CD review: Brave Combo's 'Kikiriki'
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BRAVE COMBO
"Kikiriki"
Kindred spirits: Flaco Jiménez, Lenny Gomulka, the Klezmatics, Geno Delafose
Show: Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. at Blob's Park. 410-799-7130. http:/
Can Beethoven's Ninth Symphony be distilled into a three-minute hop-and-spin polka suitable for boozy couples at the local dancehall? Yes it can. Can the Bee Gees' brooding 1967 hit single "Holiday" be juiced up for a fast polka with barking vocals? No problem. Can "Satellite Polka," a standard among East Coast Polish polka bands, be redone as a synth-swathed electronica dance track? You betcha.
All of these miraculous transformations can be heard on "Kikiriki," the new album from Brave Combo, a Texas band of former rock-and-roll and jazz musicians whose love for polka music is as genuine as it is irreverent. The group won the 1999 Grammy for Best Polka Album, despite including a polka arrangement of Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze" on the winning disc, "Polkasonic." The band won because it excels at the basic requirements for any polka band: irresistibly danceable and unfailingly joyful.
"Kikiriki," Brave Combo's 31st album, meets those requirements again and adds one surprise after another. Accordionist Carl Finch plays the "Polish National Anthem" as a duet with a Texas thunderstorm. Saxophonist Jeffrey Barnes and trumpeter Danny O'Brien turn Frankie Yankovic's 1948 hit "Just Because" inside out with hot solos worthy of the Count Basie Orchestra. The album's title track is actually "The Peanut Polka" redone as a minor-key Balkan, and it's still danceable and joyful.
-- Geoffrey Himes
