Volume 11 – #8 – August 2008

Okay. The heavy summer touring is behind us and we now enter weekend Polkafest/Oktoberfest mode until early November. We’ll probably play about a million polkas and waltzes between now and then. The musical orgy begins with Westfest, in the little Czech town of West in Central Texas and comes to a close with Wurstfest, in the little German town of New Braunfels, between San Antonio and Austin. We can swing both ways, Baby. Actually we can swing about 100 ways. Of course, we’ll also be throwing plenty of Polish, Slovenian and Tejano/Conjunto polkas into the mix wherever adventurous dancers gather. Let’s get excited and scream and pass out, from too much screaming and start all over! Whatever, this is a great time to look over our itinerary on our newly designed web site and plan your catharsis.

Speaking of polkas, the new CD we’re working on contains nary a one. We’re flexing our latin/rock muscles to satisfy those lucky people who come to our shows and want that sort of thing. It’s packed with show-stopping moments and just about ready to explode in your ear. That’s a corny way of saying that we’re almost finished with it and hope to have it at shows by mid-September. Here’s a list of the hits you’ll be flailing to very soon. “Honga,” “Louie, Louie (Cha Cha),” “Peter Gunn Spy Medley,” “Cowering Mess,” “Yo No Bailo Con Juana,” “Ruben’s Bolero,” “Patricia Twist,” “Tsamikos,” “El Chameleon” and “Mission Impossible (Cumbia).” That line up is guaranteed to get your butt moving. And for those of you who think dancing is weird, or at least just not for you, (which I understand, as do most musicians) these songs will make you groove internally in a way you never imagined. So, we toil for the groove. If you go to our MySpace site, we’ve posted a video from a studio session that truly lifts the veil and you can expect to see a lot more of that stuff, from all walks of BC life, as the future unfolds.

Speaking of an unfolding future, did you know that the Presidential election is coming up? More than ever before, it’s a good idea to vote and vote intelligently. Just reflect on how the country should have voted more intelligently four years ago or eight years ago. Follow your wise inner voice and try to pay attention without letting pride get too involved. You’ll have to do this by yourself and it’s a good idea to face a mirror. My take on things? It’s time for the USA to be a compassionate leader and not a bully. Geez, we haven’t been around long enough to think that we know so much. Just about a dozen generations ago we were trying to break free from England. How could we get so arrogant so fast? Now everybody is talking now about making America great again, but that means so many different things to so many different people. Do we want to be great as a military power that has everyone else scared? Do we want to be great business thinkers and corporate bigwigs? Do we want to produce good quality stuff rather than crap, or, at least, not buy crap from other countries? Is that what some people mean by being great? Or is it winning a bunch of gold medals at the Olympics? Does that make the United States great? Or is it that we’re the healthiest people on the planet, like we maybe never were? Did we have the best schools and hospitals at one time and do we want to return to that? I do believe we have the best shopping malls and sports arenas in the world and I know we have more TV stations to choose from than anywhere else. Are we achieving greatness in these areas? We cherish the conveniences we have in this country. I wonder if the USA, being such a melting pot, perhaps the ultimate melting pot, has a serious identity problem. If so, perhaps the solution is to start downplaying that whole “making America great” thing for a while. I know politicians have to spout clichés a lot right now, especially, but I’m tired of hearing the rhetoric about being the best and returning to our former glory. Let’s get real, damn it! Basically, this is how it is. As a young country, we don’t know who our parents are (we come from everywhere) and it’s causing inner conflict that we deny, which is leading us to feel so insecure that we spend all our time thumping our chests outwardly in anger rather than looking at ourselves and fixing our own problems. Why can’t our greatness come from our unique ability to balance the diversity of this amazing land, so that, indeed, this is one place where one can do his or her own thing, because our grand experiment (to be a country where anyone can come and be free) actually worked. That’s good enough, isn’t it? Instead, we’re a big dysfunctional mess that can’t decide what greatness means. To many, it means being a justifiable bully to the rest of the world. Somehow, becoming the heroes of World War II, made us think we had to become the police of the world. I know it’s not that simple, but something introduced this whole “greatness” concept. It’s like, before we even found out if our grand experiment was even going to work (you know, all people getting along and making lots of money) we were chomping at the bits to tell everyone else how to live. I think I’ll stop.

Over the years, it seems, our polka season has been getting closer and closer to our holiday season. This time around, there are only three weeks between Wurstfest in early November and Thanksgiving weekend, when we play our first rowdy Christmas shows in St. Louis and Chicago. Then it’s a solid month of Frosty and Santa doing the twist, culminating with (don’t tell anybody, no, wait, do tell everybody) another Brave Combo symphony excursion. This time it’s the BC Symphonic Christmas Experience with the Las Colinas Symphony, which means more new orchestra scores for our catalog. We’ll be doing three shows in the Dallas area the weekend before Christmas. These will be beautifully bizarre events, not to be missed.

I love cats and dogs and communicate daily with many. They always tell me to spend more mindless, I mean mindful, time with them than worrying about other stuff. I think it’s funny that none of my animals has any idea what I do for a living. Most of them would think I make really loud unpleasant sounds for long periods of time if I brought them to gigs. I do bring one of my dogs to the office on occasion. He thinks we’re at a carnival until the boredom of looking at me working at the computer sets in. Then going home sounds good. You know what? That does sound good. I’m out of here.