You could tell by their way they played and
communicated with each other using nods and sidelong glances that they’d been playing together quite regularly for some time.
We decided to get a seat closer to the band. The area around the
stage was full of underweight women wearing slightly-too-small Maple
Leafs t-shirts and their overweight boyfriends wearing waaay-too-large
Maple Leafs jerseys. We found a table occupied by a girl sitting alone and asked if we could join her.
“Sure,” she said, looking at the display of her cell phone intensely, “I’m just waiting for a friend.”
“It looks like we have an accordion in the house!” said Sheri, the band’s lead vocalist. “Are you gonna play some polka?”
“AC/DC!” I yelled back.
“This oughta be good,” said Jay the guitarist.
The band finished its first set and took a quick break, after which
they started going through the list of people who wanted to sing or jam
with the band. Although I was not the first to get to the list, the
people before me signed up for the fourth, fifth or sixth slots; no one
wated to be first. Sicne the first slot was open, I took it.
“Let’s hear it for the guy with accordion!” Sheri said as I took the stage.
“You Shook Me All Night Long, right? In the original key?” asked Peter the bassist.
“Original key, G, yeah,” I replied, to which I got a nod and the opening guitar chords.
Here’s a still photo of what it looked like…
“I’d like to dedicate this number to a specific owner of American thighs…”
…and here’s a video [3 MB, MPEG; the sound is quite distorted, so turn your volume down].
You Shook Me All Night Long
is a guaranteed crowd pleaser just about anywhere in the world, and
when done with an accordion, the crowd reaction is always better. The
band want kind enough to let me have the solo, and I think Angus Young
would’ve approved of my work that night.
At the end of the number and after the applaused died down, I was about to step off the stage when Sheri and Jay stopped me.
“Hey! Why don’t you stay on and do another number with us?”
“I’d love to,” I replied. “Which one?”
“You pick,” said Jay.
“Hmmm…what do you guys know?” Noting that they were pretty
up-to-date with their cover tunes, I took a wild guess. “I do a pretty
decent version of Outkast’s Hey Ya…”
“Hey! We do that!” said Sheri.
“Okay, then…Hey Ya! One, Two, Three, UH! My baby don’t mess around because she loves me so and this I know fo’ sho’…”
Most of the bar got up and danced for this number. Years of being a
street musician served me well for this number: I managed to dodge out
of the way as a big guy in a Tie Domi jersey tripped ands fell onto the
stage while trying to impress the puckbunnies with fancy footwork.
All right, now fellas! What’s cooler than bein’ cool? SQUEEZE BOX!
All in all, a fun Tuesday evening. Perhaps I’ll have to drop by during their next jam night appearance (Tuesday, May 4th).
Here are some photos of me and The Redhead at the wedding of my friends Ashley Bristowe and Chris “Turner” Turner (author of the upcoming book Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece Documented an Era and Defined a Generation), which took place in early January in the beautifully mountainous Canmore, Alberta:
“My baby don’ mess around because she loves me so, and this I know fo’ sho’…”
I don’t think this even needs a caption. Oh, what the hey: this photo is proof positive that if Tony Pierce and I were to team up, we would be unstoppable. How ’bout it, Tony?
The Redhead and me, taking in the after-dinner speeches.
Awwwwwwwww…
Saturday, April 17th, 2004 — 8:15 a.m. to 8:45 a.m.
Dave Winer, discussion leader
- This is a user’s
conference, not a developer’s conference. There are plenty of
conferences catering to developers, but few address the concerns and
needs of the users. Yes, as bloggers, we’re all users, but it’s too
easy for us to think like developers.
- The sessions are discussion groups — there are no “panels”
nor “speakers”; just a discussion leader and all of you, the
participants.
- Everything said is on the record and for attribution. You need to explicitly state it if you want to say something off the record.
- We’ve got lots of interesting people here, including
- Jeff “Buzzmachine” Jarvis — “Big Media is your friend”
- Dan Gillmor
- Rebecca MacKinnon, leading the International Blogging discussion
- Things to consider through the course of the day:
- Can we make money out of blogs?
- Compare our ideas and experience
- How are we better than other media? How are we worse?
- At the end of the day, can we get a list of deliverable:”If we
only had this and this…”, “Here’s what we need as an industry…”
- The Star Spangled Banner played by Yours Truly on the Crucianelli accordion (a.k.a. “The Good One”).
I heard via Boing Boing that “Weird Al” Yankovic’s parents died from
carbon monoxide poisoning in their sleep on April 9th. Having recently
dealt the possibility of losing a parent, I have a faint idea of the
pain he must be feeling right now.
In spite of this, he says that he’s not cancelling any of his tour
dates (he is taking some time for himself by cancelling all interviews
and other PR-related activites). He’s also encouraging people to buy
carbon monoxide detectors for their houses.
From one accordion player/parodist to another, my heart goes out to you, Al.
Be sure to read Weird Al’s message to his fans.
“Come home with me! I’ll give you…THREE DOLLARS…”
[ via del.icio.us, which I really need to use more often ] How to use a hand puppet to meet, attract, and date tons of single women. Here’s the relevant snippet:
Puppet Method” to meet single women in nightclubs. Here’s how he does
it:
-
First, you will need a hand puppet. You can buy them at your major toy stores such as Toys R Us.
-
Bring your hand puppet with you to a nightclub where there are lots of single ladies.
-
When you see a girl that you’re attracted to, approach her and tap her
on the shoulder lightly with your puppet and when she turns around
raise your hand puppet towards her face and say something like this
with your puppet, “Hi beautiful, would you like to dance with me?” Move
your puppet up and down with your hand as you are saying your script
just as if the puppet was really talking. And be sure to talk in a real
silly voice.
-
What happens next? She’s going to die laughing and think that you are
so funny. Plus, you will make a very favorable impression on her
because women love a guy with a sense of humor. And, of course, she
will most likely dance with you.
I know this method of meeting single women seems a little silly, but
try it. It works like a charm for my friend and it can work for you
too.
I’ll bet this could be turned into a decent social experiment / paying newspaper article. Hmm…
Tomorrow night is the monthly Kickass Karaoke at the Bovine Sex Club. Carson’s got some new CDs that don’t yet appear in the master list — included are The Darkness’ I Believe in a Thing Called Love, the White Stripes’ The Hardest Button to Button and Outkast’s Hey Ya, which Wil and I tried out last Sunday with him on lead vocals and me on accordion, chorus and yelling “Ice! Cold!” in response to “What’s cooler than cool?!”
(Maybe I could change my nickname to “Accordion Guy 3000”.)
I’ll try the Hey Ya solo (don’t think Wil will be there) and I’m sure Meryle will tackle I Believe in a Thing Called Love with her usual aplomb.