Volume 16 – #2 – February 2013

There is so much to do just to get through the day. And then, damn it, there’s tomorrow. Are you with me on this? The sun comes up and goes down, over and over. And we structure our time based on the patterns of the sun, apparently. People are waking up and going to sleep, constantly, all over the world. Most people arise around the time the sun does and go back to sleep approximately sixteen hours later. Then after eight hours more, get up and do it again. One way or another, at some point, after awakening, if food is actually available (for many it isn’t), a decision must be made about what, where and when to eat. This takes up time and gives the day focus, as do other mandatory activities, such as bathing, brushing teeth, dressing, going to the bathroom, losing keys, picking paper up off the floor, feeding kids and/or pets, not to mention going from point A to point B and back for work, school, shopping or whatever. Time is also consumed making decisions about how to use up time. In the middle of this quagmire of activity we’re supposed to figure out the purpose of it all and decide if more enlightenment is required. If so, that’s another thing to work into the mega-mix. It takes a lot of organization and drive to stay on the fast track. I’ve always felt like the world was zooming by without me, leaving me in a thick fog of tiny question marks. MTV was like that. I constantly wondered how to fit Brave Combo into that phenomenon. Other than an occasional story about Texas music or bizarre world music or irreverent interpretations of traditional music, we never made it to regular MTV. We never made a video that they put into rotation. We toured like crazy, here and there, sometimes for good reason even, were on big radio shows, like Prairie Home Companion and Mountain Stage, played prestigious New York City venues, like Lincoln Center, CBGB and The Bottom Line, had music in lots of movies, were the darlings of the cool music press nationwide, with high-profile supporters, like David Byrne, Kurt Loder and Lester Bangs. And it seemed that a whole bunch of industry people, some quite powerful, loved what we were doing. But no young A & R hipster ever stepped forward and accused us of being the next big thing and showered us with the means to make an MTV-style video. I had plenty of ideas but no way to make ’em happen. We released recordings on Rounder Records, arguably the biggest and best independent record company in the world, for over 20 years. Once or twice, we discussed, with Rounder’s owners, doing a promo video as an album was released, but the financial risk was always too high; never seemed to work out for most of their artists. But, don’t feel too badly for us. Just because MTV wasn’t banging down our door, doesn’t mean we haven’t been well-documented. There’s plenty of video of Brave Combo floating around. It appears a lot of folks have been aiming cameras our way over the decades. Plus, some of our filmmaker friends and fans, such as Sam Hurt and Chan Chandler (“The Hokey Pokey”), Bart Weiss (“A Night On Earth”), Joe Mata (“So Rich”), Christopher Cave (“Three Weeks”) and several others have produced fantastic music videos of some of our grooviest songs, but going from having a VHS cassette or DVD in your hand to seeing it ten times a day on the small screen is a big step. Nowadays, in the land of YouTube, the playing field has somewhat evened out but the competition for attention has gone from fierce to the clutter equivalent of 100 hydrogen bombs. Stuff is just everywhere and each day brings more than the day before. The music world was never totally about music, but now it’s like swinging a machete through a dense field to get to a paved road but the weeds and vines are growing faster than you can whack them down and your machete is turning into a butter knife. See, it’s just like regular life. Not magical at all. You wake up, do a lot of stuff and eventually go back to sleep.

Speaking of Brave Combo music on YouTube, I noticed the other day that a video had recently been posted of four young naked Russian (I think) women dancing to Brave Combo’s version of “Jingle Bells.” Heartwarming. The description section even has a picture of IT’S CHRISTMAS, MAN, with a way to buy the album. A few years ago the people who made the movie, MADAGASCAR, licensed that very “Jingle Bells,” much to our delight, to include in their trailer for the movie. For some reason, that trailer was posted on YouTube around Christmas, in just about every major language. Shortly after that, our little, somewhat foreboding, “one horse open sleigh” started popping up in oddball videos from everywhere. This is kinda like how it is with our “Hava Nagila Twist.” Someone, somewhere, at some time got his or her hands on the recording and choreographed a routine for it, involving several dancers. This resulted in myriad videos of dance groups from all over the world, doing the very same steps to our funky, klezmer rocker. If you go to YouTube and enter “Have Nagila Twist” chubby Checker and Brave Combo will be the main artists represented. If you see a bunch of people on stage, it’s guaranteed their moving to the sounds of Brave Combo. Funny times, indeed.

And speaking of videos, here is one I can’t stop watching. It’s the Massachusetts band, Heavy Chicago, from the Frank Night Polka Show, out of Springfield, Connecticut (mid 1970s, maybe), playing “The Green Maple Polka.” It features, our friend, Jackie Libera on vocal and trumpet and one of our favorite accordionists, Billy Belina, on bass and harmony vocal. One time we went to The Polkabration Festival in New London, Connecticut to see our California modern polka-rock friends, Rotondi, play alongside a slew of traditional Polish-style bands. One of the first outfits to catch my ear was the Bay State IV, which included the above-mentioned, Jackie, on clarinet and trumpet and Billy, on accordion this time, handling the bass with his left hand, as well. They made an impression on me. That was also our first time to hear Scrubby and The Dynatones, Ray Jay and the Carousels and The Polka Family.

Okay, I can’t squeeze any more words out of my head right now. Please check our itinerary often. Gigs are starting to pop up over the calendar. It’s time to make your plans to take in that good ol’ BC sound; a constant in a turbulent era. Shake it off, Baby. Come to the well of polka and quench your thirst! We love to see your smiling faces or even your confused faces.