Steinway Piano vs Tom Brier -- "Blue Lampshade"

Tom Brier shows a Steinway & Sons grand piano who's boss by playing "Blue Lampshade", a novelty he composed in 2003.

The title came out of a mondegreen/soramimi, mishearing the title of a Creole tune -- "Boodle-Am-Shake".

Please see http://www.cdbaby.com/tombrier to sample or purchase Tom's latest album, "Rewind".

Category:

Music

Tags:

• steinway
• grand
• piano
• novelty
• ragtime
• brier
• suttercreek

[DBill117]

Is this piece on a cd? If yes, please tell me which one so I can buy it! ^^

I love it! <3

[Keeper1st]

@DBill117 Alas no, it is not on an album yet. Considering that Tom has several different variations of this tune (the score is 31 pages long because he couldn't commit to one version, so many sections have variations written out) and never plays it the same way twice, it might be strange to commit one version to an album.

[KawhackitaRag]

hahaha "Bout de l'An Chez"; ahahahahahaha that's a good one Ron. In reality, Tom misheard someone's request for the old jug band favorite "Boodle-Am-Shake", and in fact, the beginning of his first theme actually quotes that tune!

[Keeper1st]

Ah, I've seen the title Boodle-Am-Shake before, but because Marty said "Creole tune", I was stuck on it having to be French. Having "chez" at the end doesn't entirely make sense ("Bout de l'an" is a memorial service), but I had no idea if maybe Creole French deviates from standard French in that way. Hey, who knows, maybe Boodle-Am-Shake is derived from a shaking dance at a rousing "bout de l'an" memorial service (cf. those funeral parades in New Orleans)! Anyway, thanks for solving the mystery!

[aaron12345432]

Didn't you post this last year? I remember a video of tom playing blue lampshade but it got deleted or something.

[Keeper1st]

Good memory! Back in 2006, I shot about 10 seconds of Tom playing this (at a quicker tempo on an upright piano). It is part of the "Sutter Creek Ragtime Festival 2006" compilation video.

[AGlass0fMilk]

@lkukphonp

Just an entire 2-disc set devoted to Blue Lampshade variations.

[lukphonp]

@Keeper1st record ALL the variations!! that would be interesting :D

[jasoony]

amazing! you captured everything wonderful about tom brier on camera, even a little of his wonderful neck beard!

[MisterMulluc]

I like the 'mysterious' angle of the recording, a great piece all round

[KawhackitaRag]

also, this is a FANTASTIC performance! The trio of this rag is essentially improvised and different every time, which is why Tom has always turned down requests for the sheet music! I think, however, if he just put blank bars with chord symbols, and maybe a few melodic ideas written in, and wrote "improvise", people would get it. That's what I did with one of my rags. Alternatively, one written-out trio with chord symbols would work, with the repeats being "ad-lib".

[Maturkus]

Just loved it! I'm trying to teach myself how to play whith my left hand more widly, that is like, more than an octave in less than half a... (I don't know, is it called tact in english? However) 2 beats in 4/4 I guess.

Unfortunatly it's more or less "required" in most of the things I want to play. Allthough he's doing fine and making it look all easy and stuff. It's really not fair, I want to be gifted with magic fingers to! And yes, that is what he has got. Magic fingers.