Bella’s Bartok all pun and games at The Rockwell on Friday, 29 December 2023.

Your Friends In Hell take off their jacket to get more comfortable in the opening slot.

ONCE in the house.

Two bands, two accordions. It was that kind of night at The Rockwell.

The good ol’ groanbox, the melodeon, the stomach Steinway. Not exactly the dream instrument sparking the imagination of the kids these days, but prior to the guitar taking off in the 1950s, the accordion was more popular than you know.

An accordion was everywhere, in every band, in every genre, in every part of the land. All those European immigrants had brought their squeezeboxes with them, and created new sounds in the New World with old instruments.

Once rock n roll took hold of American popular music, though, the popularity of the accordion started to wane. The windbox fever didn’t die overnight. There’s plenty of memorable moments in the history of the accordion, 1950s to present. But it was decisively outdueled by the guitar as the apple of every young music student’s eye. You just can’t rock out with an accordion.

Or can you? Punk is at least one genre keeping the accordion lamplight lit. You’ve got to drill down into the sub-sub-genre of gypsy punk or circus punk or whatever you want to call it. If you do, you’ll find the accordion playing a leading role with its ability to communicate melody and rhythm in one wheezy stroke.

It’s not exactly the Sex Pistols, but what’s more punk than bucking the expectations of what’s supposed to be “punk?” And the reappropriation of acoustic textures was a nice counterpunch to the distorted chords that had started to sound like so much metal mush by the late 80s.

Plus, you can dance to gypsy punk.

Will the accordion rise again? Stranger things have happened. Strap one on and be the groanbox you want to see in the world.

Your Friends In Hell

The Boston-based four-piece Your Friends In Hell look custom-tailored for Halloween gigs.

After all, they describe themselves as “a group of hellish exiles making music about ghosts and stuff.” How would the band adjust to performing a December show in a holiday landscape festooned with candy canes instead of jack o’ lanterns?

Not at all!

All four members rolled up with full Halloween spook makeup and dialed it up like it was the 31st of October. A kind of gothy twist on gypsy punk. There’s something to be said for staying in your lane. If The Nightmare Before Christmas taught us anything, it taught us that.

Shout out to the accordion, of course. But special bonus points awarded for the xylophone. It’s so easy to imitate that sort of sound with a synth keyboard, most bands don’t bother with the real thing. You can hear the difference though. And the xylophone looks cool!

Watch for Your Friends In Hell to return to the stage somewhere for a Half-o-Ween show…

Bella’s Bartok

The Amherst-based band Bella’s Bartok doubles down on the gypsy punk by punning on the name of Hungarian composer and ethnomusicologist Béla Bartók.

That’s some meaty theoretical foundation for wheezebox ditties. But the five-piece didn’t get academic, it was a straight up dance party from the jump. Haven’t seen this much get-down at The Rockwell since Talk Chalk.

You knew it was a good crowd for a good band when everyone sang along to the lyrics of a tune that the frontman said had been written twelve years ago. Who remembers the lyrics to a song from a decade ago? Who remembers lyrics to a song? Who remembers anything? This crowd was locked in for the show.

Shout out to the accordion, of course. But super special extra bonus points awarded to the washboard, which is an even rarer find on stage than the accordion.

Just an aside: with the proliferation of modern appliances like washing machines, have we long since passed the point at which washboards are more frequently used as musical instruments than scrubbing devices? At least in America? It might be true, even taking into account the niche role of washboards as instruments.

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