Robert Fripp once remarked that rock is our most malleable music – under its guise, you can do pretty much whatever you want. Some bands emphasize the music's blues roots while others do the same for its country heritage. There are those that look far afield to non-Western sources to drag kicking and screaming into the rock realm. Precious few people, however, look to the Central European dance music that was immensely popular in the American Midwest – the polka. One band that does, though, is Chicago's Polkaholics which is comprised of Jolly James Wallace and Action Jackson Wilson on bass and drums, respectively, and Dandy Don Hedeker on guitar.
Wally! is their fifth studio album and is perhaps the world's first polka-rock opera. On a foundation of souped-up polka beats and fuzzy guitars, it loosely retells the story of Walter "Li'l Wally" Jagiello, a Polish-American icon of Chicago's polka scene who died away in 2006. The songs are a mix of band originals along with a couple covers of tunes by the man himself. There's even one song called "Polka Superstar" which is based on a certain Andrew Lloyd Weber piece with which you may be familiar.
It is said that polka is happiness and this no less true for polka-punk. "Caldwell Woods" celebrates the Sunday picnics taken by many Chicago Poles back in the day where they'd enjoy polka music and food. Indeed, my mother, from whom I get my Polish blood, told me that she and my aunt were among the crowds at Caldwell Woods when she was a girl where they listened to music and ate freshly-made pączki. A stretch of Division Street in Chicago was known as the "Polish Broadway" and the song named after the street screams happiness: "There's a bar on every corner/there's a girl waiting for you/polka dancing every night and day."
The songs are no less effective when the punk aesthetic gives way a bit to more traditional polka as with "Zakopane Waltz". And just how punk can referencing babushkas be? Everyone in the band contributes vocals and the harmonies are brought to the fore in a great round-like a cappella section of "Son of a Gun".
While The Polkaholics don't adhere to the letter of polka, they have got the spirit down pat.
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