Ladies of Spain need not apply

Let's set the mood:



That is the Main Squeeze Orchestra. While their accordion skills are clear, Grinwout's is especially impressed by their ability to stomp on the floor at the appropriate moments. If you doubt their seriousness, check out the shopping page on their website, where you can buy their music, of course, but are too late for the t-shirts or the thongs, which are all sold out. (So much for our plan of Main Squeeze Orchestra thongs for all the women on our Christmas list this year.)

Needless to say, the accordion is not a simple instrument when it comes to image. Ezra Glinter, writing in the Paris Review about his visit to the shop of Walter Kuehr, the accordion impressario who is conductor of Main Squeeze, puts it this way:

Many accordionists mentioned the need to overcome the perception of the instrument as a joke, and the difficulty of being accepted outside niche musical communities. “When you play an instrument that can cost as much as a compact car and has more moving parts than one, you want to be taken seriously,” one player wrote in an e-mail. Another confessed: “We are lonesome cowboys, I guess ... We fight prejudice that the accordion is a cheesy instrument that can only play polkas for retired people.”

In some circles the accordion is beyond cool. In others, it is not. Grinwout's, which seeks out unusual music, is still on the fence. We can listen to album after album of zydeco, for instance. But, well, there's those polkas for retired people: we live in fear that some day we'll wake up wanting the early bird dinner at 4:30 so that we can get home in time to watch reruns of Lawrence Welk. In other words, it's not that you're born that way, but some day you just turn that age.

It's scary. Read Big Squeeze (there's a Welk clip) and see for yourself. Your day will come!
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