Leyland Accordion Club, Leyland, Lancashire, England.

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Leyland Accordion Club - 16th June 2004

This Wednesday

Our guest artist on Wednesday, Ken Astin, started to learn the accordion at the age of 8years, taking all the BCA exams, and entering the NAO Area contests at Bolton. He represented the North Midlands & North Wales area many times, and came 3rd in all Britain in the Junior Solo Championship in 1958. Born and living in Blackpool, Ken was soon playing for dancing in hotels and clubs on the accordion until Beatles came on the music scene and swayed Ken's musical interest to the bass guitar. Now married, Ken moved to Garstang and joined a local dance band playing in village halls from Horrogate to Carlisle. In the early seventies he took up the Organ and eventually opened a Music shop in Garstang, and then a second shop in Blackpool, aquiring the Technics Organ agency and supplying organs to the Tower, Winter Gardens, all three piers and most of the clubs in the area. This was a busy time and the accordion was not played until 1994 when his friend Phil Kelsall asked him and Gina Branelli to play along with the Wurlitzer at the Blackpool Tower centenary concert. The accordion was put away again until March 2003 when Alan Venn introduced Ken to Harry Hussey at one of Alan's Organ/Accordion weekends. Harry's enthusiasm and style impressed him so much that he booked a flight to Castelfidardo in Italy and bought a Vignoni Bach II compact. When I heard Ken playing, I knew that he should be heard on the accordion club scene and booked him straight away. Don't miss Ken making his debut on Wednesday. Doors open 7.30pm for an 8pm start.

Conston Players

I received a phone call asking me to supply some accordionists for an event at Croston on the 10th of September. On the day, Tom and Colin went along to provide two hours of accordion playing for what turned out to be a rainy day. It was lucky that the event consisted of about 10 or 15 stalls which were under cover. This meant that Tom and Colin were allocated the facepainters tent as the location for their musical entertainment. The crowds seemed to enjoy the accordion playing, which had to stop for half an hour when the maypole came out and the local primary school girls gave an excellent demonstration of dancing round the maypole accompanied by accordion music played through the sound system from a tape recorder or CD. The children were a credit to their teacher as they produced lots of intricate patterns during their performance. During the day we met a chap who lives just a mile or so away from the club, he plays the accordion in his bedroom but does not feel confident enough to come down and meet us. There must be lots of people like him, living in the local area, playing the accordion, but not aware of the club, or confident enough to come down and visit us. I have heard of about 6 people who live in the local area, who play the accordion, but who we have never seen. I hope to get to these people with a series of newspaper press releases, diary what’s on entries and hopefully a couple of TV and radio appearances. If you have any ideas for finding these people, if you can put a poster up in your local shop, library, club, doctors surgery or wherever then let me know or pick up an A4 poster at the club
Don't miss Ken Astin Concert. This Wednesday at the Priory Club. Doors open at 7.30pm for an 8pm start. See you there...

Blank Sheet Music

www.blanksheetmusic.net is an internet website that will create any kind of blank sheet music for you to print out for free. The site uses Macromedia Flash to create the sheet music you select from a list of sheet music types. You can choose from these pre-defined types such as percussion, piano, six string, alto, tenor etc. or you can choose the custom option to create your own. Once you have the sheet music on screen, you simply click the print button and your printer dialogue box appears. This is a nice site for people who use blank sheet music. The site is easy to use and it allows you to have blank sheet music anywhere you can find an internet connection and a printer

David Batty From Leicester!

Those of you who get Charlie Watkins magazine may be surprised to see a photograph looking like me, accompanied by a paragraph about David Batty from Leicester. I can confirm to those of you who were thinking ‘Oh no, there’s not two of him’ that Charlie made a mistake, probably because to southerners in London, it’s a case of “Leyland or Leicester, what’s the difference, it’s up north isn’t it?” I will forgive Charlie for this mistake because the write-up he gave me couldn’t have been better if I had written it myself. I will give him a geography lesson next time I speak to him.

Our Website

Our internet website has had 69517 visitors as at the 18th of July 2004, that’s 1035 visitors since last month.

Rotary Club Talk

I was asked if I would be an after dinner speaker at Lostock Hall for the South Ribble Rotary Club last Wednesday. The subject I chose was the accordion. After enjoying a great meal I was introduced by the President and I started my talk. The subject of my talk was the accordion, it’s history, anecdotes, jokes and of course, demonstrations of couplers, playing techniques etc. The talk revolved around my interest in the accordion scene in the area, the clubs activities, festivals, events and the social scene associated with the accordion. As I was talking, my accordion came apart to demonstrate reeds, couplers, and the stradella bass mechanism. There were lots of very intelligent questions from the audience which numbered about 27 people. From the questions, comments and discussions I had with various people during and after the event, I think I surprised many with the amount of current activity associated with the club and the accordion in general. After 40 minutes I asked for a time check and was told to continue by various people around the room. My talk ended 20 minutes later with a demonstration of how the accordion can be expanded and enhanced with MIDI. As I played ‘Sailing By’ with strings and an orchestral backing from my RA95 arranger it was obvious from the comments the audience made to each other as I played, that quite a few people were amazed that what they previously thought of an older instrument, was in reality as up to date as any instrument they could think of. When I plugged the accordion in to an expander and started playing it was something totally unexpected. At the end, I left a pile of 30 newsletters on the table after my talk and was surprised to see that 20 had been taken, that’s a very good response from 27 people. I met some nice people at the Rotary Club and I hope that we might see some of them at the club in future.

LAC Picnic 2004

On Sunday the 4th of July we enjoyed another of our annual picnic concerts at the usual venue of Hollins Farm. As is usual for this event, the sun shone throughout the day, leaving many of us with very red arms and faces. Some people arrived in caravans the previous night and had a late night accordion playing party while the rest of the crowd arrived from 12 noon onwards. We were entertained for 8 hours with non stop accordion music on the weatherproof stage which gave the players some protection from the sun. The sound system took the sound all round the field and for those in caravans having their meals, as usual the concert was broadcast on FM radio so they didn't miss anything. The entertainment continued through the evening with accordion, accordion and keyboard, accordion keyboard and drums, midi accordion playing from Phil and near to the end of the evening we had six belly dancers being accompanied by Bill Agnew on accordion (see photograph on the left). The wrap around photograph below shows the view from the stage nearer the end of the day when some people had left, but it still gives you a good idea of the layout of the event. The caravans are parked on the left of the photograph. I have uploaded this photograph to our Internet websitewhere you can view it in detail and in full colour. I might get a few more of the photos on there for you to view or print out. Here's looking forward to next year.....