Last Bang This Year!

December 31, 2019

Well, here it is about 3 hours and 15 minutes away from the start of a new year and I wanted to end this year with a little something positive.

I woke up this morning a little disgusted with myself in terms of how I did this year on the accordion.  Yes I know, there were a million excuses… crazy 14-18 hours-per-day work schedules, a battle with cancer (that I won!), dental surgery, an extremely difficult and sad ending to a relationship that ripped my heart out of my chest, and many more excuses that I could discuss on and on. 

The issue is that this is exactly what it all is… excuses!

I am done with excuses.  The battle with cancer was hard fought, but I won, the work conditions are promised to change before the end of January 2020, dental surgery is going to continue until complete.  My heart… well, I don’t know about my heart, I have to put away somewhere so that I don’t have to listen to it for the time being.  Painful?  Yes.  Annoying? Most definitely.

I will cope and survive… I always have in the past.

What I am motivated to do is to not put away the accordion like I had to do the last several months.  Not like I had much choice, but had I been better motivated, who knows.

I am now motivated.  To start, I had to make a statement, set a benchmark to gauge myself by and a level to start from and exceed. 

So I made a video.

Yeah, it SUCKS.  I captured it on 2 cameras and the TouchMix mixer in ONE take, no practice, no warm up and no removing any of the errors.  It’s all there in it’s vulgar mediocrity.

This video is going to be the bar that I must beat, and to do that I have to practice.  To better myself, I have to put in the time, make more videos and start to not only get better, but SHOW that I am getting better, and it all starts here on the very last day of 2019.

Here is that video:

I left the comments open on YouTube, invited all to dish out their criticisms, laugh or whatever… I just laid it on the line.  Come and get me, go ahead, do your worst, I can take it, indeed, I am asking for it! (haha!)

My FR-8X is in perfect working order, the Hohner VI N is in tune, both  sound lovely and I am already planning the next video, perhaps a tango, (maybe a Czech tango?), which I always love, and from there… who knows, the musical world is my oyster!  It’s me and my accordions and the pleasure they give me as I am enjoying all that funny noise I make with these strange boxes strapped to my shoulders!

Life was good once, for a short while… it can be good again.

Oh… HAPPY NEW YEAR!