I played the accordion for years in a German Bier Keller in Europe. I was happy, the clientèle was happy, the staff was happy, and…..the boss was happy! I got to play music every day and night that you wouldn’t dare play here (Zorba the Greek…Kalinka…Eviva Espana…Strauss waltzes…German marches, etc). Music you can sink your teeth and your emotions into. Every night when we started the music, immediately the crowd would get up on their long benches at the tables with a pint of lager in their hands, lock arms and dance and swing and sway with each other. This would go on for hours. You could play Zorba every 30 minutes and the crowd would go wild every time.

Fast forward back to here. I returned to the USA and started over again “re-learning” what’s popular here. However, I became absolutely disillusioned in a short amount of time when I began playing here in the States. The music was dull and the people were just as dull (as an audience…of course this is all relative). Even the good music had a subdued ring to it, and of course, had to be COOL because Americans want their music...COOL!

The thorn in my side became New York, NY (Sinatra). To me, it typified the shallowness and polished glitz of American music. Don’t get me wrong...there’s a whole lot of it I like, particularly 70’s Disco and Latin music (which I wasn’t in touch with in Europe), but most days I wish I was back on the Continent playing the real stuff.

One of the top songs in Europe at the time, for many years, was Tie A Yellow Ribbon. When I left that was the last time I got to play it...and enjoy playing it. In Europe, when you play music, people come alive. Here, no matter how well you entertain, it’s like pulling teeth trying to get them to have a good time.

Don’t misinterpret...I don’t knock the folks in this country for their musical shortcomings. They were just never taught to “let go” and feel wholesome, happy music like their European counterparts. Sometimes I look at them and see the child inside trying to crawl out and I feel bad that they grew up in this musically challenged stifled environment we live in.

Yes, there IS a whole new world of music out there that we don’t get to hear in America. I find Americans to be obsessed with jazz (which even a buffoon musician could make work) or, as I said, anything considered to be “cool” because Americans get off on being “cool!”

I consider myself a very lucky man having lived and played in Europe for 10 years. Those were the best 10 musical years of my life, and now that I think of it, my 10 best years period!

When I first moved there, I knew nothing about European music and their listening habits. But I started playing/busking in the streets and studying and researching the music every day. I’d listen to the music presentation on the BBC daily and write down every song title. Easy enough as there were only 4 channels at the time. I’d make notes of any song that was ever mentioned or requested and go out and by the sheet music and learn it immediately. The more I studied European music, the more insatiable my appetite for it grew. It’s non-gimmicky music with real melody lines, bright, lively, happy, fun, moving, emotional, etc. Then I even graduated to French musette and this was the most fun I ever had playing music. Couldn’t get enough of it.

To this day, I wish I could go back and re-live those years. But as Tony Mads said:

“every where you turned there was a McDonald's or a Burger-King.”

In came the fast food joints and juke boxes and out went traditional music in mainstream Europe.

Lucky