Whoa! Slow down! Everything’s going along, screwed up as usual, and before we know it there’s no more Michael Jackson, Sky Saxon or the Polka Grammy. If you had told me a month ago that these three musical icons were about to disappear, I probably wouldn’t have been surprised, but still definitely shocked. Michael Jackson was as close to an alien human as a person could possibly make himself and motivated by stuff I never think about. He obviously played with a different deck of cards than most of us and maybe tried to live by different rules, too. Who knows? It’s not my place to speculate, but hearing that he died was mainly hard to compute because he had seemed, in a way, invincible and eternal, even if no longer relevant; just doing his non-ordinary “media-worthy” things while I cleaned cat litter. I do know, however, that most recently, I have felt more sorry for him than anything else. He appeared to be a mess, but, seriously, what do I know? I feel badly for his family and the people that knew him and cared about him. And now, we’ll all have to hear a lot about his life for quite awhile, I fear. RIP, Michael. Then there was Sky Saxon. If you don’t know the name, perhaps his band, The Seeds, rings a bell. They had a couple of hits in the 1960s and were responsible for helping to indoctrinate the mainstream public to the psychedelic rock sound. “Pushing Too hard” was the band’s biggest hit (Brave Combo proudly plays a salsa version of this song). He was a somewhat mysterious, mystical and reclusive figure for decades and just recently re-emerged, moving to Austin, Texas and starting to perform again. I always thought The Seeds were tougher and edgier than other popular psychedelic bands like The Strawberry Alarm Clock; more in league with The Electric Prunes, The Music Machine and Blues Magoos. I wouldn’t mind hearing as much about Sky Saxon as we’ll have to hear about Michael Jackson, in the coming weeks. I’d like to know what he’s been up to for the past 40 years. I’ll Google him, I guess. Whatever, both Sky and Michael were sort of other-worldly and eerily enough, their last names rhyme perfectly. And now they’re part of that “Hell-of-a-Band” in Heaven. Michael’s gonna have to duke it out with Elvis, for the lead singer position. Are John Lennon, Freddie Mercury, Buddy Holly, James Brown, Kurt Cobain and Jim Morrison all having to sing back-up? All I know is that the band’s getting really big and it must still be a little weird for Stevie Ray Vaughn to be jamming with Jimi Hendrix. I wonder how they decide which songs they’re going to play. Enough of this disrespectful rambling. RIP, Sky. That brings us to the Polka Grammy. Well, first of all, any minor category is always in danger of being eliminated, if the entries fall below a certain level. Consequently, categories have come and gone, or have split or have combined, from the very beginning. Things change every year. It’s all part of the on-going Grammy evolution and we’ve seen it coming for awhile. I am seriously honored than Brave Combo won two of the twenty five that were given out and we plan to continue submitting albums where they’re appropriate and if we win a third one someday, we’ll celebrate appropriately (our CD, ALL WOUND UP, was nominated for best children’s album one year, you know). None-the-less, this development is very unfortunate for the polka community and particularly sad because polka has to fight so much harder for respect and attention than other genres. This is a fact. But the polka world is also quite resilient and resourceful. This may be just the thing to unite the various polka factions, tribes and gangs around the country. I do know that there are a bunch of really pissed-off polka folks out there, at this very second, ready to make war with somebody. It might as well be the mainstream music industry. At least, that would be my suggestion. As for Brave Combo, we’ll be all over the Urban/Hip Hop and modern country categories this year. RIP, Polka Grammy.

Magic Fingers. Speaking of death, the creator of The Magic Fingers Bed Vibrator, John Houghtaling, has passed away, at 92. When I was a kid, on family vacations, we would sometimes stay at a motel with a metal box attached to the bed headboard. The box said “Magic Fingers” and had a slot for quarters. This was about as close to exotic as I could imagine. Check it out. For 25 cents the bed would shake for about 10 minutes, happily buzzing the whole time. By the time Brave Combo started touring regularly in the early 1980s, I still ran across the occasional metal box and usually dropped in a quarter. Half the time, nothing happened. The other half the time, when it actually came on, it might clank obnoxiously more than vibrate or just sorta sit there and hum. The Magic Fingers were all getting old. I remember worrying a couple of times about the safety of the electronics involved and unplugging it from the wall. Whatever, it sucks ,because we’re saying goodbye to yet another element of innocence as we move closer to becoming totally jaded. Hell, I’m there already. Bring on the logical!

