Greetings, pinch and a punch and all that.
Hope you're doing okay. Good weather abounds here in Amsterdam, which is grand, as Summer finally beckons us, which means knuckling down and finishing the to-do list of spring cleaning that has yet to be done, in order to get on with making a right summer mess, of course. It is the way. Speaking of which, advance notice that I will be away for not one, not two, but three consecutive Sundays in June - 15th, 22nd and 29th, so if you feel like giving us an administative hand for one or more of those Sundays, please let me know, I'd appreciate it.
"My first time picking, so hard to choose.
Then accordionist started dying this past few weeks, so that led me to put non-squeezebox choices on the shelf.
Bravely I offer perhaps my favourite from more than 5,000 accordion albums I own. This one helped kickstart the squeezebox obsession that got me into an almost 20 year radio “career”, a book, and otherwise spending an inordinate amount of time listening to other people playing this instrument. Still remains solidly not only one of my favorites, but one I recommend to people when I want to open their ears to the instrument a bit.
It's among the top “I didn’t know accordions could sound like that” records I know of. All acoustic, with no wild electronics on this one (those I have to save for other accordion records). It seems like a brave pick, it’s kind of long, we’re entering the CD era so they had 75 minutes to fill up, and did. There's lots of short pieces going from one flavour to another, so if one piece is annoying don’t worry it won’t last long. Feel free to put it on and do dishes or something. Turn it up and wait for somebody to walk by and say, “What are you listening to?” Great record for playing loud with the top down for the neighbourhood to hear.
There’s more than one accordionist/composer, so the texture gets rich and varied. If you look at the waveform you can see it's very healthy, and demonstrates the dynamic range of the instrument, with its ability to play quite loudly and very quietly.
Games to play:
a. How many accordions are there (varies on different pieces)?
b. Try to guess how many different composers there are in the group.
c. Where are the players from? What kind of instruments are they playing? (There’s I think one non-accordion in there.)
It’s a live recording taken from a series of shows. You can hear the performers having a good time, making a few mistakes, goofing a bit, and the audiences' response. Wish I could have been there.
There’s a film documentary about this tour that’s worth seeing. Just a joy."
Right then. Download's here, stream's below:
See you 20:00 BST (GMT+1)
