A fiddler friend sent me an e-mail containing the above quote and asked me to defend myself. I came back with this one:
which I think would make a cracking bumper sticker.
What other disparaging quotes can we dig up? And what’s your answer to them?
Your response to the Seán Ó Riada quote ought to be:
“Easy for him to say, from up in his palatial digs in the penthouse of the HQ of Na Harpsichordi Eireann, that building that was financed by the royalties from all of the Irish traditional harpsichord recordings made since the wax cylinder era. Do you know how many record shop owners Joe Burke has had to pay off over the years to get space on the shelves for just one accordion recording amidst the twang of all those machine-plucked strings?”
Seriously. Why should the opinion of a harpsichord player have any relevance whatsoever on traditional music? I daresay the notes of a harpsichord are no less ready-made than an accordion’s. Pompous wanker.
I confess that I sometimes feel the same way about flutes that Tony McM. feels about accordions.
Flutes, being biodegradable, would return to the bog fairly quickly, whereas accordions never will. So aside from the feeling of satisfaction you get from hurling your flute into the bog, you’re being green as well!
Some of us play wooden accordions, you know. My lovely old G/C box would certainly biodegrade faster than my delrin flute!
That said, I hope the box is just reaching the midpoint of its life, and has another hundred years or more to go.
Colomon, it sounds like Tony MacMahon may have been speaking directly to you, wouldn’t ya say? Heave the box, and play the flute!
I think we need pompous wankers (well, I would say that, wouldn’t I?) to dare to say what needs to be said sometimes.
And I think the context in which O Riada made his remarks needs to be taken into account - group playing being dominated by ceili bands that were themselves often dominated by the ghastly LMMM sound of loud, wet boxes. Let’s not forget that his Ceoltoirí Chualainn included box players Sonny Brogan and Eamon De Buitleir.
Had it not been for O Riada’s strong-minded attempts to find new forms of ensemble playing of Irish music, the last 40 years might have turned out very differently and, I would venture to say, very few of us on here would be playing Irish music at all.
So actually I don’t take exception to either of these quotes, considering who they are coming from.
Steve
PS John, there probably is a bog hole somewhere deep enough for all the concertinas in the country - they’re so admirably compact!
Yes, and I’d venture to say that there would indeed be one with enough room for all the concertinas and all the accordions too. Following proper packing approach (i.e. bulkier items on the bottom), let’s put the accordions in first, followed by the concertinas made with accordion reeds, and then the real concertinas. Rob can follow along behind and shove his flutes into the cracks. There might be a bit of a mound when we’re done, but that’s okay. Here in America they turn the landfills into parks when they’re done filling them, and there’s one of those in Virginia called Mt. Trashmore. We can call ours Mt. MacMahon Mor, and challenge the Irish government not to build an interpretive center next to it. When shall we start, Steve?
And I suppose there was a Harpsichord in every Irish kitchen for the last 500 years?
You know, the trouble with all these ivory tower types legislating the rules of authetic Irish music, is that they themselves are not part of the that authenticity.
Look at the Chieftains versions, and decoration of them, and say nothing at all about their instruments! Hey the drum they revived was not a kitchen instrument within the long span of written Irish history.
On the other hand the feadog was and is.
So while there are many fine Irish tunes associated with the ‘Accordion’, there are none that I have ever heard associated with the Harpsichord
So if I understand all this correctly, any instrument will become a traditional instrument after someone starts calling it that and keeps at it for a couple of generations (the life spans, not the whistles.) Or does a quote for a visionary deceased harpsicord player still settle to issue. Someday the the grandkids will look back nostalgically on the tradtional musical arrangements of Clannad and the Pogues.
Oh, God, who cares what instrument the music is played on as long as it’s played with good, springy rhythm and appropriate variation and ornamentation and with all due respect for the tradition. As long as it’s not a piano accordion. 
Just remembered another gem of a put-down directed at box players: “glorified melodeon player”…
From Seamus Tansey, heard on that unbelievable radio program, you all know the one I mean.
I can think of a few melodeon players who need glorifying. 
-Knock, knock.
-Who’s there?
-Seamus Tansey.
-Seamus Tansey who?
-Well, YOU are not too sharp!
Disgraceful..very funny, but disgraceful nonetheless.
Slan,
D.
Being disgraceful is one of my less attractive vices, I’m afraid.
Disgraceful? I thought it was very subtle myself and if you are the originator Nano please accept a virtual pint. If not, you can have one for passing it on anyway.
PS Dubh if that’s disgraceful, what adjective would you suggest to describe ST’s behaviour in the affair at issue?
Apart from the fiddle, what instrument doesn’t come with the notes ready-made? 
I think some people do see the box as a quick-in to playing a melody instrument - I’m thinking English stuff here but it applies to ITM too I think - but rapidly discover that making “music” is a more than just hitting buttons at a predesignated moment.
StevieJ, I didn’t originate that; found it at The Session. Dunno if the poster there originated it or not, but it was brilliant.
As for Dub, I take his jibe as a wry compliment, being as it was qualified with the smilies so. Then again, I may be thick as clay. Well, okay, I am as thick as clay, but I think I got Dub’s intent. 
Hello
From Joe Burke
There was a whip around in a pub to help defray the funeral expenses of a recently deceased accordian player. When the hat reached the resident fiddler he put a pound into the hat ‘to help bury the box player’. He thought for a few minutes and then said ’ heres another pound for the acoordian’
Sean O’Riada presented a series of radio programmes in the early sixties entitled ‘Our Musical Heritage’. These radio programmes were brougt out by RTE on 3 cassette tapes with an accompying booklet. This was where the world first heard the seminal recordings of Johnny Doran. They had not been publically available before these programs.
In one of these lectures he talks about how accordian players are ruining tunes. He then went through a slow air on the piano stopping and showing where the accordian players of the time were changing the music as to make it unrecogniseable.
These were a brilliant set of lectures and the style of box playing in the fifties and sixties was totally different than styles today.
Paddy O’Brien from Nenagh was the man who changed the way accordians were played.
Regards
John Moran