On Saturday, May 1st, 1999, I took the accordion out and played it in public for the first time. I soon discovered that I could wear it like a backpack when I wasn’t playing it, which made it convenient to take whereever I went. That in turn led me to discover that interesting things happen when you carry an accordion around on your back. Life hasn’t been the same since.
I’ve got two accordions — the original, a Titano two-reed student model, which I call the “Street Accordion” and a Crucianelli three-reeder, which is the “Club Accordion”, which I bought in November 2000. The Street Accordion is the better-travelled of the two, having accompanied me to New York City, Burning Man, San Francisco, L.A. and Prague. The Club Accordion’s been to San Francisco.
Here are some notable things people have said to me:
Can you actually play that?
Is that heavy?
It’s my birthday. Can you play Happy Birthday for me?
I’ll give you 20 bucks if you can play In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
I’ve never seen an Asian guy play an accordion before.
My Dad plays the accordion! (Usually a woman says this. I think it’s some kind of Elektra complex thing, which is good.)
That’s such a cool…what do you call that instrument?
I run a software company. Would you like a job? (I’ve been asked this at least a dozen times.)
(while pressing the keys when I’m not squeezing it) Howcum it’s not making any sound?
I thought I’d post the all-time-best accordion picture in my collection in honour of this event. It doesn’t have me in it, but it does have the accordion:
At the Tiki Hut, Burning Man 1999. Have I mentioned how much I love this instrument?
Thanks to everyone who took part in my accordion adventures. I’m certainly planning on having more.
There was the usual maze of registration booths at the ground floor of the Centre, but it turned out to be for a conference for estheticians and people who work at spas. The career fair, a sign pointed out, was in a single conference room in the basement. The sign also had a noted hastily taped to it that read “No IT firms today”, which left two categories, “Business” and “Engineering”. I could say that curiosity is what kept me interested in taking a look inside, but truth be told, I was more interested in seeing if Laura was still there.
There was a line of about 50 or 60 people leading to a single registration desk. You couldn’t enter the conference room without regsitering first, but I had no interest in putting up with a wait for something I wasn’t really interested in. If this were a conference and I had my accordion, I could do what I’ve done a couple of times: claim to be part of the show and that I was running late. It’s worked at a couple of Linux expos and DefCon.
I pulled my laptop out of my knapsack and walked up to the attendant minding the door. She looked me over. I wasn’t wearing a suit like everyone else at the show, but a vintage work shirt, skater-boy pants and running shoes. I also didn’t have a file folder full of resumes like everyone else.
“Hi. Nortel tech support,” I said, picking a likely company name. “Problem with one of our display computers.”
Please please please don’t ask me for some kind of ID, I thought.
“Can I get in? I’m running late, and if I don’t get that computer up and running, it’ll be bad karma.”
The attendant waved me through with a terribly disinterested look.
I went inside, and there was no Laura, and not much in the way of companies either. In the area for “Engineering” companies, there was a total of five companies. The pickings were evn slimmer for “Business”, where there were only three. I’ve seen livelier booths at a high school science fair. Nortel didn’t even have a booth here.
I decided to look around the “Engineering” section. It was a room full of people in ill-fitting suits carrying portfolios and drafting tubes. Nobody was looking particularly happy. I haven’t seen a room full of people this glum since I sat in the waiting room of a towing company a few years ago.
General Dynamics had the flashiest booth and the highest turnover. Being a weapons manufacturer, their security requirements couldn’t accept anyone who hadn’t been a Canadian citizen for at least five years, which apparently disqualified most of the people in the room, which skewed heavily towards middle eastern and south Asian.
“Damned bin Laden, he is screwing us all out of a job, eh?” said the only guy in the room who didn’t look morose. He must’ve thought I was also applying for work.
“I don’t know about you,” I replied, “but if the career fair’s like this, I’m thinking about opening a hot dog cart.”
A Google search for the word accordion currently puts me on the fifth page of results.
So for now, my Google claim to fame is that I have the Google search for the word accordion currently puts me on the fifth page of results.
A Google search for the mispelled version, accordian, places me on the first page, seventh item down. This would indicate that while my readership is a little low on the spelling skills, their taste is impeccable.
Here’s I photo I’d never seen until I ran a search for pictures from Burning Man 1999 using the non-word accordian:
My friend Anne works for Aerial Communications, the PR firm behind the Toronto dates of Jackie Mason’s latest stand-up comedy show, Prune Danish. She always gets tickets to any show promoted by her company and invited me along to see this one.
Mason comes from the great tradition of the comedians of the Borscht Belt, a vacation spot in the Catskills that became a popular destination for Jews starting in the 1950s. The hotels and resorts in the area hired Jewish entertainers to match their clientele, a lot of whom were stand-up comics. From the Belt came the great comic staples of observational humour (think Jerry Seinfeld and even Cory Doctorow) and aren’t-WASPs-funny jokes (think BET) that we take for granted today.