It was the early 1960s; the pre-Beatle 1960s. I was young and one Christmas I got a little transistor radio. It had an ear plug; just one cause stereo hadn’t made it to radio yet. It didn’t matter. My station of choice in Texarkana was KTFS. They played the top 40 hits during the afternoon and evening, after a morning of farm reports and SWAP AND SHOP and THE BENNY WOODS HARMONY HOUR and, of course, THE UNCLE DUDLEY SHOW. But at 10 PM, my bedtime, the show on KTFS was called MOSTLY MUSIC. They played two or three easy listening songs and then a voice, male or female, would say, in a slow sultry sing-song-y whisper, “Kaaay, Teeee, Effff, Essss” or “Mostly Muuuusic.” Then another couple of songs would play and the hypnotic call letters would follow again. There were no commercials, just two hours of haunting music and an occasional ghost, reminding me what’s up. I was in bed, in my dark room, transistor sound flowing into my ear, and my ear alone, or so it seemed. And the radio station felt very far away. I imagined it being almost empty; maybe only a couple of guys playing cards and smoking Camels and drinking Folgier’s, keeping an eye on the two-hour reel of tape being broadcast without human interruption until the station signed off at midnight. I would be asleep by then. This nightly event would affect me more than I realized. I guess it revealed to me the subtle power of music and not necessarily the kind of music you would expect a pre-teen hipster to even notice. But I did notice. In fact, I dived deep into the sound and felt it all around me. It was fun and not unlike looking at wiggly things through my microscope that I’d discovered in a drop of water from the pond behind my house in the woods.

EVEN MORE NOSTALGIA. Throughout the year, I plan to look back at some important dates in Brave Combo’s 30-year-existence, like the time we were playing a party at someone’s house and the synchronized dancing of the masses almost made the walls collapse. We had to stop the polka groove or risk not being here now. Or what about when I broke my toe in Copenhagen? I can find that date on the calendar, for sure. I even think I can pin point the “tornado near the Kansas/Colorado border” day. There have been lots of good times and I plan to recall plenty of them as the months roll on. So, start getting excited now!

Speaking of excitement, no matter where you live, there’s a chance we’ll be performing near you soon. Check out our itinerary often. New dates pop up every week. Click on “Tour Dates” and see which Brave Combo shows make the most sense for you. In the meantime, think of nothing else; just us. We’ll do the same.

Brave Combo has officially existed 30 years. I don’t know how to feel about that, exactly. I know I’m losing touch with a certain pop music mindset, yet not caring as much as I though I would. In some ways, even if Brave Combo has been mostly under the radar commercially, we’ve pursued stardom via pretty conventional means; making recordings, touring, doing interviews, going after radio airplay by going to radio stations and performing and/or talking, building massive mailing lists, working with record companies, getting music in movies and on TV and, of course, setting up a website and all that involves. A lot of socializing goes along with playing in a touring band, even when you don’t want it. But I know it’s important. All aspects of this business are important, down to putting posters up on poles and storefront windows. It can get complicated fast when a band decides to put on a show. And, you know, that’s what we are. We’re show people. We sleep late. We stay up late. We see bright lights in our eyes when we’re on stage and funky back alleys when we’re not. Someone might think that our working conditions are brutal at times and, I will say, it’s easier if you have a sense of humor as often as possible. We stopped at a new giant truck stop recently around 3:00 AM, which is typical, and it had an old west theme that included a giant beaver statue in the middle of the enormous, extremely well-lit store. There were also Cowboy and Indian statues sprinkled throughout. I like to check out how happy the store clerks are in places like this and usually they’re very cheerful and chatty. Other than being out of sync with 90% of the normal world, working late is the way to go. All night stalkers know that we live our life in a less crowded world than everyone else. Daytime is all about hustle and bustle. Everything is jam-packed. The highways are clogged. But at night, almost no one is out driving around but truckers and bands, and all the bands are listening to Art Bell’s COAST TO COAST AM radio show. After every gig our first stop is usually a convenience store, truck stop or toll road service plaza. This can be a peak experience for me. One time I walked around the outside of a store with an armadillo by my side. He just wandered up and we got to hang out for a few minutes. And inside, the snack food wrappings are colorful and you never know what condition the restrooms will be in. That’s an added surprise and almost never disappointing, unless the management has decided to put an “out of order” sign on the door to discourage street gangs from congregating. And when I say that the restrooms are almost never disappointing, I don’t mean they’re always clean. They’re generally not clean, in fact, may be horrific, but they can totally crack me up, too. I have been enjoying filthy restrooms for 30 years. Sometimes the restroom may be separate from the store and you might need a key, which might be attached to a baseball bat, so you don’t misplace it. After discovering the door unlocked, you enter cautiously and immediately notice the weird bluish fluorescent bulb buzzing and flickering and myriad varieties of bugs all over, taking occasional dips in the clogged toilet or broken urinal. To me this says, “Let’s have a party!” I will admit that it’s a bit of a downer to think about the futility and desperation these bugs experience once they’re trapped in this hell hole, but maybe their eyesight and sense of smell calculates it differently than we humans do. Anyway, that’s a way to look at the first 30 years of Brave Combo; laughing at ridiculous stuff. Of course, there are other fun things, like performing around the USA and occasionally in foreign lands, accepting the favors of nice fans, meeting interesting people that we admire, and deciding what to do with Grammy Awards.

