California Connection - Cooking With Polkas

Huh, I don't have anything sentimental to talk about today. Weird. We've officially entered Phase 4 here in Illinois. Summer is still officially cancelled in my book, though. I plan to spend my evenings sitting on our porch, reading a book, smoking herb, and waiting for this all to pass. My fiance and I have a collection of yard games to play, like bags and some other pseudo-horseshoe related contraptions. This is Covid-Summer, baby. My only hope is that we all stay healthy enough this summer for Palatine's Oktoberfest to still take place this September. I might lose my mind if it doesn't. Please, for the sake of giant, frosty mug of beer, wear your masks.

Today's entry is another "modern" take on polka. The 90's still seem "modern" to me, even if this release is 30 years old. California Connection brings you Cooking With Polkas! My copy of this tape is warped to shit, but it's still quite listenable. I will stubbornly believe that recorded polka needs to sound a little bit rustic for it to be enjoyable. My favorite part about this release (after the fantastic artwork) is how they abandon the "cooking" theme immediately after the first track, Recipe For Polka.

Hi-Ho to Polkaland is, as my friend Connor would say, an "ear-worm." I had it in my head all weekend. There's a sweet breakdown in the middle, perfect for pogo-ing. Cheers for the Angels reminds me of that one Lawrence Arm's song where they sample a radio broadcast of a Cubs game. A lot of instrumentals on this release as well, such as Connecticut Oberek and Sax O-Fun. I haven't seen that as often on the more "modern" releases.

Enjoy, and stay safe folks. Daisy Cutter is great on a hot summer day.

DOWNLOAD HERE: 
http://www.mediafire.com/file/128pg7xo28sxdqg/California_Connection_-_Cooking_With_Polkas_MP3.zip/file

Energy - Get Energized!

It has recently come to my attention that the 1/4 inch adapter I've been using to record these tapes absolutely sucks. I noticed yesterday while I was recording my weekly show for Harper College Radio (Shameless Plug: Jake Joyce's Wide World Of Sounds, every Monday at 7 PM CST, 88.3 FM WHCM or www.harperradio.com. Tune in an hour earlier for Dexter's Radio Hour at 6 PM CST! 😀) that the fidelity sounded like absolute shit. I had to Frankenstein my entire set up to get it to work properly.

Anyways, I almost thought about scrapping today's post and re-recording the entire album once I got my new adapter. But then I realized, no matter what I did, the rip I recorded would never be of perfect quality. Then I got to thinking, "what even is 'perfect quality?'" I'm a pretty simple man. My idea of "perfection" denotes anything I can peacefully enjoy without harming anyone or anything physically or mentally. That seems pretty straight forward, right? So during my initial playback of my copy I realized, this is perfect. Unless you're the most stringent audiophile, I'm almost certain you will not need this album in hi-fi. In fact, I believe the grittiness even adds to production. It does what it's intended to do. It gives me ENERGY! 

I normally don't include the liner-notes in my posts, but the back of the tri-fold taken from Energy's Get Energized! (pictured above) is too good not to share. This recording stands alone from the other albums I've posted over the last few weeks as it presents itself as more tongue-in-cheek than my other inclusions. While polka has always been the most light-hearted of music, this album is more self-aware. Polka Maniac is a great example of this, as is the entire album's aesthetic itself. Just look at the cover! Would you ever think that this would be a polka album? I had to double take when I first saw it.

We Will Dance Then has become my anthem for a Post-Covid World. Granted, we are no where near a Post-Covid World yet. We are closer than we were three months ago, but please continue to protect yourself, your family, and your friends. However, the moment it is truly eradicated, I will be blast this song from my window for an entire day. Fun is also one hell of a weekend anthem. We will dance and have fun all together very soon.

