The Blob (Accordion Version)

Been kind of a crazy week, so yes, I've sort of let this site slip a little bit.  Lotta life going on and things do get a bit heavy around here from time to time.

So let's try a nice light relatively low-effort post.  I mean, not so low-effort that I just recommend the ridiculously heavy late-'00s Japanese King Crimson tribute band ZaKS.  That would be a bit _too_ content-lite.

Nah, time to crank up the randomizer and see what we get.

Guy Klucevsek - The Blob

It looks like this one hit my library sometime in late 2018.  I was aware of Klucevsek from fairly early on - I recall seeing "Flying Vegetables of the Apocalypse" in old Wayside Music catalogs.  I think I heard some of his work with John Zorn and concluded he was a little too New York downtown for my taste.  Later I heard his work with the Accordion Tribe - I believe he played a key role in getting that fantastic group together - but his actually compositions seemed to me to be the weakest of the five.  So I didn't explore further.

I believe that it was his rendition of "The Blob" that got me into this record.  I know people argue about the value of "The Blob", one of Burt Bacharach's earliest hit compositions.  Personally I am all on the side of it.  It's absolutely atypical for a horror/monster movie.  I haven't ever seen the movie, but I have vivid memories of it from a series of '50s horror movie picture books that were at our local library.  This is all mixed up in my head with my memories of the fear-inducing invincible blob from the "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons" game for the Intellivision.  This blob was not _that_ intimidating.  It moved extremely slowly.  However, I frequently panicked upon seeing it - I don't exactly have gaming nerves of steel - and the notoriously finicky Intellivision disc controls didn't help.

So it seems to me perfectly appropriate that the theme song should be light and silly and somewhat novelty-ish, because the blob in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons was also fairly silly.  Also, the incredible power of that mouth-pop is completely undeniable.  Klucevsek's accordion interpretation does not exactly bring out the more menacing side of the piece (if there is one).  Not only does he present the same fantastic earworm melody, but he comes up with all sorts of increasingly absurd new verses ("It tangos/eats mangoes/chit-chats/wears spats"), as well as putting in some fantastic instrumental sections further developing the basic theme.

I would definitely rank this among the all-time Bacharach interpretations.  Deserves to be a #1 Christmas hit in Britain.

OK, good enough!  More later.