Lester Bailey

John Spiers of Spiers & Bowden fame has just launched www.melodeon.net. Any of you out there who like me dabble in the dark side as well as concertinas will be more than welcome. There's only 3 members at the moment, mind you it's only be live for a few hours.

Agree with Jim that Lord of the Dance is not a trad tune, but Aldbury Morris use it regularily for a dance called Skirmish in the following set: British Grenadiers Ode to Joy Lord of the Dance British Grenadiers

Can I assume the aboves were OK then?? Edited for typo which matters if you are poking fun at someone else’s typo

And ITM means??

According to this site the George Fox in question is indeed As for Monk's March, it is a heel and toe dance from Sherborne in Gloucestershire if played with a 2/2 time signature (this seems to suit the song) but also appears as General Monk's March with a 4/4 time signature as a heel and toe dance from Bledington in Gloucestershire. The two villages are 17 miles apart. Details of the General Monk in question can be found here. Edited for formatting incompetence and speelingg

I have just received an email supposedly from paul@concertina.net which contained the Netsky virus . Be on the alert.

So as not to be left out I have recorded some tunes which can be found here. If you like then there are links to the ABC files for the tunes on the same page.

Oh! Yes

You could always name it after some one really famous in the concertina world who was born in Bradford upon Avon. Something like "Lester's Session"

Jim I've emailed you with some thoughts on the page which will overcome this problem. Nice tunes by the way

The anglo has just gone for £4001 (thats $7351). Wow!

According to this website June is National Accordion Awareness Month. More interestingly I found the following quote from the site:

Oh! yes they have

Oh! I forgot there is always the Yahoo Diatonic Accordion Group here.

If you are a cheap skate like me the tunes are available as either ABC or noteworthy files from the Lewes Arms Folk Club site here. Must support Chris and Jim in their praise of this selection. Also the guys at the club organise very good workshops see here.

You could try The Session. Showing my prejudices I find them a bit odd especially after the long diatribe about how it is impossible to play what they refer to as "ITM" (Irish Traditional Music) on an English concertina. The definition of "ITM" that showed up recently was also odd "Tunes indigenous to Ireland, but also some others played by Irish people but also people from other nations" which seemed to cover most bases

I know it's strange to answer your own question but some Googling has lead me to find that a concertina is called a MAY'RON in Klingon. Mind you they are a savage race as they only have one word to cover both concertina and accordion. If you want a Klingon Dictionary go here. Edited for typo

English, Anglo, Duet, Bandoneon??

Lisa and I recently transacted intercontinental commerce (well there's no law against it), it was easy from my end to ship Fedex and I am sure Lisa can fill in the blanks about US Customs and any import duty.

Maybe not at sessions, but I visited the Rochester Sweeps Festival this year to see the Morris and there was one team of ~20 year old girls wearing big boots stripey tights short skirts and leather basques. Now that must be the future of Morris Dancing.

Thanks All ther is to know about Wookey cves can be found here. We were dancing their as part of our annual weekend away. It was a spooky place to dance but the acoustics were truly wonderful.

I have just added some pictures of the Aldbury Morris Concertina Band taken at yesterday's Westminster Morris Men's Day of Dance to my site. Pictures are here.

There is a stunning looking 72 button 5 octave Wheatstone Aeola. Made out of Amboyna wood with Gold keys and brown leather bellows for sale on Ebay Look here Oh! for enough money but expect it is way out of my price range.

Caj I feel I must disagree with your point of view, I have received instruction, albeit on melodeon, from most of the great players in the UK (Kirkpatrick, Cutting,Peters, etc). They all have their view on how to play and some of their ideas have changed the way I play, but I would not slavishly follow all their views as I would then become a clone and not a musician in my own right.

I think it is fair to say that the preponderance of tunes in G, D and E min in Morris is wholly driven by melodeon players. If you look in Bacon or Sharp there are many more keys used and I surmise it would have depended on the instrument the collectee was playing when the collector collected. My team consists mostly of English concertina players so we do use other keys, sometimes juts to annoy passing melodeon players, my particular favourite is Cuckoo's Nest Sherborne in G Min so much better than the normal E Min. ps. At last weeks practice, near the end of the practice season so everyone turned up, we had 12 dancers, 1 English Treble, 1 English Baritone, 1 English Bass, 1 Norman Anglo (C/G), 2 melodeons, 1 Saxophone, 1 Eb Bass. Touch of the never mind the quality feel the width music.