This morning's Minneapolis Strib has a nice profile of legendary Minnesota roadhouse bandleader Johnny Holm.    Holm has been riding the circuit of upper midwest ballrooms and smalltown nightclubs for decades, always bringing the party with him.  He and his band play country, rock, soul, hiphop:  whatever gets the people up and dancing.  It's a grand tradition:  the show band that makes its living from live performances, not from recordings (though they always have CDs and cassette tapes for sale out in the lobby, at a table manned by a wife or girlfriend of someone in the band). 

   In the article, Holm compares himself to Lawrence Welk, and I think he's spot on.  It's not the musical blandness so much as the dance band tradition.  Welk and his counterparts--Whoopee John, the Chmielewski Brothers, etc.--could always be found on a Saturday night, whipping up a polka party for farmers and other rural locals out looking for a good time.  

   I have a soft spot in my heart (perhaps it's in my head) for these bands.  I saw the Johnny Holm Traveling Fun Band once, back in the early 1980s during my sojourn in the lower rungs of the fastfood industry.  One of the women I worked with was a fan, and she made us all head out to the Mendota Ballroom on a county highway outside St. Paul.  The place was packed and sweaty.  It was a BYOB club, but everyone was pretty well smashed.  There were only a couple of fistfights out among the pickup trucks in the unpaved parking lot:  in other words, a good time was pretty much had by all.  It was Saturday night, and that was enough.