Yes, that Dolph Lundgren – the guy who played “Ivan Drago” in Rocky IV and the cyborg preacher in Johnny Mnemonic. Here he is, bringing the house down with the long-underappreciated Elvis single as part of his co-hosting duties for Melodifestivalen, the event where the Swedish entry for the Eurovision Song Contest is chosen. He doesn’t just sing, he also dances, plays the drums, does some martial arts and rocks the black tie look:
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R.I.P. Pauly Fuemana
How could I not like OMC’s one hit, How Bizarre? It’s a catchy little pop tune penned by a Pacific Islander that features the accordion (the credits say that Hershal Herscher played it) prominently. Although it has a happy “Pacific Rim pop” sound with its C-G-F chord progression, its bounciness belies its subject matter: gang life and trouble with the cops, New Zealand style. It’s a gangsta campfire song!
Released in New Zealand in 1995, it went triple platinum there, an achievement that Wikipedia says had not been surpassed as of 2005. In 1996 it found its way into the Australian, British and Canadian charts and even did well in the U.S., despite its being released for radio airplay only and not as a commercially-available single. How Bizarre sold nearly 4 million records between 1995 and 2000, making it the best-selling one ever to be recorded and released by a Kiwi band. (Somewhere, the guys from Split Enz are fuming.)
Pauly Fuemana, the lead singer of OMC, died on Sunday shortly before his 41st birthday. For making an infectious tune with accordion that was a party standard during some of my partiest years, I pay tribute to him. Requiescat in pace, Pauly.
Here’s the video for How Bizarre:
No visit to Halifax is complete without a stop to the Lower Deck pub for a pint (or five), and no rock band is complete without an accordion. A fortunate combination of the two came about when I went to Halifax to help run TechDays there in early November, and it resulted in the performance recorded in the video above, in which I joined the band for a rousing and drunken version of Steppenwolf’s classic, Born to Be Wild. Let this be a reminder to you: the accordion is not just a machine that creates music; it also creates serendipity.
Oddly enough, the band had never played the number before, but that never deterred them from doing so in front of an audience, and they played it as if it were a well-established part of their repertoire. This is not the first time that this has happened either – the Zaitchik Brothers, the band at our wedding reception, had also never played Born to Be Wild before, but we brought the house down. I’ll have to post a video of that one sometime.
I think that there’s something so basic, so primal, so inherently rock-and-roll-y in Born to Be Wild that it’s encoded into the genetic memory of rock musicians and hence they can play it on command without having rehearsed it.
While walking back to the Queen Elizabeth Hotel from Centre Mont-Royal through Montreal’s network of underground shopping malls and Metro tunnels, we passed by this pair of buskers, who were burning up their frets with some very fast-paced jazz:
Christian suggested that I join them, and moments later, the bassist, guitarist and I agreed to do some high-speed 12-bar blues in E flat minor (they actually play in E, but they were tuned down a half-step).
I’m actually pretty terrible at improvising in that key, but I did my level best to keep up.
As I played, my co-worker Vivian snapped these photos with my camera.
These guys were quite good and played at a blistering pace.
I really should work on the keys in which I’m terrible at jamming: C sharp/D flat, D sharp/E flat, G sharp/A flat and A sharp/B flat. I have no idea why I’m better at other keys but not these ones. I suppose it just boils down to practice, practice, practice.
After a couple of minutes’ worth of jamming, we wrapped it up and shook hands. Christian threw a ten-dollar bill into their guitar case as a way of saying “thanks” for letting me join them in an impromptu performance and we continued on our way south through the tunnel.
In case I don’t say it enough: I love the accordion and what happens when I bring it along.
As a reader of this blog, chances are that someone read Goodnight Moon to you when you were a child:
And as a reader of this blog, chances are that you like offbeat humour and have at least a passing interest in rock and roll. This means that chances are you might enjoy the darkly amusing parody Goodnight Keith Moon:
Here’s a snippet showing the opening spread:
Quick cultural references: Keith Moon was the drummer for The Who and died of a drug overdose in 1978 in the same flat where “Mama” Cass Elliot (of The Mamas and the Papas) died four years earlier
GO!’s host Brent Bambury gets the audience warmed up before the show.
