polka: the final insult

I nearly fell off my roof the other day. Not the roof at my primary home but my summer home in Gilberton. Well, not really my summer home... but my time share. I was up there trying to get my antenna ready for the big day, June 12 th; the day when television reception signals were scrambled. I don’t know about you, but I recommend having the large Australian rabbit ear antenna on the roof. It helps with getting clearer reception for Baywatch.
I had always been reluctant to sign up for cable tv even though cable television was created in Mahanoy City, not far from my summer time share. I refuse to pay for something that I can get for free. It doesn’t matter if it involves television or my love life. It must be my upbringing.
Don’t think that I was never tempted to hook-up with cable television or a satellite dish. I often thought about it. I am envious of cable subscribers who can watch the bulletin board on Comcast Channel 7 or Pottsville Station Channel 15 throughout the day. But luckily through the kindness of friends I have amassed a great bulletin board video library.
I nearly fell off of the roof that day because Mammy yelled up and told me that the Grammy Award Show has stripped Polka of its recognition as music. It was a shock I will never forget. No more awards to a polka band! To add insult to injury, all past polka recipients must return their awards accompanied by a written apology. It was the saddest day of my life since Pluto was stripped of its status as a planet. It brought back memories of the day Jim Thorpe had to return his Olympics medals and then face banishment in Mauch Chunk.
The Polka Industry should have listened to me. I tried to warn them. I was a voice crying out in the wilderness. I told them that the music needed to become hip and relevant. I suggested that twenty per cent of all future polka albums use such terms as ‘ho,’ ‘bizzle,’ ‘big behind,’ 'pimp’ and ‘gettin' jiggy.’ If the vocalists were too prudish to use such terms in english, then they could slip them in songs using Polish or Russian slang. Crude word usage such as 'cichodajka,' 'bljad', and 'dupek' may have helped save the grammy recognition.

I also told them that their dress had to be modernized. I said, “…get more gold chains…. let your underwear show…and for God’s sake,get your noses and eyebrows pierced…” Maybe they should appear in public only wearing their socks, just like the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I told them to dump the upbeat melodies and focus more on pain, despair and death. I told them to get rid of the E-I-E-I-Os and introduce guttural roars, grunts, snarls, and low gurgles. I also told them to get some woman onstage during the next Pierogi Bowl, maybe Mrs. T herself, and have a "wardrobe malfunction," like Janet Jackson had at the Superbowl several years ago. But no one listened to me, not Happy Louie, not Joe Stanky, not even Little Andy himself. Even though this is what the public wants, the polka industry refused to change course, and now the polka industry is finished, worthless as my unused tickets for the Lakewood Roller Coaster.

I carefully got down from the roof and went into the parlor to wait for the government to scramble my television reception from analog into digital. Mammy was scared; she remembered what had happened to our computer when the millennium started. “Will the remote control now adversely affect her pacemaker?” “Will the Prince of Belair still remain fresh?” “Will the same old crap still be on?” We held each other tight and shared a cigarette; waiting for the moment to arrive. “Would the NBC Peacock begin molting, shedding its feathers?” “Would Law and Order have too much Order and not enough Law?” “Will Morley be any Safer?”

All the while my mind drifted back to the shabby treatment given the Polka. I swore that day that if my tv set still worked I would never watch the Grammies ever again. Instead I would watch some of my old analog tapes of the Community Bulletin Board.

When the big day came the government mandated change-over was actually easier than back in the late 1970s,when everyone was forced to convert from eight-track to cassette.

Polka Club memories

I was at the Altamont Free Festival back in the late nineteen sixties. You know, the legendary celebration held in the south end of Frackville. How did I hear about it? Well, I was sitting at the counter at Phaon’s Diner waiting for my scrapple breakfast, listening to my Toshiba transistor radio which was tuned to the WPPA Sunday morning Polka show. It was difficult to hear polka music in my native west end of the county so I had to set the radio next to the window to get clearer reception. That is when I first heard that a free concert was planned to be held in Altamont with an intoxicating line-up of the county’s best bands. Later Yak Tam Billy Urban made the same announcement on WMBT, the station that played progressive polka music.

