Volume 12 – #6 – June 2009

Whoa! Slow down! Everything’s going along, screwed up as usual, and before we know it there’s no more Michael Jackson, Sky Saxon or the Polka Grammy. If you had told me a month ago that these three musical icons were about to disappear, I probably wouldn’t have been surprised, but still definitely shocked. Michael Jackson was as close to an alien human as a person could possibly make himself and motivated by stuff I never think about. He obviously played with a different deck of cards than most of us and maybe tried to live by different rules, too. Who knows? It’s not my place to speculate, but hearing that he died was mainly hard to compute because he had seemed, in a way, invincible and eternal, even if no longer relevant; just doing his non-ordinary “media-worthy” things while I cleaned cat litter. I do know, however, that most recently, I have felt more sorry for him than anything else. He appeared to be a mess, but, seriously, what do I know? I feel badly for his family and the people that knew him and cared about him. And now, we’ll all have to hear a lot about his life for quite awhile, I fear. RIP, Michael. Then there was Sky Saxon. If you don’t know the name, perhaps his band, The Seeds, rings a bell. They had a couple of hits in the 1960s and were responsible for helping indoctrinate the mainstream public to the psychedelic rock sound. “Pushing Too Hard” was the band’s biggest hit (Brave Combo proudly plays a salsa version of this song). He was a somewhat mysterious, mystical and reclusive figure for decades and just recently re-emerged, moved to Austin, Texas and started performing again. I always thought The Seeds were tougher and edgier than other popular psychedelic bands like The Strawberry Alarm Clock; more in league with The Electric Prunes, The Music Machine and Blues Magoos. I wouldn’t mind hearing as much about Sky Saxon as we’ll have to hear about Michael Jackson, in the coming weeks. I’d like to know what he’s been up to for the past 40 years. I’ll Google him, I guess. Whatever, both Sky and Michael were sort of other-worldly and eerily enough, their last names rhyme perfectly. And now they’re part of that “Hell-of-a-Band” in Heaven. Michael’s gonna have to duke it out with Elvis, for the lead singer position. Are John Lennon, Freddie Mercury, Buddy Holly, James Brown, Kurt Cobain and Jim Morrison all having to sing back-up? All I know is that the band is getting really big and it must still be a little weird for Stevie Ray Vaughn to be jamming with Jimi Hendrix. I wonder how they decide which songs they’re going to play. Enough of this disrespectful rambling. RIP, Sky. That brings us to the Polka Grammy. Well, first of all, any minor category is always in danger of being eliminated, if the entries fall below a certain level. Consequently, categories have come and gone, or have split or have combined, from the very beginning. Things change every year. It’s all part of the on-going Grammy evolution and we’ve seen it coming for awhile. I am seriously honored than Brave Combo won two of the twenty five that were given out and we plan to continue submitting albums where they’re appropriate and if we win a third one someday, we’ll celebrate appropriately (our CD, ALL WOUND UP, was nominated for best children’s album one year, you know). None-the-less, this development is really unfortunate for the polka community and particularly sad because polka always has to fight so much harder for respect and attention than other genres. This is a fact. But the polka world is also quite resilient and resourceful. This may be just the thing to unite the various polka factions, tribes and gangs around the country. I know that there are a bunch of really pissed-off polka folks out there, at this very second, ready to make war with somebody. It might as well be the mainstream music industry. At least, that would be my suggestion. As for Brave Combo, we’ll be all over the Urban/Hip Hop and Modern Country categories this year. RIP, Polka Grammy.

Magic Fingers. Speaking of death, the creator of The Magic Fingers Bed Vibrator, John Houghtaling, has passed away, at 92. When I was a kid, on family vacations, we would sometimes stay at a motel with a metal box attached to the bed headboard. The box said “Magic Fingers” and had a slot for quarters. This was about as close to exotic as I could imagine. Check it out. For 25 cents the bed would shake for about 10 minutes, happily buzzing the whole time. By the time Brave Combo started touring regularly in the early 1980s, I still ran across the occasional metal box and usually dropped in a quarter. Half the time, nothing happened. The other half the time, when it actually came on, it might clank obnoxiously more than vibrate or just sorta sit there and hum. The Magic Fingers were all getting old. I remember worrying a couple of times about the safety of the electronics involved and unplugging it from the wall. Whatever, it sucks, because we’re saying goodbye to yet another element of innocence as we move closer to becoming totally jaded. Hell, I’m there already. Bring on the logical!

I don’t know if I can explain this, but I’ll try. I sing, hum and whistle to myself throughout the day. Band members have asked me to stop doing this before. I can also make weird popping and clicking sounds with my tongue, but that doesn’t have anything to do with what I’m about to tell you. So, here goes. It seems that I’m often at the end of a phrase in my private humming, singing or whistling right about the time I’m starting the car. And a little tone beeps from the dash right at that moment and it’s usually the next note I would be humming, singing or whistling. Does this happen to anyone else? This happens all the time and it freaks me out. Does this make sense?

A STORY ABOUT NIGHT MUSIC. It was the early 1960s; the pre-Beatle 1960s. I was a kid and one Christmas I got a little transistor radio. It had an ear plug; just one cause stereo hadn’t made it to radio yet. It didn’t matter. My station of choice in Texarkana was KTFS. They played the top 40 hits during the afternoon and evening, following a morning of farm reports and SWAP AND SHOP and THE BENNY WOODS HARMONY HOUR and, of course, THE UNCLE DUDLEY SHOW. But at 10 PM, my bedtime, the show on KTFS was called MOSTLY MUSIC. They played two or three easy listening songs and then a voice, male or female, would say, in a slow sultry sing-song-y whisper, “Kaaay, Teeee, Effff, Essss” or “Mostly Muuuusic.” Then another couple of songs would play and the hypnotic call letters would follow again. There were no commercials, just two hours of haunting music and an occasional ghost, reminding me what’s up. I was in bed, in my dark room, transistor sound flowing into my ear, and my ear alone, or so it seemed. And the radio station felt very far away, hiding in the darkness. I imagined it being almost empty; maybe only a couple of guys playing cards, smoking Camels, drinking Folger’s and keeping an eye on the two-hour reel of tape being broadcast without human interruption until the station signed off at midnight. I would be asleep by then. This nightly event would affect me more than I realized. I guess it revealed to me the subtle power of music and not necessarily the kind of music you would expect a pre-teen hipster to even notice. But I did notice. In fact, I dived deep into the sound and felt it all around me. It was fun and not unlike looking at wiggly things through my microscope that I’d discovered in a drop of water from the pond behind my house in the woods.

MORE NOSTALGIA. Throughout the year, I plan to look back at some important dates in Brave Combo’s 30-year-existence, like the time we were playing a party at someone’s house and the synchronized dancing of the masses almost made the walls collapse, breaking the floor beams in nine places. We had to stop the polka groove or risk not being here now. Or what about when I broke my toe in Copenhagen? I can find that date on the calendar, for sure. I even think I can pin point the “tornado near the Kansas/Colorado border” day. There have been lots of good times and I plan to recall plenty of them as the months roll on. So, start getting excited now!

Speaking of excitement, no matter where you live, there’s a chance we’ll be performing near you soon. Check out our itinerary often. New dates pop up every week. Click on “Tour Dates” and see which Brave Combo shows make the most sense for you. In the meantime, think of nothing else; just us. We’ll do the same.