tagged w/ Lederhosen
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Several years ago, Morgen and I visited Germany—more specifically, the region in southeastern Germany known as Bavaria. Although Germany ranks third in per-capita beer consumption (after the Czech Republic and Ireland), it is clearly a place where people take their beer very seriously. Bavaria, in particular, is home to the oldest (non-religious) legal standard of food production still in force: The legendary Bavarian Purity Law of 1516, known in German as the Reinheitsgebot.
The Duke of Beers
The short version of this law, which was enacted on April 23, 1516 by Bavarian Duke Wilhelm IV (a.k.a. William IV), is that beer may contain only three ingredients: barley, hops, and water. Ostensibly, this makes the law one of the oldest “consumer protection” regulations, instilling confidence in purchasers that the beer they get will contain no questionable grains or additives. (Among the additives the law sought to ban were some commonly used herbs that had hallucinogenic effects.)Several years ago, Morgen and I visited Germany—more specifically, the region in... more
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Mainly posting this because I'm SO jealous I didn't get to go this year.
The pictures are pretty fun, and there's some additional background info!Mainly posting this because I'm SO jealous I didn't get to go this year.... more
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The world always needs new inventions. Now we have beer-proof Lederhosen. They are on sale at this year's Oktoberfest in Germany.The world always needs new inventions. Now we have beer-proof Lederhosen. They are... more
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How is it Polka dies but talentless mass produced pop music lives!? Where is the justice? Wait'll they hear the Polka samples on the upcoming Outkast album and there will be a Polka resurgence!
It's enough to make any serious polka fan shove his plate of sausage aside, fling his lederhosen in the closet and go out and shed a few tears in his beer.
The waltz is over for America's Polka King, Jimmy Sturr, not to mention every other squeezebox-loving, ompah-dancing fanatic who followed the Grammy Awards each year just to learn whether Sturr would collect yet another trophy for best polka album of the year.
Moving to ensure that its awards show remains what it called "pertinent within the current musical landscape," the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences announced Thursday it is eliminating its best polka album category.
Although posters to Internet sites catering to polka fans (yes, there are such places) were outraged, Sturr, who is hailed by fans the world over as the King of Polka, was doing his best to take the news in stride.
"Sure I feel a little bad, but I'm grateful, man," said the 58-year-old musician who has won the best polka album trophy 18 of the past 24 years.
"The Academy did a lot, not only recognizing me but recognizing polka music," he continued. He added that the recognition gave him a chance to fuse polka with pop, country, rock and folk and broaden the music's audience as he worked with musicians such as Willie Nelson, Alison Krauss and Bela Fleck.
Still, he wasn't completely satisfied with the Academy's explanation that polka was attracting too few entries in its category.
There are millions of polka fans worldwide, Sturr noted, and hundreds of working polka bands in this country alone. They have taken your grandfather's music, he said, and merged it with Tex-Mex, rock, Tejano and other forms to create a distinctly American sound.
As Grammy-nominated player John Gora noted, one of his most popular polka covers is the rock band Genesis' "Follow You, Follow Me."
"And Phil Collins liked it," he said of the Genesis frontman.
For his part, Sturr said he suspects that if there were 20 people on the committee that recommended dropping his category, "19 of them have never been to a polka concert. "
Others speculated that Sturr's amazing record of Grammy wins helped do in the category.
"I think the fact that it was so dominated by one artist, that kind of killed the incentive for a lot of people to enter," said Carl Finch, whose Tex-Mex-Tejano-Conjunto-Polka fusion band Brave Combo upset Sturr to take the award in 1999 and 2004.
Sturr, meanwhile, says he has no plans to stop entering the Grammys, and will nominate his next album in whatever category he is allowed to.
That will be the folk music category, said Bill Freimuth, the Academy's vice president for awards.
Finch, however, worries that that kind of pigeonholing won't go down well with polka fans, who he says are already fed up with all the lederhosen and accordion jokes they must endure.
"It's not that the polka world's not used to it," he said of polka not getting enough recognition. "The polka world expects it. It's like, 'Yeah, the man did it to us again.'"How is it Polka dies but talentless mass produced pop music lives!? Where is the... more
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If you're going to wear lederhosen at the granddaddy of German drinking fests, you better make sure they're made of Bavarian leather in Bavaria. Apparently a row between purists and punters has broken out in Munich over the prevalence of cheap lederhosen made in China and slutty dirndl (a revealing combination of tight leather hotpants and deep-cleavage corsets in place of the traditional Alpine woman's dress).
If you're going to wear lederhosen at the granddaddy of German drinking fests,... more
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