30th Anniversary gossip. Lyle, BC’s first bass player, really wanted to be able to polka dance with an audience member while playing his bass, which was, of course, connected to an amp by a long guitar cable. He actually took lessons and tried it a few times. Our first drummer, Tito, never wore socks that matched , unless it was by mistake. More as the year goes on.

A growing number of paranoid people are convinced that the world, as we know it, will either end or go through some giant change in 2012. That’s three years from now. This is based primarily on some Mayan prediction, peppered by the sense that literally every aspect of modern life is falling apart. I’ll admit that there is plenty to worry about and, indeed, the future looks more bleak with each scary new day, but don’t you think it’s also a little arrogant of us to think that this very period of time, while we currently preside on Earth, would belong to us? I mean, if that’s the case, then I guess I’m flattered. And, unless you can convince me that there’s a really good reason for humans to be around much longer, this does seem to be a pretty good time to call it quits. When Brave Combo started I used to think about something I called THE GREAT HUMBLING; a big inevitable event I figured was bound to knock some sense into everyone and bring all of the survivors back to the real reality, whatever that’s supposed to be. Well, it’s 30 years later. To my knowledge, THE GREAT HUMBLING hasn’t happened yet and things are, in many ways, considerably worse than they were then. There are a whole lot more people now. That’s for sure. And that can’t be good for the society as a whole, though I know it fulfills core desires for most people and gives them a good reason to keep on living, like drugs, shopping and television do. So, where does that leave us? I only have control over one person and that’s me. I can’t recommend to anyone else how they should live or think. I can only hope everyone that chooses to have kids will know that it is their responsibility to be sure that what they decide to pop into this world doesn’t screw things up more. This means spending at least as much time with your kids as I do with my animals. But, again, what do I know about anyone other than myself. Besides that, some people think I’m crazy, especially when it comes to animals. But I do wonder what’s going to happen in 2012. I think almost everyone expects some horrible nuclear attack sometime soon. Who would that surprise? And once that happens, well, everything will change. Maybe that’s it, although that’s not very creative and certainly won’t be unexpected. A meteor or comet could hit the Earth. That would probably cause some big time trouble for all of us, and certainly more cosmic and an act you’d expect from an angry God. For now, the swine flu scare seems as far away as the first moon walk, so pandemic pandemonium is too much yesterdays buzz. Maybe the creepiest global-upheaval possibility is world-wide economic collapse. That might cause us all to see the worst side of everyone; desperate humans in a kill or be killed mindset, clawing open cans of beans with their bare hands, learning to swing from vines growing on empty office buildings. Perhaps if all of us, including yours truly, could learn to be less self-centered and more concerned about others, there would be no problems at all. As I understand it, if one can find the greatest joy in life in service to others, nothing bad can happen, because the greater the catastrophe, the more fun for the person that gets off on helping others. Certainly, the worst situations that require the most caring for each other usually turn out to be the defining things in a person’s life. If everything is easy, nothing is worth much.

I did my civic responsibility. I was called for jury duty, showed up on time (8:20 AM on a Tuesday), which is a pretty big deal in itself, was picked for the first round, was interviewed with about 15 other people, was recognized by the bailiff and both attorneys, one representing the man driving a car that hit a truck and one representing the man driving the truck). But, ultimately, I wasn’t picked. Jury duty is a funny thing. When you first show up, with about 200 other people, everyone in charge is upbeat and smiling. First a judge comes out and explains how important the right to a trial by jury is and thanks us all for showing up. He jokes a little. Then someone tells us all how to act and how to get out of being chosen. Apparently the key is to speak up; to have an opinion. Then they call names and we split into smaller groups. Our group goes to a courtroom right across the hall where another judge, and the two lawyers I just mentioned, tell us again about the privilege of serving on a jury and how to get out of it. Again, by speaking up and showing that you have an opinion. I figured once the first lawyer told me and everyone else in the room that his wife loves Brave Combo and then the other lawyer asked if I was ever so injured that I couldn’t play the accordion, I was going home soon. And that’s just what happened. On the way out I told the bailiff to come out to a show sometime. We shook hands and then I went home, picked up Eddy (our 18-pound cat) and went to the office to make up for the time I lost doing my civic duty. Other than being extremely inconvenienced at 8:20 AM, I had a good time. It was a refreshing change of pace and it probably won’t come around again until 2012 and, well, things will be all different then. So, I am so off the hook!

Speaking of music, don’t forget about it. Brave Combo plays a certain style of organized sound that we call Brave Combo style, and you can only get it from us. We will be displaying it all over the country this summer and hope you’ll show up. Check out our itinerary. It’s growing like a beautiful weed. Of course, you can always expect some exciting new vibrations and a twisted view point that just might make you rethink your current value structure. At least that’s our goal. So, submit. Okay? Please. And if you don’t, I’ll see you in 2012, sucker!