Leyland Accordion Club, Leyland, Lancashire, England.

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Leyland Accordion Club - 20th October2004

December Party Jacobs Join

Next month is our christmas party night, as usual this is a Jacobs Join where we all bring along something like sandwiches, sausage rolls, a cake or something similar and share it out in one big spread. This is also a night where we see some new party pieces, new duets and new players taking to the stage, you can get practicing now.

Our New Club Mascot

Our new club mascot went down well last month. I will bring it along this month for those who missed it. Our mascot is a 5' 7" (Over 6 ' 6" tall if you include his ears) Wylie Coyote playing a full sized accordion! I bet no other accordion club has one of those! It was sat on stage next to the players all night, see photographs in here next month.

New CD Being Produced

Harry Hussey and Ken Astin are recording a CD together this week, the CD will be recorded on Wednesday and Thursday. Further details of the contents, cost and where to order it from will appear in the newsletter as soon as they are ready for sale.

Club Membership

Many thanks to those of you who have already paid your club membership, the rest of you still have December and January meetings to update your membership for 2005. The annual membership of £5, which is unchanged from previous years, give you cheaper admission on concert nights and it also ensures you get this newsletter delivered each month.

This Wednesday

This Wednesday we see the return of Romano Viazzani as our guest artist playing the new Roland accordion. Amongst the visitors on Wednesday night will be Steve Roxton and there is also a chance that Harry Hussey and Ken Astin will also be in attendance if they finish producing their CD recordings in time for the concert. Bring your friends along for a great night of entertainment. Doors open at 7.30pm for an 8pm start. Make sure that you turn up early for a good seat. Why not bring your friends along for a treat. I look forward to seeing you there on Wednesday for another of our great nights of entertainment.

David Batty

Keyboard And Accordion Weekend

This weekend, Alan Venn's Accordion Weekend break was held at its usual venue of The Mount Hotel, Blackpool. Guests arrived on Friday and were treated to Harry Hussy and Alan Venn in concert. Each day featured a morning then an afternoon accordion workshop with Harry Hussey. Other sessions included "The Guest Entertains" where anyone got the chance to have a go. On Saturday night Ian Wolstenholme played keyboard, Ian's son then gave us a selection of tunes on his guitar while his dad backed him on the organ. The rest of the night featured Ken Astin and Harry Hussey playing individually and together. Sunday had more workshops, a musical quiz and then an evening concert with Ian, Harry, Ken Gorrell and Trevor Evans in concert. The concert on Monday night featured Harry and Ken, Trevor Evans and Andrew Seddon. Alan already has the next event planned, watch out for further details in this newsletter nearer the time.

John Brown

One of our members, John Brown, died two weeks ago and was cremated last week. John was always sat in the same place, he was the closest person to the stage against the left hand wall as you face the stage. John, who only recently started playing the accordion at well past retirement age, was a regular at our practice nights. When John lost his driving licence after failing an eye test, he started walking about a mile and a half to the club on concert and practice nights, we took him home at the end of the night. I spoke to John's wife last week, she told me that John loved coming to the club and was always practicing his accordion. He found out about the club by going to Leyland Citizens Advice office to see if there was an accordion club nearby, then he found that there was one a mile and a half from his house, he will be missed by many I'm sure.

Roland Accordion Shops

I have noticed in recent weeks that a large number of shops have suddenly started advertising the new Roland accordion. I have had many shops, that I previously didn't know existed, contacting me to try to sell their new item to me. It's good that these shops are actively selling the accordion, they are doing a lot to raise the profile of our instrument. You can see the Roland accordion demonstrated on Wednesday when you come to the club, our guest artist Romano Viazzani is the demonstrator for the V-Accordion. Romano gave us a half hour taste of his playing at the end of the demonstration evening and we were so impressed I booked him on the spot. He will have a whole night to impress us on Wednesday, make sure you don't miss it.

Accordion World Magazine

Accordion World Magazine is currently starting it's new round of subscriptions which run from January to December. The full colour glossy magazine is produced 6 times per year by David Keen. To subscribe, send your cheque for £13.75, made payable to "David Keen", to Accordion World, 19 Frays Way, Uxbridge, Middlesex, UB8 2RJ.

