Accordion Crimes

The last time I saw the Dolomites, their lead guy, Steve, who plays accordion, was frying bits of chicken in a barrel on stage at Satyricon. This was three or four years ago. It was way past 2:30am and the door guy had already turned on the lights. People were fading out and heading home, but Steve would not give up. If I remember right they were playing "Why, why, why, Delilah." It was awesome. He started throwing chicken at the people who were still there. (No one is too picky at that hour.) The set finally reached its sad end when he began to light things on fire; even Satyricon back then had limits. Afterward I remember drinking purloined beers on the sidewalk outside the club and learning (and then instantly forgetting) a sentence or two in Gaelic from Max, the Dolomites' fiddle player at the time. Although now that I think about it, that could've been a different show....

All of which is to say I was worried that when I went to see the current iteration of the band last night at the Zebulon (or is it just Zebulon, no "the"?), I might not get home in time to go to class the next day. My fears, it turned out, were unfounded. The show started right around nine thirty, and I was home by midnight. (I felt vaguely disappointed by this.) Steve has been living in Japan, apparently taking really good care of himself: he looks great. (He looks like some early, rejected version of the Pirate Johnny Depp, washed ashore and rescued by a Tokyo clown school run by kabuki bellydancers, or something.) Most of the songs had Japanese lyrics, or so he claimed, with occasional shouted choruses of hilarious simplicity ("Blah blah blah! Oh my god! Holy shit!", for example, and I'm only partly paraphrasing there). Everyone danced like maniacs. No chickens were harmed.

Here they are on MySpace.