Volume 16 – #7 – July 2013

Well over 30 years ago I heard that polka was dying. Guess what? That didn’t happen. In fact, now you can buy an accordion at your neighborhood Guitar Center. With decades of Brave Combo experience under my belt I now see how stupid that declaration of doom was. It was never even close to kicking off. Why would a music just go away when millions of people perform it regularly and multi-millions listen and/or dance to it regularly? Polka has been around for over 150 years and it’s never really been threatened. What I think is hard to accept is that there is constant change in all things, even polka music. One time someone wrote a nasty email to us after we won the Grammy for POLKASONIC, informing us that we couldn’t win a polka award because we aren’t Polish. THIS OPINION, POSING AS FACT, WAS WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS!!!! Some grumpy old grumpy grumpies within the polka scene are pissed off because they’re not young anymore and the polka world they remember has, indeed, almost disappeared. And, yeah, that is sad. There was a time, especially in the parts of the country which were ethnically rich in European and Eastern European immigrants, when polka was a rambunctiously cool thing. Chicago, Buffalo, Cleveland and hot spots around the Midwest, Upper Midwest, Rural central states (from Texas to Nebraska), New England and the Northeast. It might have always been preferred, in a large part, by blue collar workers and their families, but was still a viable music to dress up for and rally around. And because it provided much-needed temporary relief from a hard life, it also created a social setting. This is what many polka fans miss, but what can you do about time moving on and evolution, for that matter? In a world where everything in main-stream media is judged and evaluated by its pop-culture significance, polka can only hope to come and go. And it has, many times since it was first danced outside Prague in the mid-1800s. It became a scandalous rage around Europe; the rock and roll of its day. In the 1930s, “The Beer Barrel Polka” was the number one song in the US for several weeks, such that articles appeared in VARIETY about the sheer power of the song and its mesmerizing affect on people. In the 1960s polka-influenced Tex Mex rock and roll sneaked into the scene and onto the top 40, influencing even The Beatles. Brave Combo has been allowed to exist and make money for 33 years using the word “polka” as a war cry. And by the turn of the new century, accordions were the coolest instrument around and the sound of polka could be heard almost everywhere, even if it wasn’t being called “polka.” It’s the tension and release and the relentless nature of 2/2. Jeez, there are a lot of edgy young polka bands crawling around the planet these days; more than ever, and a bunch of them are ripping us off. And we’re delighted about it, as long as they’re not getting our gigs!

It should be no surprise to anyone that I come across a lot of information about the plights of abused, neglected, imprisoned and tortured animals around the world. I often can’t look at some of the photos and videos. It’s just too traumatic for me, not so much upon first seeing evidence of the cruelty but more because I can’t let it go. It stays with me. I can barely stand knowing how much pain and sorrow is happening, even as I write this sentence. But there are some encouraging signs. Research chimpanzees are being released in record numbers. The horrors of idiotic places like Sea World are starting to sink into the average persons brain. Sad bears are being set free from confining and dangerous roadside attraction cages. More people are looking and, actually, seeing and calling attention to bad situations. No one buys into factory farming anymore. And even if a person can’t break his or her addiction to the meat these hell holes produce, he or she does know what’s going on and somewhere deep inside knows he or she is also responsible for this eternal misery. And more people are cracking under the weight of this knowledge. They can no longer contribute to the vicious cycle of suffering. I think, too, some people, because they finally know, and accept, the truth, fear the ramifications of piling on bad karma, figuring that exchanging a chicken’s life for a few minutes of “ooh, man, this tangible manifestation of violence and cruelty which resulted in a destroyed life, sure is tasty!” I wonder how many people really think something like, “Well, I’m sure that cow didn’t mind dying so that I could put hunks of it in my mouth and swallow ’em.” I love that old saying, “A moment on my lips, a lifetime of cow hips clogging my arteries and impacting my colon. Did I learn that from PETA? Can’t remember. Sorry if I made you mad or, rather, made you think more than you wanted to. No, I’m not.

Speaking of music, there is a lot of it in the air and on the internet, bombarding us, like little sound bombs. A good friend of mine, John Schaab, turned me onto a Russian band a few years ago. He gave me a CD with no English on it and said he thought I would like it. And, boy, did I ever. It was in my hot 100 for a long time. I ultimately found out the name of the band was Ivan Kupala. As far as I could tell there were two or three serious-looking dudes creating this cool techno/trance music out of old Russian folk songs. Then then they would have indigenous women from whatever region sing along with their groovy electronically modernized arrangements. I have recently been bitten, again, by the Ivan Kupala bug and thought you might like to check it out. http://youtu.be/E_0j_38Tda0

Okay, it’s time to run to the post office, build an outdoor cat enclosure, brush my teeth and figure out what we’re working on at rehearsal tonight. Oh yeah, I also have to call a couple of people about something super important, I’m sure. Here’s hoping that your super important is super-dooper and that your summer doesn’t hurt too much. I’ll close with three words and an exclamation point. POLKA NEVER DIES!