I knew it would a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I had to go to Altamont and be part of the county’s musical history. Just think about it, the Jordan Brothers, The Other Side, Lil’ Andy, Tony Karpee, The Schuylkill Haven Belvederes’ Drum & Bugle Corp, Big Barrel Emil Simodejka, Buddy Widel Trio, The Individuals, and so many others, all on one stage...and for free. The event would go down in Schuylkill County musical mythology.
It would be three days of peace and love in “The Mountain City.”
Before I tell you of the festival, I want you all to know that while my musical taste was based in “underground” Polka music, I was open-minded to listening to other forms of music. Underground polka music is the edgy polka music that did not have a mainstream following. Traditional polka music could be heard on the Lawrence Welk Show but I preferred the raw energy heard at the Bavarian Festival in Barnesville. The best polka music was not the sappy, upbeat, happy Myron Floren-variety, but rather the type of polka that reflected the dismal lifestyle of many of our county youths. This music circled itself around both aggression and crime (as found in the lyrics of “Who Stole the Keeshka?”) and misogyny ( “She’s Too Fat Polka”- utterly offensive to Rubenesque women). As an angry white boy, it was the music that spoke to me…it was both the music that annoyed anyone over thirty and was also the music to allow me to “get jiggy with the ladies.”
While polka music was unheard of in my native Pine Grove, misogynistic lyrics were not. In fact the west end “Hoe Down” music was notorious and the subject of a Grand Jury Probe on obscenity in the record industry. That will be a story for another day.
I was attracted to this new, high-energy polka music with its pulsating 2/4 beat, and I remained an underground polka aficionado for many, many years - a regular on the polka party club scene that flourished in the clandestine, boilo-fueled houses of northern Schuylkill county. I longed for those twelve hours of non-stop musical bliss. Minersville was a Mecca for polka clubbers like myself, where the all-night DJs would play the latest Jimmy Sturr, Frankie Yankovic, Stanky and Eddie Blazonczk albums for the revelers, remixing polka tracks in and out of each other. Some of these house DJs became celebrities in their own right; Jouz Cabachi, from WPPA, is one name that comes to mind. This legendary figure turned polka turntablism into an art form by beat mixing, matching and scratching, exploring the repetition and altering rythms of polkas, obereks, mazurkas and czardashes. Yes ear-shattering clarinets, accordians, alto saxes and trumpets all blending together! What a time to be alive! Stomping on people’s feet! Frantically pushing and shoving into the swirling crowd as if it was an out of control rugby game! Full-figured factory girls in their stretch pants seductively removing their babushkas and throwing them into the crowd; all the while the energy was fed by kielbassi and pierogies, washed down with boilo, Columbia beer and Kaier’s ale.
Whoop-I, Shupp-I!

Of course, we got criticism from our elders, as there were many injuries, mainly broken toes. Soon safety codes were enforced at the clubs due to the public outcry. The Bavarian Festival was shut down and many of the clandestine clubs turned themselves into respectable parking lots that began appearing in the area in the nineteen seventies.
I will have to tell you about the Altamont Festival some other time.

State Dance Controversy

Pennsyvlania's large legislative body apparently wastes time and tax dollars on trivial issues as naming the state bug, state fungus, and state dance. The debate on the latter resulted in a letter to the editor which follows:

It is not too late to stop the madness that is going on in the state capital. I am talking about the debate over the state dance. There must not be a rush to judgment to enshrine the "polka" as a the state dance. This is a decision that future generations will have to live with. History is not on the side of the polka and our high-priced legislators should wake up to that fact.

Despite the lyrics of a certain song, the polka did not originate in Scranton or anywhere else in the Keystone state. The dance started in "bohemia," a section of far-away Germany. Do our lawmakers realize the connotations that having a bohemian dance stamped as the state dance will have on our impressionable youngsters? To me the word "bohemian" conjures up thoughts of beatniks, poems that don't rhyme, and sour tasting yogurt. Do we want Pennsylvania associated with the likes of those things? I certainly hope not.

Any fourth grader will tell you that the polka is historically incorrect when discussing our state, the proud "Quaker state." William Penn and his religous followers were never noted for their dance routines. In fact, only two Quakers made it to the White House. Herbert Hoover was the first and he never danced. The other was Nixon. I have a videotape of Tricia Nixon's wedding and the Quaker president did a waltz, not a polka at his daughter's reception. Therefore, the Quaker state cannot be linked with the strange, bohemian polka.

During the War for Independence, our founding fathers and founding mothers had little time to dance. If they did, then it was the minuet, not the polka. If it was done at all during that era, it would have been done by lonely Hessian soldiers to alleviate the boredom. Remember that Bob Hope was not around yet to entertain our Hessian mercenaries. His USO show started much later. Again, my argument is sound; no historical figure in Pennsylvania ever did the polka. Not Betsy Ross, ner Ben Franklin, nor Milton Shapp.

I am not arguing against having a state dance. I think it deserves one. Hawaii has its hula. Virginia has its reel, and New York has its YMCA dance. I think that with baby boomers in the state gaining as much political clout as the senior citizens, I propose one of the following: "the watusi," "the twist," or the "bristol stomp." Any of those would be more dignified than the bohemian polka. The dances I have proposed have Pennsylvania roots. They were performed on American Bandstand and locally at the "Mayor's Dance" held at the Pottsville parking lot. They were also performed at Willow Lake, the Globe, the Moose and the Y, all before dancing disappeared from the social scene to be replaced by body surfing in a mosh pit. It seems that our youngsters prefer to be treated as if the were pieces of third class luggage at the eastern airline baggage pick-up rather than the dancing machines that God intended them to be.

Please stop what you are doing right now; pick up your phone and call your local representative and tell him, "Watusi, yes; polka, no! When will Harrisburg wake up and dance to the music"? We need a statesman in Harrisburg in the mold of Patrick Henry who will have the courage to stand up and loudly proclaim, "Give me Watusi, or give me death."