A Mad, Mad World

Connecting the Polka Dots

“Polkaholics”, the new documentary by filmmaker Wes Hranchak premieres this Friday at the Chicago International Movies and Music Festival. This loving tribute and celebration of polka tells the story of L’il Wally Jagiello and his coming together for a show with the Polkaholics at Zakopane Lounge in Chicago.

I have had the pleasure of sharing the stage with the Polkaholics. They dish up high octane rock polka. Leader Dandy Don Hedeker, besides being a shredding rock/polka guitarist and professor of biostatistics, is a super knowledgeable polka fanatic historian.

The Polkaholics most recent CD is “Wally!” – an original Polka-Rock Opera that tells the story of Li’l Wally’s Chicago polka glory and Florida sunset.

Read the cool Chicago TimeOut article.

I highly recommend catching this band in the act!

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GDub and I met Stefan Hiss and his band “Hiss” back in 1997 when we were in Germany visiting my sister who is a friend and fan. In fact, Stefan played her wedding 2 years later in 1999. They dished up a rousing night of music and I danced like a wild woman.

We’ve stayed in touch since and whenever we travel to my sister’s home outside of Stuttgart we usually get a visit in with Stefan to talk “music” and swap our current CDs.

Stefan’s latest band is “Los Santos” and he just mailed me their new CD entitled “Blue in Hawaii”. It’s a Western/ Tex-Mex celebration performed by stellar musicians. Instrumentation includes pedal steel, ukulele, dobro, banjo, and of course, accordion – Stefan Hiss is an amazing accordionist!

The fifteen tracks include, “My Wife Thinks Your Dead”, “Rag Mop” and “Deja Que Salga La Luna” plus three Hiss originals, “Blue Hawaii”, “Twisting in the Taiga” and “El Mezquite”.

One of my personal favs on the album is “Johnny Guitar” (a great tune written by Peggy Lee and Victor Young for the 1954 movie). They’ve capture just the right amount of “Out West” surrealism.

And their version of “Rag Mop” swings!

So LISTEN to THIS: “Blue in Hawaii” by Los Santos.
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Los Santos play “Rag Mop”:

Stefan Hiss playing one of his original tunes: “Tanz aus meinem Grab” (Dance on My Grave):

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We’d love to hear from you on the subject. And we’re making it easy for ya. Our pal, Sean Pete of It’s Not Art has set up a survey to take a look at what motivates, encourages, drives and/or deters music fans to attend live music events.

All answers are confidential. We absolutely will not use your info for any other reason but to help us discover what gets a music lover out of the house and into a club, festival, concert or other venue.

Please take the Live Music Survey and share your thoughts on what makes a show worth attending.

Live Concerts. Better than staying at home.

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The Mad Maggies’ mascots are a tiding of magpies and “Death” – our memento mori beanie baby.

As you can imagine, Death especially enjoys this time of year. He suggested I post these fascinating celebrations of things skeletal.

• The oldest instrument discovered is a flute made from the wing bone of a griffon vulture some 40,000 years ago!

• 7 Wonders of the (Un)Dead World: Global Ossuaries — very large assemblages of bones. Part kitsch, part morbid, part profound commentary on the mysteries of existence.

• The offical website of the Sedlec Ossuary in the Czech Republic. Don’t miss the chandelier made from all the bones of the human body!

This is a short tourist’s youtube of the Sedlec Ossuary:

• Bonfire is a translation of the Irish “tine cnámh” (CHIN-e kuh-NAW*V) meaning bone fire. The farmers slaughtered at this time of year in preparation for the long Winter. On Oiche Shamhna (EE-HUH HOW-NA), October 31st, each village built a large ritual fire on which the animal bones were thrown. All household fires were extinguished and then each household took from the village bonfire to restart their hearths. We’d call it a community building exercise

• Death is always on stage with us, sometimes sitting downstage by the tip basket, sometimes up high on a speaker. Check him out next time you come to one of our shows.

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For anyone who’s been in a band.
For anyone who has had a dream and a passion.
For anyone who has grown older.
For anyone curious about what it takes to stay true to one’s artistry.

movie website

official trailer on youtube

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Sebastien Soldevila et Emilie Bonnavaud du collectif de cirque Les 7 doigts de la main ont remporté la médaille d’or lors du Festival Mondial du Cirque de demain à Paris 2007. Sur une mise en scène de Shana Carroll. Musique : Robert Skoro.

Wow!

(Thanks to Derek Sivers for Twittering about this.)

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What can I say? I love to dance and I love watching good dancers.

James Brown was one of the very best! He was in his body completely.

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A great big tip of the porkpie to GW for a mid-day alert yesterday to last night’s Brave Combo show. Brave Combo is one of those handful of bands I’ll see any time I can. The first time I saw them was in Wyoming. To close the show, they capped off the Duck Dance by going out into the parking lot in sub-zero weather and the entire audience followed. They’re that sort of band. The second time I saw them was shortly after I moved to San Francisco. Polkacide opened for them at the Great American Music Hall. So many people were so joyously dancing that I thought the floor would collapse, and I thought, I’m living in the right place now. The next time I saw them the Mad Maggies opened for them on a Monday night, and they still put on a show of non-stop rock-&-roll polka love-drug joy. Honestly, I can’t imagine what sort of person would not enjoy a Brave Combo show.

Last night in addition to Maggie, Gary and polka stalwart Sean Pete were polka royalty known and unknown to me. I resisted the dance floor for a few numbers, but when the band played a twist I could no longer hold back. One of the most inspiring things about Brave Combo is their ability to keep a happy dance beat going apparently forever. The word indefatigable does not seem out of place here; Gary quite straight-forwardly calls them pitiless monsters. Due to the closure of the Bay Bridge, I gave my driver the night off and took public transportation, and thus had to leave Slim’s after a mere hour-and-a-half of Brave Combo, though I’m told they continued for another half an hour.

I hope to see Brave Combo back in the Bay Area soon, and you, the devoted Mad Maggies fan, at the show.

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For those of you who missed the Accordion festival, we are sorry.

You missed a rousing set of tunes from the new CD- Skull and Magpies and a Maggified version of “Get Ready”.

The crowd danced, cheered and supported us like no other audience. It was humbling, fun and a musical roller coaster.

OK, as you know, I love all that whistle stuff (hint I am the whistle player) so playing Morning Star in front of such a great crowd was amazing.

We looked the part too- JB had THE suit, Maggie shared her legs, GDub was kilted and I am sure there was some breeze- catch my drift?- and I had a pair of shorts. The added bonus to the shorts was the rhinestone skulls on the back which were displayed throughout our performance and the time we lingered on into the evening.

We were able to be part of a line-up that included Culann’s Hounds and Those Darn Accordions (TDA) who were celebrating 20 years. It was great to hear so many different types of music and feel the energy.

It was a blast- thank you Cotati.

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An absolute WOW. Wally Sound posted on his facebook this YouTube of Russian sand animation artist, Kseniya Simonova. She appeared on “Ukraine’s Got Talent” and won for this performance. It is mesmerizingly beautiful. I had to pass it along.

Thanks, Wally! (Wally has engineered all of our CDs. He’s the best.)

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