Music, food, beer
Jul. 4th, 2015 10:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dormouse1953So I was having a meal in a restaurant almost on the bank of the Rhine. It advertised itself as an Argentinian Steak House but I ordered pork fillet in a gorgonzola sauce with rosti potatoes. Neither a particularly Argentinian dish, nor specific to the Cologne area. At least my kölsch beer was local, my second half litre of the evening.
A group of street musicians lined up outside the restaurant: two saxophones, trumpet, double bass, percussion and accordion - a piano accordion, not a button accordion for those accordion geeks out there. I thought the button accordion was more common in Europe. They weren't playing German oom-pah music, nor indeed anything South American. They launched into a medley of Glenn Miller hits that made me feel all nostalgic. OK, Miller died nearly ten years before I was born, but I saw The Glenn Miller Story enough times as a kid, and every time it got to the bit where his band played Little Brown Jug for his family after his death I got all misty eyed, even though I knew that was ahistoric, he recorded that song in 1936. My father's two CD set of Glenn Miller hits made its way into my collection after his death and is on my iPod.
Then they did a few Beatles numbers which should be more the music of my generation. I was ten in 1963, between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles first LP. But that music has less appeal to me.
When they finished they passed a hat round and I found a handful of euro coins to toss in.
The food, the beer and the music left me in a good mood. I went passed the Gay Pride event in the Heumarkt where a woman was leading the crowd in a number of popular German songs. (I think it was a woman, although given where I was it could have been a man in drag. I was too far from the stage to tell.) I felt slightly annoyed that I didn't know the words so I couldn't join in.
A group of street musicians lined up outside the restaurant: two saxophones, trumpet, double bass, percussion and accordion - a piano accordion, not a button accordion for those accordion geeks out there. I thought the button accordion was more common in Europe. They weren't playing German oom-pah music, nor indeed anything South American. They launched into a medley of Glenn Miller hits that made me feel all nostalgic. OK, Miller died nearly ten years before I was born, but I saw The Glenn Miller Story enough times as a kid, and every time it got to the bit where his band played Little Brown Jug for his family after his death I got all misty eyed, even though I knew that was ahistoric, he recorded that song in 1936. My father's two CD set of Glenn Miller hits made its way into my collection after his death and is on my iPod.
Then they did a few Beatles numbers which should be more the music of my generation. I was ten in 1963, between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles first LP. But that music has less appeal to me.
When they finished they passed a hat round and I found a handful of euro coins to toss in.
The food, the beer and the music left me in a good mood. I went passed the Gay Pride event in the Heumarkt where a woman was leading the crowd in a number of popular German songs. (I think it was a woman, although given where I was it could have been a man in drag. I was too far from the stage to tell.) I felt slightly annoyed that I didn't know the words so I couldn't join in.
