The first time I heard an accordion being played I was amazed. My classmate Merv brought his accordion to school and at lunch time he opened up the strange looking curved case and pulled out a large, shiny, flexible device that emitted wheezy musical gasps as he hauled it onto his lap. Impressive? Who wouldn’t be impressed with its 1950s chrome-work, flecked plastic panels and stylish logo. It was like the dashboard of a Corvette! And what about all those buttons, keys and special rocker switches that Merv flicked to change the sound? It was like a portable Hammond B3 organ! His right hand danced over the standard keyboard and his left hand, playing the bass notes and chords, found the right black buttons out of a choice of hundreds of identical black buttons. Merv swept the ribbed bellows in and out, but somehow the accordion seemed like a living creature with a life of its own.
It went on expanding in one part and contracting in other parts, top and bottom, unpredictably like a rectangular octopus propelling itself this way and that, shooting out water jets and tentacles rhythmically but randomly.
And the sound! It rose and fell in waves. Rich and fruity like an orchestra made up of 100 haunted harmonicas. Then the tunes he could play… who wouldn’t weep at “Lara’s Theme” from Doctor Zhivago or tap along to the “Beer Barrel Polka”? As Merv was Polish, he would also tug at our heart strings with a few Polish folk songs. I can’t remember any of the names of these tunes. They were unpronounceable because of the number of continuous consonants unbroken by pesky vowels.
For some reason Merv seemed a bit sheepish about his accordion. Perhaps he felt it was a bit cheesy. He could play Beatles tunes on his squeeze-box but somehow neither The Rolling Stones nor Eric Clapton worked at all. Subsequently I discovered that accordions rank quite highly in cheesiness.
Accordion players I saw on TV had fixed processed cheddar smiles on their dials. There was no classical concentration or rock star angst for accordion players. The outlook was always bright and breezy and cheesy in accordion land.
I also noticed from TV that accordion players dressed strangely. They wore brightly coloured suits or the folk costumes of their native lands. Who can really focus on the music when the accordionist is dressed in those lederhosen leather breeches of Northern Europe? French accordion players usually wore a red beret and scarf and horizontal striped shirt in black and white to blend in with the black and white keyboard and to hypnotise their audience. But almost always they sported the same sugary grin. There are exceptions to the squeezebox smirk. For some reason accordion players who are buskers seldom smile. This puzzled me for quite a while until I realised that they were probably scowling because they received so little money for their labours. I have come to realise that not everyone is an accordion lover. Accordion buskers I have seen are probably saying to themselves over and over again “If only I had learned to play the banjo or the ukelele or the kazoo or anything else but the accordion”.
I once saw one grim looking accordion-playing busker wearing a court jester’s hat with bells on it, but he didn’t fool me. His accordion regret was palpable.
Some little known facts about accordions:
1. Very few accordion players have long beards.
The reason for this is obvious. Having your beard hairs pulled out by the bellows expanding and contracting is not a happy experience for the musical male. It also make makes sugary smiles simply impossible.
2. Painting the bellows with a syrupy scene or image or flag that swells and shrinks and reveals itself and then conceals itself may add interest for the audience (or not).
3. Small children who are ashamed of their accordion playing can always hide behind it showing only their hands and legs.
4. Elvis never play the accordion but Jimi Hendrix did. If you don’t believe me just Google Jimi Hendrix accordion. You will see the edited image which proves it to be true.
5. May 6th is World Accordion Day. It is promoted by the CIA.
The website claims this is the Confédération Internationale des Accordéonistes. Hmm.
-Geoff Milton
