Bob Wiseman's music is simultaneously quirky and poignant. He opened the set with a cute song about his wife, accompanied by accordion. Let me tell you, there's something about a guy playing the accordion, and really meaning it,that catches me right off the bat. The rest of Bob's set was accompanied by variously absurd video clips projected above his head. Several of the clips consisted of Bob backing himself up on a number of instruments, from piano to beat boxing to a little beat up casio keyboard. Others were simply clever interludes - such as the mini-documentary on his next album, which he intends to pack with over one hundred instruments, as well as frequencies above and below human hearing. He closed the set with a couple of songs on the house piano, which demonstrated his real virtuosity as a musician. In a genre which can be challenging to hold people’s attention, I was really glad to see a solo performer be so innovative in his relationship with the audience.
This brings us to Geoff Burner, another man-and-an-accordion. Geoff’s music was intelligent, provocative and oh, so irreverent. Whether he was singing about his favourite places to get drunk, or poking fun at the Holocaust, he did it with such poise and humble self-assurance that it was hard not to laugh along. There were a great number of memorable moments in this set, but the one that sticks out immediately is his song written as the theme for the upcoming Winter Olympics in Vancouver. This song was a commentary on our priorities as a society. It took note of the fact that in the process of paying for the Olympics, the BC government cut all of the funding to investigate the deaths of over 700 missing children. A rousing climax to the song consisted of the whole room singing along to “The dead, dead babies were worth it… The dead, dead babies were worth it… The Vancouver/Whistler Olympic Games!” Really, how can you argue with that? However, as well as being offensively amusing, Geoff also played a couple of songs that were insightful in a more serious way. One that jumped out for me was “The Clown and Bard”, about a girl that he met in Prague who ended up strung out on speed. Then of course, he closed the whole night with a song punning on the Yiddish word for fan, which sounds a lot like an English word that is rarely mentioned in polite company.
