I sure hear what you guys are saying. I'm 36 years old but have been playing the accordion since I was around 10. When I was 16 I played four times a week in a restaurant. Playing the accordion was so uncool, however, that I played in a town about 30 miles away so that I would never run into anybody I knew. Stupid in retrospect, but when I was young I was very concerned with what everybody thought and playing the accordion was about dead last on every girl's list of admirable traits (in fact I think it was right below "prodigous amounts of acne").

Well, I ended up buying a new Camaro my Senior year of High School from all of the gigs I was playing and everyone thought that was cool, but when college came around I dropped it completely. I had been out of the business for about 10 years when I again picked it up last year (I had played piano and keyboards during the interim so I never really "lost" it).

Guess what? Accordion is IN now! What a crack-up. I played for a party in Newport Beach and about 100 people asked for cards and loved the music. La Paloma Blanca and Spanish Eyes are POPULAR again! My wife absolutely hates the women that talk to me all night.

Bottom line is that I think everything is cyclical. Eminem and Snoop Dogg are really in right now, but to me they're not musicians. They don't play instruments or read music. Sure they're creative and talented, I just don't think they're musicians.

I'd take an "old" guy like Uncle Dave playing Misty any day, and my personal opinion is that the world is slowly but surely moving back in that direction.

Now if only somebody would actually request Lady of Spain........