Leyland Accordion Club, Leyland, Lancashire, England.

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14th January 1998

Well what a night that was! Walter Perrie and Tom Cowing provided us with some very entertaining music, Walter playing his Excelsior whilst Tom played electronic second accordion. As usual, it was up to the regulars to do the difficult bit and warm the crowd up. This task was accomplished by myself playing "Return to Sorrento", Tom Bennett demonstrating that I must get two right hands fitted and Agnes Maclaren showing us both how it should be done 'Agnes style'. We also had a newcomer by the name of Trudy who played a few tunes at the start of the second half before Walter and Tom returned. Walter and Tom played two halves with The old rustic bridge, Ballochyle, Mackenzie Hay, The Brolum, The Spey in a Speight, Jacqueline Waltz, Figaros Aria from The Barber of Seville, Rossini's La Danza, La vie en Rose, Under Paris Skies, Milord, and Umbrellas of Cherbourg. The second half of the evening settled down with myself, Tom, Agnes and Trudy playing a few numbers, followed by our guest artists playing us to the end with Frosini's Cocquette Polka, Frosini's Bel Viso, White Cockade, The Petronella, The Duke and Dutchess of Edinburgh, Statin Islands, The Marquis of Tullibardine, The Lass of Bon Accord. The Long Long Trail and the Marquis of Huntley's Farewell. I did take a few pictures of Walter and Tom playing but in most of them Walter was a blur, the lower one of these two was the only one where he stayed still long enough during his playing for me to catch him on film. I must thank Walter for his music and Tom Cowing for traveling all the way from Hexam in Northumberland just to play for us. Many thanks for those of you who have paid your membership fee, it keeps me in stamps for these newsletters. From now on the new rates of £1 for members and £1.50 for non members or £2 for members and £2.50 for non members on guest artist nights will be the norm on the door, any newcomers to the club will pay the lower fee and will then be able to decide if they wish to pay an annual £3 to become a member with all it's benefits. For those of you who have paid, you will find your membership number on your address label, the rest of you will will have the words 'Membership: Unpaid'. In order to keep costs down, I have programmed my computer so that non members who do not attend the club will be removed from the mailing list automatically after 4 months of non attendance; members are not affected by this whether they attend or not. This will allow me to concentrate on providing a good club for those who do support it either by paying their membership fee, regular attendance or both. I would like to thank two people for their dedication to the accordion and for their help with the club. They are Steve Roxton and Walter Perrie who are to be honorary members, I have had a lot of advice and encouragement from these two people without which I might not have started the club, I feel that this is the best way to repay them (they might turn down my offer of a free accordion lesson!!). A few people have contacted me to say that they are attending the accordion festival in March. I am looking forward to this, I have had a lot of calls asking if a day ticket is available as local people do not want to book a chalet when they are only a few miles from home but the organisers only let those who book a chalet attend the festival, so it will be no use anyone else calling there, they will have to book a chalet if they wish to take part. The organisers are not allowing any video cameras in to the festival either so I will not be able to get hold of videos of it. You can however obtain a video of the Prestatyn festival which was held in September, this is 2.5 hours long and a bargain at £10 including postage, send cheques to Heather Smith, 80 Inglemire Avenue, Kingston Upon Hull, HU6 7TG or telephone 01482 803765 for more information. I was informed at the last club night that Gladys Lees was not at the club with her husband Ron in January due to some bad news regarding her health. I spoke to her on the phone this week and she said that she missed us and is hoping to be back at the club soon. I would like to wish her well on behalf of everyone at the club. We look forward to seeing you soon Gladys, give her a hug from us Ron.