DOWNLOAD HERE! 

http://www.mediafire.com/file/0r595sei35fejfq/Energy_-_Get_Energized_MP3s.zip/file  

The New Brass - Rolls Out The Barrel

This blog has become a true testament of my own personal growth. When I first started the Polka Hole back in 2011, I couldn't be bothered to upload an album within a consecutive month. This was back when I had all the free time in the world. I worked evenings at an "adult store" in DeKalb, IL. I would literally sit in a chair and read books for eight hours. Sometimes the monotony would be broken up by helping the customers who would stumble in from the neighboring bars (after building up enough drunk courage) to meander in our shop at 11:30 at night. I didn't have to take my work home with me, and prepping for the next day was as simple as vacuuming the floors and dusting the DVD shelves. So now that I'm exponentially more busy than I was in my 20's, why has my demeanor changed to allow me to keep a consistent Polka-Schedule?

As a much older young-adult (I'm still a young adult right?) my priorities have shifted. In the world of social media and instant gratification, I can attest that 24-year-old me was probably discouraged that this blog didn't take off into the stratosphere of Blogspot fame. I'm not exactly sure what I expected though. Websites like this started to fade into obscurity in the early 2010's, and a blog solely dedicated to a style of music that no one listened to obviously wasn't going to be popular. What was the purpose of this blog? Was I doing this for me? Or was I doing this to cultivate other's perspectives of me?

Travis Shettel of Piebald did an interview back in 2014 where he talked about his new band and the projects he had been working on since Piebald broke up. I'm paraphrasing here, but he said something along the lines of "I'm finally able to record the music I want to record." I'd think about this quote over the following years, but it never really sunk in until recently. You reach a point in your life where you realize "Hey, only a handful of people care about this project I'm working on, but it makes me really happy, and I will continue doing it for those seldom few."

This new ritual of waking up on a Saturday morning to drink coffee and rip old polka records to an MP3 format has become something I truly love because I enjoy it. If others grow fond of Polka Hole then that itself is a bonus. Compare this to ten years ago where it was a chore to drag my hungover ass out of bed to get anything done, let alone write up an entire blog about polka music, hoping and pining for other's approval of what I was doing. Maybe I was depressed a lot earlier than I realized. Hindsight is a bastard.

Which brings me to a track I'd like to talk about from today's featured album from The New Brass, Rolls Out The Barrel. As soon as I saw the title Strawberries and Raspberries Polka  I knew I'd fall in love. Let us ponder the following lyrics. "It brought new life to me/some joy and gratitude/I shared my joy with friends/and changed my attitude." Now, in this song, the singer is talking about "wine." However, what if we decipher "wine" as a metaphor? What if "wine" represents the feeling you get when you realize that life is truly valuable, and you can't spend too much time trying to impress people you barely even know? Life is making valuable moments that you yourself cherish.

Although I'd still like to think of myself as a "young adult," I'm far too old to worry about how far-reaching my art will become.

"There are friends gathered round that often I do thank." 

DOWNLOAD HERE: 
http://www.mediafire.com/file/gk25blaf23eauuo/The_New_Brass_-_Rolls_Out_the_Barrel_MP3s.zip/file

The Four Mugs - Barber Shop Ballads

Hello folks. I hope you're all doing well on this lovely June afternoon. I'm back at work today. Feels a little bit strange, but I'll be working staggered shifts until the Illinois Phase 4 plan comes to fruition. Sounds like that could be happening as soon as next month. We shall see. This pandemic has done a decent job proving that, even as adults, as we go through life, none of us have any idea what we're truly doing.

Last week I had mentioned that this week's post would stray from the theme of this blog. Although Barber Shop Ballads by The Four Mugs is not a polka album, it's a record that I wanted to showcase due to the memories I have attached to it.

Early on in my young adulthood, I was an avid collector of any "obscure" record I could get my hands on. It's pretty much why this blog came into existence in the first place. I would always be scraping the bottom of the barrel at thrift stores, picking up the wax that no one else dared touch. This would include collections of 1920's carnival music, Chinese violin compositions, polka (duh), and anything with a cheesy floral arrangement on its cover.

Over the years I've gotten rid of a lot of this stuff. When my depression and anxiety was at its peak I would look through this portion of my collection and derive absolutely no joy from it. "What did I ever see in this crap?" I'd think as I flipped through my record shelf. Looking back, I wish I would have kept it. I derive joy from it now!