(I was probably the only Asian in the audience. Most of the audience looked as though they came from North York, which means their only encounters with Filipinos are usually with their housekeepers and nannies. I wondered if they thought I had the night off. “Did you press my shirts and get the kids’ lunches made already?”)
Mason put on a good show, starting with his traditional jabs at audience members in the front row and then going straight for the observational humour. While there’s nothing terribly ground-breaking in his material — the standard items from the news and ethnic jokes (there were moments he really sounded like Krusty the Clown, but then again, Krusty’s probably modeled after him, right down to the bit where he quit being a rabbi to go into comedy and making fun of foreign accents) — he still got a laugh out of the audience, who ages ran the gamut from university students to seniors.
I really liked the bit where he said that “only Gentiles think they have to sit in the airplane seat assigned to them”; it’s funny because it’s true.
There was a birthday party for my friend Marlo on Saturday. Dinner — which I missed, owing to some prior commitments — was at the anything-goes yuppie hangout Seven Numbers.
I caught up with Marlo and her entourage after dessert, at which point everyone decided that they wanted to go dancing. I suggested the neighbourhood I call “Clubland”, a busy row of bars and clubs just south of where I live. We were going to see if we could get into Fez Batik, and if the line was too long, we had at least a dozen other clubs from which we could choose.
The line for Fez wasn’t moving at all, so we decided to walk south and try our luck at the clubs on Adelaide Street. Luck was with us; while The Living Room had a decent crowd inside, there wasn’t any line.
Always let the ladies try your pimp hat on.
A brunette bartender in pigtails and olive green tank top motioned for me to come over to the bar.
“Can you play that thing?” she asked, pointing at my accordion, which I was wearing like a backpack.
“Yeah, otherwise it would just be a thirty-pound fashion accessory,” I replied.
“I’ll buy you a drink if you play something for me.”
I don’t remember what the DJ was playing at the time, but it was easy to figure out which key it was in. I remember the song having a simple riff and that I had no trouble playing it. The bartender was impressed and she poured two shots of Goldschlager — one for her, one for me.
A bearded man in a grey sharkskin suit walked up to me.
“That was great! By the way, I’m Tony. I run this place. Follow me to the DJ booth.”
I followed him through the crowded dance floor and into the booth.
It was occupied by the DJ and a couple of hangers-on. The DJ was
starting an old-school set with Prince’s Kiss. Tony asked the DJ for the microphone.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Tony announced, “please welcome the latest addition to The Living Room family…the Accordion Dude!”
I tipped my hat to the crowd. Tony pointed the microphone at the accordion and said “Go on, play.” Luckily, Kiss is a I-IV-V song, heavy on the sevenths, and it took me only two stabs at the keyboard to find the right key – A. I played through to the end of the song and even managed to get in a decent solo.
Tony led me to the bar on the opposite end of the dance floor, where he asked me to play something for the dreadlocked barman. I forget what the DJ was playing at the time, but once again, it was easy to figure out the notes and I played along. The earned me a free drink from this bartender, and Tony gave me a fistful of tickets good for free drinks. He then led me to the lounge near the front of the club to play for the bartender there. Marlo and company were in the lounge, so I gave them the drink tickets.
“When the accordion train comes in, everybody rides!” I said.
I managed to have a couple of vodka-and-cranberries with the birthday party before Tony came back with an idea.
“I’m gonna have you dance right on the main bar. It’ll be just like Coyote Ugly, but with an accordion.”
He put two crisp fifty dollar bills in my hand and led me to the bar with the pigtailed bartender who served me first. They cleared off a section of the bar for me, and I climbed up and played and danced.
The bartender, Jenn, kept feeding me Goldschlager shots. So far, I hadn’t spent a dime on drinks and I was actually making money.
Marlo had my camera and took a couple of pictures:
The guy in the sharkskin suit in the foreground? That’s Tony.
A couple of women reached up and tucked fivers in my pants. Inspired by this, Jenn climbed on the bar after last call and tucked my shared of the bar tips into my pockets while spanking me to the beat. This, of course, is why we boys take up playing instruments in the first place.
We decided to head out for some late-night eats after Jenn closed the bar. As I walked out, Tony asked me to meet with him later in the week to discuss a performance schedule. He wants me there every Friday and Saturday night.
I don’t really want to sacrifice my weekend nights to go-go dancing.
(I just read that last sentence and thought: That’s one of those things I never expected to write.)
As it gets closer and closer to the third anniversary of the day I first played the accordion in public, its powers to bend reality seem to be increasing. Life becomes more and more like a beer commercial every time I bring it out.
