My World Music Blog : March 2007

It's been a fairly quiet week musically this week as I've had the flu which meant that we didn't go out last night to see a local Gypsy band we'd heard about. Oh well, they'll be on again soon.

I did however buy myself a little C/G Concertina on Ebay for AU$130. It's definitely not a professional instrument, but it works fine and is in pretty good condition. As I've always wanted to learn to play Concertina, I figure this is a good way of starting.

It shouldn't be too hard as I once spent a year and a half learning to play an 1850's Bandonion I purchased. It had over 40 keys on either side - most with no pattern whatsoever!!! Unfortunately it was too delicate to continue playing so I had to stop (I spent more time repairing it than playing it). But anyways, how hard can 10 notes be compared to 40 :-)

In other news which is good for me, but not so good for them, my current favorite band Gogol Bordello has had to cancel their Australian tour due to Visa problems. The only reason it's good for me is that their one and only show in Melbourne was the same night as my boss was getting married so we couldn't go to see them. Now that they'll be back later in the year we can go see these crazy Gypsy Punks strut their stuff!!!

Well, I'm back from my St Paddies Day fun and frivolity! It was heaps of fun doing these gigs and catching up with my interstate friends. Overall we held up pretty well considering we haven't played together for a year (and have only played 4 gigs in the last 4 years i.e every St Pat's Day). There were no major disasters and everyone quickly got back into the swing of it.

The hardest bit was holding up physically. Most of us did a gig in our home pub on Friday night and then jammed afterwards at a friends house until 1am. Then it was up at 8:30am on Saturday morning for a 10:30 gig which lasted 2 1/2 hours. A couple of hours break and then we played from 4:30 - 7:30, then packed up and headed back to the pub for the final gig from 9:00 - 11:00.

Surprisingly, there weren't too many idiots around this year - it's often the case that people get absolutely smashed and become complete dickheads! I'm amazed there wasn't too much bad behaviour seeing as a lot of the crowd were drunk when we began playing at 10:30 in the morning!!!

I woke up pretty sore on Sunday morning (8 hours of playing Accordion will do that to you), but wasn't too hungover despite getting pretty drunk during and after the final St Pat's Day gig!

Then it was back on a plane back to Melbourne Sunday lunch time and back to normal life for another year...

There's a selection of photos from St Pat's Day which you can view here.

My Jews Brothers CD arrived today and I've been listening to it while doing the dishes and writing this - it's pretty cool - very swung - and they don't take themselves too seriously which is always a bonus in my books! Most of the tracks are originals, but they do justice to the Klezmer tradition.

I was a bit concerned when the Bulgar turned into The Basso, which is an audience favorite, but considered extra cheesy by the Klezmer bands I've played in (though it hasn't stopped us playing it). When it turned into a crazy, junk-band type arrangement I couldn't help but smile.

The other CD, a mixture of world traditions was definitely a mix of styles. It contains a piece called Besh O Drom from Hungary which we learnt to play for a festival last Christmas - this version was almost half the speed of the one we learnt though - very, very different!

I'm flying off to Canberra tomorrow night for my annual St Pat's pilgrimage. After only about 3-4 hours practice in the last few weeks, I feel a bit scared that my fingers aren't up to standard on the tin-whistle, but hey, I only play it once a year now!

In WMW site news, I began putting up links to sites with free World/Folk music MP3 files. Make sure you check them out and add your links if you're a band or solo artist!

Once I get back I'll post some photos from the rowdy, drunken weekend.

I won a CD on Ebay today called "My Yiddish Swing" by The Jews Brothers (a Klezma band from New Zealand). I hadn't heard of them before, but after checking out their website and listening to a few tracks, I had to bid on the CD. I ended up winning it and am eagerly waiting to hearing the album. The Jews Brothers do a mixture of original and traditional pieces and seem to have a lot of fun with them, so it should make for a good CD.

I also managed to score another CD from the same seller who had a bunch of radio promo CD's for sale - each of them had heaps of different tracks. The one I won has pieces like Lo tambon dei poples (France), Ciganska oro (Hungary) and Yol Bolsin (Uzbekistan). I'm hoping the tracks are good - but it only cost me AU$0.99 + postage so it's no biggie if they're not.

I've been practicing my tin whistle a lot lately, getting my fingers moving again after a year without performing on it. The band I'm gigging with plays a million miles a minute, so agile features are a must. I also dragged out our old website and uploaded it to the site. The band is called Katyusha and does a mixture of World and Irish music. You can see the Katyusha website here - the design is really, really dated though I I want to clean it up this weekend to bring it up to scratch :-)