Those Darn Accordians! give great live show

It is with reservation that a music critic uses the word "fun."\nAssociated with the commercial vapidity of dance club pop and teenie bopper R&B, the term carries a certain shame.\nBut San Fransisco-based pop-polka act Those Darn Accordions! certainly fits the bill.\nA National Lampoon among so many Men's Healths and Home and Gardenings, TDA! put on a foot-stomping good show at Rhino's Friday, a show infused with its characteristic juvenile wit.\nSetting the tone for the evening, the accordion quartet started out with a cover of Rod Stewart's "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy." When performed on accordions, the lounge classic sounds campier than the banter at a drag queen convention. But that's not the kicker. Octogenarian Clyde Forsman, a co-founder of the band, is brought out to croon the piece. As one would imagine, great comic results are delivered.\nAnd that's the mentality of Those Darn Accordions! in a nutshell -- a mentality of arrested adolescence.\nThey are skilled musicians weaving highly catchy melodies. With songs ranging from lively polka to ironic covers like War's "Low Rider," they displayed their musical virtuosity song after song. And while the accordion isn't quite as sexy as the guitar or the piano, it can't be easy to constantly use all of your fingers while hefting something that bulky.\nBut TDA! is one of those concept bands less concerned with the music than with seeing to it that the audience has a good time. It plays a small venue like … oh, an accordion.\nTDA! ploughed through all of its standard crowd-pleasing numbers like "Hamsterman," which is an off-kilter ode to futility. Its lyrics are outright goofy, with the subject matter coming from topics like Japanese sci-fi and 1960s counterculture. \nThough mere farce, TDA! turns out some pure gems, like "Deathbed Confession." A jaunty barroom piece concerning the life story of a free-lance tabloid photographer, its refrain consists of his dying admission that he "put the monster in the Loch Ness." \nForsman was trotted out again for a traditional Irish ditty, which he sung solo, and a cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Fire."\nIn a fitting stroke, the group ended its set by playing the German folk song, "Ententanz." It's better known as the musical accompaniment to the the chicken dance.\nThose Darn Accordions! is a sort of low-key phenomenon on the West Coast, and it's really not hard to see why.