Squeezebox Idol

Among the many classic Gary Larson cartoons that form “The Far Side” oeuvre was a split-panel showing on one side an escalator of the dead going to heaven with St. Peter at the top handing out harps to the incoming angels while below on the down escalator the devil greets rookie demons with accordions.

The much-maligned squeezebox, although a staple of folk music around the world, barely ranks above the kazoo in the minds of many. But a Rhode Island man may change all of that.

Cory Pesaturo, a 23-year-old Cumberland native, recently won the World Digital Accordion Championship in New Zealand. Like breaking the 4-minute mile or landing on the moon, he has done for mankind what was once considered impossible: Making the accordion cool. (In fact, he does for the accordion what Hawaiian Jake Shimabukuro does for the ukulele.)

The guess here is that Pesaturo is already on the short list for the newly created R.I. Music Hall of Fame, which inducts its first class next month. The inaugural roster includes Roomful of Blues and John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band, along with Dave McKenna, Eileen Farrell, Oliver Shaw, Ken Lyon, Anders & Poncia and Gerry Granahan.

I’ve told my Beaver Brown story before, but it’s worth repeating here. Once, when I was on a bus in Australia’s Outback, the driver played the band’s "Eddie & The Cruisers" soundtrack album (featuring “On the Dark Side”) over and over. Eventually I worked my way up to the front of the bus and casually mentioned that it was nice to hear a Rhode Island band so far from home. The driver asked what I meant by that.
“Beaver Brown. They’re a Rhode Island band.”
“Sorry, mate. That’s an Aussie band.”
I started arguing with him, but he got more animated, no doubt thinking yet another stupid septic (rhyming slang: septic tank = Yank) was trying to take credit away from a hardworking, blue-collar Oz band. At that point it occurred to me that I was in the middle of a vast wasteland of red clay and scraggly bush, and getting in a heated argument with the bus driver was probably not the best use of my time.
“How long to Darwin,” I asked.
“About 14 hours.”
“Right. Aussie band it is, then.”

This week’s question: What is Rhode Island’s signature instrument?

Rhode Sized
Kudos to Betty Cotter, managing editor of Independent Newspapers, for catching the following size-of-Rhode Island reference in a recent edition of The New York Times. The item appeared in the second paragraph of a story about New Year’s Day violence between Russia and the former Soviet republic of Moldova, which just celebrated 20 years of independence.

Russia has roughly 1,100 troops based in the separatist enclave of Transnistria, a ribbon of territory roughly the size of Rhode Island that has large ethnic Russian and Ukrainian populations.