Download Free MP3s From the Mad Maggies

Seems Maggie has, indeed, gone mad: She's giving away three sneak preview tunes from the soon-to-be-released CD Magdalena's Revenge by The Mad Maggies. The songs are "Musical Priest S" ("a twist on a trad reel"), "Surely, Shirley" ("hoping for love, a retro swing") and "Sparkey's Romp" ("hold onto your hats").

A bit of background: Maggie Martin plays accordion in Polkacide and put The Mad Maggies together to show off her own tunes, which are sometimes but definitely not always polkas, and to play some "tweaked trad" music as well.

Here's the full Mad Maggies lineup -- maybe you'll spot some other names you know from Polkacide and other Bay Area bands. Johny Blood (tuba), Dana Burt (drums), David Campbell (trumpets), Lawrence Jarach (trombone), J.X. Jones (sax, clarinet), Rhian Robinson (clarinet, whistle), Gary Wium (guitars) and Lewis Wallace (bass).

Anyway, check out the tunes. The official (and ambitious) Mad Maggies "genre" is "SkaPolka-KlezCeltica-Gitano-SurfRock," so there's something for almost everybody.

Merry Christmas a couple days early!

P.S. If you're really into exploring some new tunes over the long Christmas weekend, a little bird that looked a lot like a wild turkey just reminded me that you can hear (but not download) some new demos from another Bay Area band I happen to know a little something about on the Electric Boogie Dawgz' MySpace page.

The tunes, "I'll Be Rockin'" and "Gimme A Drink," don't feature accordions, but they were written by Bret Hagen, star of the super-low-budget Those Darn Accordions' video for "My Friend Jim." The songs (plus another EBDz opus, "Trans Am") appear on Krampilation 2006, a compilation of tunes by bands that played this year's Krampusnacht show (put on by EBDz drummer John Hofmeyer).