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Jazz Manouche

November 21, 2023 4 Comments

I don’t know how a button accordion works. I understand squeeze boxes with a piano-style keyboard. They say the sweetest sound in the world is when you throw an accordion into a dumpster, and it lands on a dulcimer you threw in there earlier. But this adding machine stapled on a bellows? No clue.

So this Gallic gentlemen, Marc Berthoumieux, has me double flummoxed. He’s playing Chinese checkers and music comes out. I don’t know how he squeezes such wonderful and inventive music out of it. Makes me want to move to Paris and learn to smoke greasy cigarettes and drink wine from a beaker and look existential while the waiter ignores me. If Rocky the Gibson wrangler announces that if you have a request, write it on a 20 Euro note and send it up, I’ll bite. Of course I’ll ask for Sunny. It was the official song of the twenty-teens, remember?

What’s the Difference Between Bagpipes and Trampolines?

June 16, 2023 No Comments

You take your shoes off before jumping on trampolines.

Anyway, as I was saying when I was so rudely interrupted by several calendars, Sunny by Bobby Hebb is the Official Cover Song of the Twenty-Teens.

Now, time marches on, and has a tendency to step on my foot while it does it, but just because it’s not the twenty-teens anymore, doesn’t mean we’re not keeping score. Songs that are adapted for jazz bagpipes don’t grow on trees, and if they did, that tree would probably get cut down. Sunny on jazz bagpipes is certainly the strange fruit of that tree, to finish the mixed metaphor. Enjoy.

How To Play Sunny on the Drums

March 24, 2017 4 Comments

As you may recall, I have determined — announced, really — that Sunny by Bobby Hebb is the official song of the twenty-teens. I will brook no contradiction on this point. I don’t know what trout have to do with anything, but stay with me here.

This is the procedure for playing Sunny on the drums. The fellow in the video gets it. Follow his method and you’ll be famous on unread blogs the world over in no time:

  • First, learn how to play the drums real good
  • Second, steal some drums
  • OK, that second thing maybe should be the first thing
  • Now kill your Shop teacher and take his eyeglasses
  • Then go to Himmler’s barber and ask for the men’s regular
  • Get a brick wall to play in front of
  • Get a Kia Sephia with a trunk big enough to haul your drums and your brick wall
  • Don’t worry about bringing your OSB wall, the bass player will bring his
  • Remember, the guitar player is really just the hood ornament on your bass drum
  • Lift an eyebrow about two minutes in
  • All the chicks. All of them

The Official Song of the Twenty-Teens

Yngwie Matsumoto in the Land of the Rising Sunny

April 17, 2015 4 Comments

There is a magic place. It’s in a faraway land where they talk in little pictures and wear benches for shoes. I don’t know the name of this place, but it has a fried egg on the wall, and all they ever play there is Sunny by Bobby Hebb. That’s it. It’s like heaven on Earth for a guy like me. Well, except for the bass and drum solos, I mean. With thumb and slap bass, at that, another abomination. But still. Sunny !

I tried to translate the hieroglyphics on the YouTube page to see what this lost tribe of my brethren was trying to say to me, but all the translator could come back with was: “Fast Playing Session.” I’ll say. It’s like he had to go home early, so he’s trying to get in all the notes as fast as he can. He must be working piecework.

As I was saying, this is a magical place. It is my Xanadu. It is my Shangri-La. It proves me right, that Sunny by Bobby Hebb is the Official Cover Song of the Twenty-Teens. The fried egg on the wall signals only one thing: Sunny is coming.

Datfunk Is Featuring Vasilis Xenopoulos! That Makes it a Sunny Day

April 15, 2015 3 Comments

I hadn’t heard from Vasilis Xenopoulos in ages. Or about him. Or around him. Or something.

As you have probably guessed, when I heard that Datfunk was playing at the Afrikana Bar, I immediately decided to drive on over there. Or fly on over there. I dunno, swim there, maybe. Anyway, as soon as I figure out where it is, I’m there. Well, in spirit. I know Datfunk is trying to lure me from my lair by featuring Vasilis Xenopoulos on the saxophone. What grown-up can withstand the gravitational pull of that? I ask you. Vasily, or Vaseline, or whatever his name is, is world-renowned by several people. Dude can blow.

I don’t know anything. I admit it. I don’t know where the Afrikana Bar is. I don’t know who Vagisil is. I don’t know if those are Christmas lights or Kwanzaa lights hanging in the background. But two things I do know: Bobby Hebb’s Sunny is the Official Cover Song of the Twenty-Teens, and I’d kill four innocent drummers to get my hands on that drummer’s Stax/Volt T-shirt.

OK, I know three things. That last line was silly. There is no such thing as an “innocent drummer.”

Tag: the official song of the twenty-teens

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sippicancottage

A Man Who Has Nothing In Particular To Recommend Him Discusses All Sorts of Subjects at Random as Though He Knew Everything.

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