Wednesday 3 October 2012

Where have all the Accordions Gone?

I mean, obviously I can remember the 70s. And it seemed in those strange-off days that everybody's dad owned a piano accordion.

You remember accordions? It was a squeeze box with one size the standard accordion chord buttons, and the other a keyboard. You could make a variety of noises, or play tunes in a breathy organ tone, while doing the whole squeezebox thing.

And one day my father's piano accordion wasn't there. I wasn't aware that it had been thrown away - and I'm sure we didn't have a surreal burglary where someone broke in and only stole the squeezebox. I mean, how odd would that be?

But what's odder is, it seems everybody has had the same experience. Their father in the 60s or 70s had a piano accordion. And then one day, it was simply gone.

So there's only one possibility. Like Zaphod Beeblebrox's biros, they must all have slipped quietly away into another dimension. An accordion dimension, all of whose denizens have large white teeth on the side of their faces.

And when you think of all the keyboard players who sit in music bands, huddled over the keys and reading the music and paying no attention to their fellows: wouldn't it be great if we got the accordions back, and made worship group keyboardists play them? They'd have to make eye contact with their mates and the congregation then.

So I've got Young Keith busy on the Quantum Super-string side, trying to bust the portal through to the other dimension. Mark my words, we're gonna make our fortune, and revolutionise music in worship.


Or is it "accordia"?

8 comments :

  1. There is a man who collects them in Northern Ireland. Sadly, he did have a break in and some valuable ones were stolen.

    I believe this is unusual, the normal pattern for accordion break-ins is to end up with extra.

    ReplyDelete
  2. We've still got lots, although my immediate family was always accordion-less. My mother swears her father once had a harp, but I've never known anyone else who claimed to have seen it.

    There are even accordion festivals here for the enthusiastic. I rather like them. I like bagpipes, too - that's another instrument that doesn't get a lot of respect.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Enough to have accordion festivals. Enough for every folk/ Celtic/ Folk-Rock/ pseudo- each of the proceeding band to have at least one. I sometimes think 'musician', not 'band', because they're bound to be asked if they play it even if they only sing or play the fiddle. And then you get grandfatherly old men and the cute little girls not much bigger than an accordion - they need one each. It adds up to lots.

      Delete
  3. My father had one! Apparently I used to burst into tears whenever he tried to play anything. He ended up giving it away to his brother.

    ReplyDelete
  4. You're right; I haven't a clue where mine went.

    ReplyDelete
  5. We still have one, black and gold - and a harp and a shed load of other instruments of torture.

    ReplyDelete

Drop a thoughtful pebble in the comments bowl