Eastbourne Accordion Festival

Eastbourne Accordion Festival is now 70% full, so, if you want to book a place then you will have to do it soon. The festival is held from the 18th to 21st of February 2005 at The Cumberland Hotel, Eastbourne. The price of £179 for 3 nights half board can be paid by a £69 deposit and the balance paid on the Monday morning that you leave the hotel. Telephone John on 01323 744700 for further details.

Three men hire a rowing boat at the rate of £10 each, Fred who hires the boats out collects their money and takes it to the office where the boss tells him to give them £5 back as discount for three in a boat. On the way back, Fred decides to keep £2 for himself and only give the men £3 discount, they each therefore get a £1 coin back. This means that the men have all paid £9 not £10. If the three men have paid £9 each, 3* 9=£27, Fred kept £2 in his pocket. Where has the other pound gone ?

Strange Internet Activity

Last month I told you that I had registered a new domain name on the Internet, then shortly afterwards I started getting two people, one in Lancashire and one in Scotland, visiting our website using the new site name. I have since found out that the domain name I registered www.accordionfestival.com used to belong to someone in Scotland. They did not pay for its renewal when the lease on it expired, then following a 3 month grace period where they could have re-registered it but failed to do so, the name was deleted from the register and was free for anyone to register, that's where I came along. The domain name hadn't worked for three months so I had no idea that it ever belonged to anyone in the past. One of the visitors to our site was the previous owner of that domain name. I spoke to the previous owner and told them that I would put their festival details on the site if they send the details through to me, they were happy with my offer of promoting their festival for them. I have registered www.accordionfestival.co.uk and www.accordionfestival.com to provide the accordion community with one place where they can find out what's happening in the world of accordion festivals. I was prompted to design a site to show all the accordion festivals in one place because, depending on what magazine you read, or what club you go to, you most likely don't find out about all the festivals. Some magazines won't list certain festivals because a rival is connected to them. By having one list that people can access, they can be sure that no festival is missed out and everything is listed in one place, in date order. I have just listed basic details of the forthcoming festivals that I know about, I will add any others I hear about. One thing that can be guaranteed though, is that this will be a complete listing of festivals that I know about, irrespective of who is organising them, where they are located, or whether I attend them or not. Simply visit www.accordionfestival.co.uk or .com to see a list of forthcoming festivals, along with the organisers name, phone number, known artists who will be there and a short description of what type of event it is. The site is very basic at the moment but I hope to expand it to include new features including maps, a forum for people to chat about festivals, and hopefully a system for people to meet each other online before setting off to a chosen festival.

Our Website

Our internet website has had 73296 vistors as at 14th December 2004, that's 1029 visitors to our main page since last month. Last month I said that I was going to publicise our website on the Internet and told you that a search on www.google.co.uk search engine returned 978 pages for Leyland Accordion Club. Since then, I have added our site to just over 350 different search engines, and I have used my marketing skills to further promote our site. The result, after four weeks is that a search on the Google search engine for "Leyland Accordion Club" now returns 1230 pages, that's an increase of 252 web pages that mention our club over a period of just four weeks, on just one search engine. Many of the places I have visited, and informed of our presence on the web, have not yet listed us and probably won't for another few weeks yet. Some places quote a period of months before their directory is updated, so the above number is set to rise even more over the coming weeks and months. I was amused to get a phone call recently about the accordion from someone down south, the person had looked on the Internet for an accordion organisation, the result was that they only found three clubs in the country on the web. I don't know which search engine they used but they said all roads seemed to point to our club. I have a lot more work to do marketing our site. I was surprised to find that in 1999 our site was listed as "site of the week" on a large accordion search site. They did a review of our activities and their conclusion was that our club could possibly be setting the standard for other clubs to follow. See www.search-accordion.com/week/week_99_04_02.cfm. As I said before, I have been resting on my laurels as far as website promotion is concerned and now I intend to make up for it, watch this space. I also did a similar job for the Birmingham Accordion Centre website this month adding their two sites to over 350 search engines.