A little Glockenspiel music

28. September 2008 by Joe Gergen.

Not sure even how to describe the band I saw at the Cedar Cultural Center on Saturday. The Nordic Roots Festival brought over a Swedish group called “Detektivbyrån”, I believe Detective Bureau in English.

The easy part to describe would be how they looked. Imagine if the Ramones’ parents had given them a glockenspiel, an accordion and sampling keyboard instead of guitars and drums. Exactly. Just imagine Joey Ramone rocking the accordian with one hand and playing the keyboard with the other and throw in some head thrashing and you got it.

How do they sound? Infectious, energetic, and great deal a lot like you would expect a glockenspiel, an accordion put through an effects board, some sampling and a drum kit would sound. I know that watching and listening to them made me smile. I noticed it made many people around me smile too.  Except for the guy down the row who plugged his ears on one song, though that may be was because of the piercing loudness of some of the higher pitcthed glockenspiel notes.

Anyway, you can listen here  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLTS0tcqgZE to one example.

I think the thing that sealed the deal on the concert was when the drummer played a scissors as the percussion instrument through an entire song. And it did actually sound like a scissors snapping shut. Snip snipsnip, snip snipsnip, snip snipsnip. Ya, baby.

The wonderful creative minds out there. Which reminds me the other day I saw an ad for “Dancing with the Stars,” which I have never seen, but I thought it said “Dancing with the Bears.” Now that would be cool. Just try to look sexy doing the tango with a bear, assuming it will dance a tango. I can just see this giant Russian Bear standing there with his arms crossed saying “I only dance Mazurka.” Contestants would be more worried about being thrown off the stage than thrown off the show.

I’ll have to name my first recording, “If You can get a Bear to Tango” or maybe “Songs to get Tossed By.”

But back to the Detektivbyrån. Oh, just go listen to them. You’ll get the idea.

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