But how would I have known then that I'd feel this way now? I don't beat myself up about it too much, especially since these types of records are still available in MASSIVE quantities at any second-hand establishment. My lovely fiance Danielle has a tattoo that I think about all the time. It says "It's never too late to be what you might have been."  My entire healing process has been me pushing myself to get back on that correct path; the one I was directed away from momentarily. It might not be the same path, but I can see a similar destination in the horizon.

Okay so what does this all have to do with this silly record? Barber Shop Ballads would grow to represent a period of my life that I thought was lost forever. It represented that bitter-sweet naivety that many of us in our late teens and early 20's take for granted. I'll never forget when I first came across this record. "WOW A BARBER SHOP QUARTET? YOU DON'T SEE THESE KIND OF RECORDS EVERY DAY!" As it turns out, as I would later learn, you DO see these kind of records quite often.  I kept the album around because it comforted me, and I'd look at it with  hope that good times would again find me in the future.

Every track on Barber Shop Ballads should be pretty recognizable if you've watched as many cartoons  as I have over the years. My Old Kentucky Home and Clementine have acted as theme songs of sorts for Huckleberry Hound, while Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes was featured in I Love To Singa (which is easily my most favorite short of all time). There is a Tavern in Town helps complete the connection between this album and the rest of this blog, and that's the excuse I'm going to use to include it on the Polka Hole.

Take a seat in the Shade of the Old Apple Tree and remember that we all good times to look forward to on the horizon. Here's to new beginnings.


DOWNLOAD HERE: 
http://www.mediafire.com/file/0hh0011zg4it66c/The_Four_Mugs_-_Barber_Shop_Ballads_MP3s.zip/file

The Mom and Dads - 22 Favorite Waltzes With...

Happy June, everyone. I hope you are all healthy and safe. I know I just returned and all, but these next two posts are going to be off the beaten path. Today's post is a waltz record, which isn't straying too far from the norm. A lot of polka groups have (and continue) to play waltz songs. Next week's record, however, is not necessarily polka related, but you'll find out more about that in a few days.

A quick Polka Hole history lesson. If I recall correctly, this blog blossomed from a discussion I was having with my friends Nick, Chris, and Matt. I think we were at Spunky Dunkers in Palatine, so I must have been home from school for a break or something. My memory is awful these days. This could have happened at a completely different location and time, or maybe it didn't even happen at all.

Alas, if my memory is indeed serving me correctly, we started talking about the different styles of music that people our age (at the time we were in our early 20's) seemed to choose to not listen to. Polka was brought up, and Chris (again my memory sucks, this may have not happened or it may have been Nick) said that "polka was the original punk," comparing the two genres use of the 4/4 time and quick tempo.

So if polka is the original punk, then waltz is undeniably the original emo. This brings us to today's highlighted release, the double-disc 22 Favorite Waltzes with The Mom and Dads. May was undoubtedly an emotional month for a lot of people, and I was surprised to find that the music on this release really helped me reflect on my somber mood. With titles like Are You Lonesome Tonight?, Tears On My Pillow, and It's a Sin to Tell a Lie, you'd think you were listening to a Mineral record.

However, the mood isn't always that of melancholy. Feelings of optimism and calmness arise during such ditties as Springtime in the Rockies, The Sidewalk Waltz, and my personal favorite, The Naughty Waltz. The track Beautiful Ohio comes as a rare breed, as it may be the first time I've seen those two words used consecutively.

I'm sure at the point of time when this was released, folks would be welcoming of a double-disc with nearly two dozen tracks. Double the fun for a LOW, LOW PRICE!  However, through modern ears, this record suffers the fate of being more about quantity than quality. Upon my first real playback, I thought I had accidentally saved Mexicali Rose twice, as Love is a Beautiful Song is nearly identical.

All in all, despite its repetitive nature, this record is great to listen to after smoking a bowl and going for a walk. Spring is almost over. Enjoy this as its curtain-call soundtrack.

Download the album here: 

http://www.mediafire.com/file/1jswtj4kso0zvkz/The_Mom_and_Dads_-_22_Waltzes_With_MP3s.zip/file