A little while back, Jeff Goodes, producer for CBC Radio One’s Saturday morning flagship show GO!, emailed me asking if I’d like to do a radio appearance on a show featuring some kind of music-related contest. I said “of course!” and ended up at CBC studios to record today’s episode earlier this morning.
GO!’s producer Jeff Goodes explains things to the audience before the show.
The theme of today’s show was “Spin the Wheel of GO!”, in which Wheel of Fortune- and I Ching-style randomness would supposedly determine what would appear and what would happen on the show. I had a lot of fun doing the show, and you can hear the fun by heading down to GO!’s audio archives, scrolling down to the show marked 11/21/2009 – Spin the Wheel of GO! and clicking the “Play” button.
When I arrived just after 8:30 a.m., I was escorted to the green room, where the indie-folk strains of Kate Rogers and her band could be heard as they performed a number for a sound check. It sounded great and I made a mental note to buy their CD after the show.
Kate Rogers and her band.
Kate Rogers (photo courtesy of the CBC).
I got to meet my fellow guests Teodora, who would be “competing” against me in musical trivia games, and Shin, a guitarist who’d just come to Accordion City from Japan. He would provide music for one of the music trivia games.
Shin playing guitar.
Shin (photo courtesy of the CBC).
At 9:30, after Brent and Jeff quickly gave the audience the “this is how things work on this show” explanation and handed out some prizes to the audience for answering trivia questions, and the recording session began.
Brent warms up the audience.
The first music trivia game that Brent had Teodora and me play was “The Japanese Guitarist”, in which Shin played slowed-down versions of popular tunes on guitar and sang the lyrics in Japanese. I scored half-points for identifying Flo Rida’s Right Round as Dead or Alive’s You Spin Me Round, the song from which Flo Rida took the sample.
Teodora (photo courtesy of the CBC).
I completely failed to identify the second song he played for me as Avril Lavigne’s Sk8r Boi, which I should’ve done, since I played the song on accordion on MuchMusic’s Much on Demand show a few years back.
Teodora and Brent.
Around that time, Katherine Burrell took a seat beside me at the table. She and Brent did a bit on Michael Jackson’s “Secret CIA file”, after which they cut to some music. During that lull, she took a closer look at my accordion, which I was wearing, and ran her hand down its side.
“Did you just stroke his accordion?” Brent asked, incredulously.
“I get that all the time,” I said, with what was probably a smirk. Ah, the things that never make it to broadcast…
Brent Bambury.
The next trivia game was “This Is It”, featuring questions about Michael Jackson. I cleaned up – and surprised myself – with the depth of my Michael Jackson knowledge.
Yours Truly (photo courtesy of the CBC).
The final trivia game was the “Foxy Roxy” game, in which Teodora and I answered questions about British art-rock band Roxy Music. I didn’t do too badly with this one, correctly identifying the Roxy Music single that Bill Murray performed at a karaoke bar in Lost in Translation as More Than This.
Yours Truly on accordion (photo courtesy of the CBC).
I did much worse with my attempt at performing Roxy Music’s Avalon on accordion. I have no idea why – for the most part, it’s a three-chord song that I should’ve been able to squeeze out in even the most drunken of states. I’m just terrible at playing songs in the key of F. Clearly I need more practice.
(I thought I did a half-decent job of emulating Bryan Ferry’s “I just had a good hard shag” vocals.)
I just hope that Bryan Ferry can forgive me for murdering his song.
After that, we had another performance by the Kate Rogers Band:
After which the show wrapped up and Brent tooks questions from the audience:
One of the questions from the audience was “Could we hear Joey do a full song?”, so I gave them the sure-fire number Baby One More Time, which got a lot of applause.
And before I left, Jeff snapped this photo of Teodora, me and Shin:
I’d like to thank Jeff Goodes and Brent Bambury for having me on the show, and all the CBC staff for making me feel welcome. Jeff, if you ever need me for more shows, you’ve got my number!
If you listen on CBC Radio One on Saturdays you’re in for a surprise: Yours Truly will be appearing on the Brent Bambury’s show Go! tomorrow. There’ll be musical merriment of all sorts. Go! broadcasts live at 10:30 a.m. Eastern, 11:00 in Newfoundland.