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chapter five New Main Squeeze Repositioning the Accordion in the Music Industry anyone who read magazines and newspapers or heard popular music on the radio and television in the 1990s might have noted a new wave of fascination withtheaccordion.Keyboard wasamongthefirstobserversofthephenomenon, reportingthat“againstallodds,despitetheimageproblemsandallthehigh-tech hoopla,the accordion is back.”1 There had been dramatic surges earlier,in the 1930s and 1940s, peaking in 1955 when accordion sales reached their height. The midcentury accordion craze was precipitated by causes different from those of the 1990s,fueled primarily by postwar prosperity and the educational and cultural aspirations of returning GIs; lingering associations with victory, patriotism,and success; and an early backlash against rock ’n’roll.It centered mainly on the accordion industrial complex, reaffirming its hegemonic values and musical aesthetics. Although the accordion continued to be the primary featured instrument in polka and a number of American ethnic musical styles, an unbridgeable divide remained between the accordion industrial complex and the proponents of the accordion-based ethnic styles discussed in chapter 5. The accordion revival of the 1980s and 1990s, if it can be called that, was more complex and more abstract, consisting of several interrelated social and cultural developments: the increasing presence of the instrument in popular and world music styles, a desire for acoustic sounds, and the proliferation of accordions and accordionists on television and the Internet. In the 1990s and continuing today, more overtly self-conscious uses of the piano accordion have appeared,such as Those Darn Accordions,John Linnell of the alternative rock band They Might Be Giants, and Weird Al Yankovic, i-xiv_1-258_Jaco.indd 145 1/17/12 12:14 PM 146 . chapter five grimacing like a deranged rock ’n’ roll idol on the cover of Keyboard in 1987.2 Weird Al (no relation to Frankie Yankovic the Polka King) and his flat,inexpressive style of accordion playing subverted this listener’s expectations of exaggerated virtuosity (“accordions can rock, too!”) or deliberately bad playing (“see how schlocky!”). What is Weird Al doing to/with the accordion? The answer to this question offers much insight into this chapter’s discussion, raising key moral and aesthetic issues.The accordion is present not as an object of parody but as the subject—an accomplice to Weird Al’s explicit attacks on the popular music industry’s banality and endless repetitions of mediocre musical formulae (note the song title “It’s Just Billy Joel to Me”). That such charges were once leveled against accordionists is an ironic twist that would have been, for many accordionists in the 1980s,hard to miss.From the perspective of accordionists, Weird Al’s rise to fame constitutes both a liability and an asset. That the accordion’s new presence in popular culture was documented by the media and on websites makes it unique in the music world.After Keyboard heralded the return of the accordion in 1987 (preceded by an earlier “squeeze­ box update” in various Gannett papers) came a wave of articles in the mainstream press and a broadcast on National Public Radio stations that covered the accordion revival (see table 5.1). Table 5.1 lists only some of the many articles that appeared on websites, local radio broadcasts, television spots, and alternative weeklies such as the New Times Los Angeles.3 Also noteworthy are the scores of profiles of accordion performers, coverage of AAA conventions and accordion festivals, and hundreds of news spots about Accordion Awareness Month (June; discussed in chapter 6). All these items give evidence of the accordion’s wider exposure in the 1990s and 2000s in the mass media. While press coverage of the accordion movement seemed to decline in the first decade of the new century, the accordion players and industry players continued to document the “revival” and evidence of a critical mass of accordionists. Long after the ripple of media coverage died down, collectors and enthusiasts continued to track accordion sightings in the industry. The blog letspolka.com tracked accordionists and accordion players in the industry. The Dutch blogger Jeroen Nijhof’s attempt to collect and document bands in every style and genre that make use of accordionists and accordion sounds is a remarkable and unique accomplishment and labor of love, one that has enriched this book. Some observers marked the accordion’s steadily escalating presence in rock music from as early as 1967. In an article for Music Trades, Faithe Deffner, the vice president of Deffner Affiliates (the accordion manufacturing company and i-xiv_1...

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