Category: Music

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Accordion, Instrument of the Gods It Happened to Me Music Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

The Accordion Report

While I was busy celebrating my birthday last Saturday, others were

celebrating the accordion at the 8th Annual Northeast Accordion

Festival in Minneapolis. Dave “Dave’s Picks” Polaschek sent me this scan [244KB JPEG image] of a local newspaper that covered the event (click it to see it at full size):

Photo: Newspaper clipping showing Northeast Accordion Festival on November 5th, 2005 in Minneapolis.

I haven’t been practicing as much as I should lately. Getting married

and getting Wendy moved in really disrupted all sorts of routines,

wonderful as both were. I’m slowly in the process of resuming all sorts

of things, not the least of which is a little regular keyboard practice.

Living in a condo complicates the matter; prior to getting married, I

lived in a house that was very well acoustically isolated from the

neighbours. I’m quite sure that even at medium volume, all three

adjacent units would be able to pick up the sound of me working on my

rendition of Neil Diamond’s Cracklin’ Rosie.

I can at least keep my keyboard chops sharp thanks to a pair of

headphones and my collection of old-but-trusty synthesizers — a Korg Wavestation A/D rack and a even more old-school Korg Poly-800

that Steph Fox gave to me a couple of birthdays ago. Perhaps I should

take a peek at some software synths as well — I figure my PowerBook

(1.3 Ghz 12″ AlBook, 1.25G RAM) should be up to the task. Anyone out

there have any favourites?

I’m also getting a little more accordion practice now that I’m back to regular attendance at Kickass Karaoke at the Rivoli.

Wendy likes the opportunity to exercise her lovely singing voice in

public, and those who know me know how much I love being on stage.

Last Sunday’s session was a special treat. We got to take Dave from

Chicago over to his first Kickass Karaoke, and I also got a chance to

meet Bob “Let It Bleed” Tarantino,

one of the better and saner voices in the local right-wing blogosphere.

Carson covered mine and Wendy’s drinks as a birthday present to me

(thanks for the Jagermeister, Cars!) and the wind storm kept the crowd

to a minimum, giving me a chance to go onstage often and experiment

with a few numbers. I tried a couple of new ones, including Wheatus’

high school whine-anthem Teenage Dirtbag and the moshtacular Thunder Kiss ’65

by White Zombie. How Rob Zombie can vocalize through an entire concert

using that voice is beyond me; my vocal cords were shredded after that

one.

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Music

Boston: See the Ramoniacs this Sunday!

Listen to the bear: punk rock lives!

Gabba Gabba Bear!

That’s my brother-in-law, Andy, who plays bass for the Ramoniacs. The Ramones may no longer be around, but these guys are still beatin’ on the brat with a baseball bat in Boston.

If you’re in the Boston area, you can catch the Ramoniacs this Sunday at The Rack (24 Clinton Street) at the Battle of the Bands. Cheer loudly, expose body parts and throw women’s underwear at Andy in Tom Jones style — he’d appreciate that.

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Music Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

"I need to dress up like an idiot and get beerlarious"

This Sunday, a special “Scare-e-oke” Hallowe’en edition of Kickass Karaoke will take place at the Rivoli.

Host Carson T. Foster has requested that women dress like tramps and men dress like women. In other words, business as usual.

The fun starts at 9:00 p.m., and Wendy and I plan to be there.

I have no Hallowe’en party plans for Saturday night, so if any of my friends/readers are reading this, let me know of any party action that you’re aware of. In the words of my friend Charles G. Watson, “I need to dress up like an idiot and get beerlarious.” I’ll bring Wendy, scintillating conversation, booze and an accordion.

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In the News Music

Also Vying for the Title of "The Rodney Dangerfield of Instruments"

Google for the phrase “Rodney Dangerfield of instruments” and you’ll get results for:

  • accordion (of course)
  • harmonica
  • banjo
  • viola
  • trombone
  • double bass
  • and the ukelele

This one goes out to Mark Frauenfelder, founder of Boing Boing  and uke player — Today’s edition of the National Post covers the poor ukelele, an instrument whose reputation was nearly destroyed without hope for rehabilitation by Tiny Tim. Even the combined forces of Urkel, Weird Al and Myron Floren didn’t do as much “de-cooling” to my beloved accordion.

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Accordion, Instrument of the Gods Music

Turner’s Take on the Clark Hall Pub Hitlist

Inspired by both his wife Ashley’s take and my quick post on the tunes on his Clark [Hall Pub] Standards playlist, Chris “Turner” Turner has written up notes on his selections. He’s very kind to me in his writeup for Sloan’s unrequited university love anthem Underwhelmed and has one of the most bang-on summaries of Nine Inch Nails’ Head Like a Hole (which at the time, had probably never been played on accordion):

This was a mainstay of the Clark setlist during my first two years at Queen’s and my introduction to industrial. I liked it. It was far heavier than most of the hair metal I grew up on, but (at least on this track) much smarter and more insightful. Plus no clumsy references to Norse mythology or motorcycles.

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It Happened to Me Music

Clark Hall Pub Hitlist

Ashley Bristowe writes up Chris Turner’s Clark Standards Songlist, a compilation of the big hits at Clark Hall Pub, the engineering student-run bar at Crazy Go Nuts University where Turner and I used to DJ. The list covers Ashley’s stay there, 1991 through 1996, which overlaps significantly with mine (1987 – 1994; I DJ’d at Clark from 1989 through 1994). On the list:

  • Jesus Built My Hotrod – Ministry
  • Head Like a Hole – Nine Inch Nails
  • Debaser – Pixies
  • Cannonball – The Breeders
  • Elephant Stone – The Stone Roses
  • There’s No Other Way – Blur
  • Loser – Beck
  • Sabotage – Beastie Boys
  • Jump Around – House of Pain
  • Hobo Humpin’ Slobo Babe – Whale
  • Been Caught Stealing – Jane’s Addiction
  • Big Time Sensuality – Bjork
  • Underwhelmed – Sloan
  • Supersonic – Oasis
  • Basket Case – Green Day
  • Miss World – Hole
  • Homeboy – Adorable
  • Supernaut – 1000 Homo DJs
  • It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine) – R.E.M.

The list is pretty good, but needs Ween’s Push Th’ Little Daisies, Front 242’s Headhunter 3.0, Rick James’ Super Freak, KMFDM’s Godlike and They Might Be Giants’ Birdhouse in Your Soul for good measure.

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Music

Canadian 80’s Flashback

Today’s a bit of a busy day for me, so in lieu of the standard-issue scintillating post, here’s a gift from the 1980’s Canadian Rock archives: Wind Him Up [8.0MB, MP3] by Saga. 

Saga were David Hasselhoff before David Hasselhoff: almost unnoticed in their own home country, a big hit in Germany. Wind Him Up is one of their best known songs and had an unusual topic — gambling addiction.

This one goes is dedicated to good ol’ Will Horne from Science ’91 (where I am listed as “professional eccentric” on the “Where are they now” page), who constantly played Saga on his stereo in our Crazy Go Nuts University residence, Leonard Hall, back in first year.