As your intrepid reporter, I decided to look at the world of the busker. First things first, I found out that, according to the Chambers 20th Century dictionary, a busker is "A wandering musician or actor". Armed with this information I rang and spoke to Leyland and Preston Police about the legalities of accepting monetary remuneration for the public performance of a musical instrument. According to the police, there is no licencing system in England for busking, it is a legal act to play in the streets and accept donations for your playing. If you are simply asking for money e.g. charity box rattlers then you need a public collection licence but this does not affect buskers as they are not collecting, rather they are being given money as a "thank you" for providing entertainment. You must not create a public nuisance or block the pavement with large crowds around you. The next step was to ask the councils about their policy regarding buskers in their town. I rang the Licencing officers in Bolton, Blackburn, Preston, Chorley, Southport, Lancaster, Leyland, Fleetwood and Burnley councils to find out about their attitude to busking, All the councils mentioned above said that they encouraged buskers as they are part of the 'street furniture' and add to the character of a town, things were looking good. I made a list of tunes that I thought would go down well and armed with this list, I set off to Preston to seek fame and fortune (I was going there anyway to do some work that morning). After work I set off for the town armed with my accordion on it's trolley. It was a sunny day and I found that all the good spots where you normally find buskers were taken, one of the Bus Station subways had a guitarist playing and so I set off to have a look at the other one, as I approached the entrance to the Guild Hall I could hear the sound of an accordion! I stopped to listen to the woman who was playing, after about a minute she stopped playing and said that she could not play when someone was listening to her! I was amused by this as she has been busking in Preston for about two years that I know of. She said that business was bad today and then she packed up and left - this was my chance I had found my spot and I quickly got my accordion out and took one look at the list I had produced and I was off. About two minutes later it happened, a 5p piece flew through the air and landed in MY accordion case, I was now officially a busker. I soon realised that most people were only near you for about 1 to 2 minutes and therefore the shorter quicker tunes were the better ones to perform. After a few rounds of Plasir D'amour, Oslo Waltz, There's a tavern in the Town and various other tunes it was time to return to my car before I received a ticket. I collected up my pocket full of change and made my way home happy with my efforts. Now for the financial bit, busking pays between £5 and £20 per hour, it's quite nice being paid these amounts of money to practice and if you are brave enough to do it then I can recommend it. I normally sit down to play the accordion but when busking I found standing up a bit tiring on my back, it also requires a different playing technique to being seated. I now have a bottle for the change I receive and I am seeing how much I can accumulate towards a new accordion. If you are up to it then give it a try and let us know how you get on.

I have just written off to Channel 4 asking if I can produce a video diary about the accordion movement in this country, I will keep you informed of my progress in this field. I do not intend to rest until I get the accordion on this program, it's what our instrument needs

Bryan Adams is releasing a version of his song "Have you ever really loved a woman" to benefit breast cancer research, he agreed to Linda Evangesista's request to do this on one condition, that she join him in the studio on the track. She agreed and is on the track singing and playing the accordion. No release date has been set for this record yet.

A charity concert of accordion music is to be held on Friday 13th Feb. 98 at 'The Studio', Haven Road, Lytham. 7.30 start, a finger buffet is included, admission is by ticket only, tickets at £5 are available from Jean Berry on 01253 726412, all proceeds to the Victoria Hospital M.R.I. Scanner Appeal. Would anyone interested in attending give Jean a ring so she knows the numbers for the food. Jean will have tickets on her at the club this Wednesday.

It's now Saturday at 7pm and since I started this newsletter at 5pm there have been accordionists on a program about cats, 'Are you being served', 'Generation Game', an orchestra that were playing, and now they have just played the original theme tune to "Skippy the bush Kangaroo" which I was surprised to hear was also played on an accordion, because I am looking and listening I find that you can see or hear about 10 accordions per day on tv, this is not including the midi accordions that sound like anything but an accordion, see how many you can spot.

Our Forthcoming Club Nights (please note the change with Johnny Coleclough bringing his date forward from October to July) 11th February 1998 Local Players 11th March 1998 Peter Whiteley&Adrienne Sharpe 1st April 1998 Steve Roxton 8th April 1998 Local Players 13th May 1998 Deirdre Adamson 10th June 1998 Local Players 8th July 1998 Johnny Coleclough 12th August 1998 Local Players 9th September 1998 (To be confirmed) 14th October 1998 Local Players 11th November 1998 Steve Roxton 9th December 1998 Christmas Dinner

Q: How do you get two accordionists to play in time? A: Shoot one of them.