Remember our post about last week’s attempt to set the Guinness World Record for fastest accordion player? Thanks to the Irish Post we’ve discovered that the accordionist was Irish button box virtuoso Liam O’Connor. Liam rose to fame as a featured musician with Michael Flatley’s Lord of the Dance, and has also recorded three albums with vocalist Lisa Aherne.
According to his site, Liam set the record for “Fastest Fingers in the World” by playing an amazing 11.64 notes per second under the watchful eyes of Guinness judges. The record-breaking tune was the venerable classic, “Tico Tico”.
Unfortunately, Liam’s site doesn’t have any sound clips, so we can only wonder what his fast fingers sound like. Leave a comment if you know where we can find clips of Liam’s music online.
4 Comments:
He’s credited on these two Flatley albums, but I got bored after a few tries trying to find any accordion sound among the clips:
http://music.barnesandnoble.com/search/product.asp?z=y&EAN=731455956221
http://music.barnesandnoble.com/search/product.asp?z=y&EAN=731453375727
by Ian on November 17th, 2006
Interesting. I listened to a few clips, too, and couldn’t find much accordion.
I did find a short piece on Liam that aired on RTE News on November 9th. It includes some playing and — yeah — he’s pretty damn fast:
http://dynamic.rte.ie/av/230-2190510.smil
(viewable with RealPlayer)
by Chris on November 17th, 2006
i actually saw him play when i was traveling in ireland this summer.
he is really really fast.
really fast.
..except he does this strange spin accordion thing that i’m sure he thinks looks really cool, but really just looks like a little kid spinning in circles trying to make himself dizzy.
but in any case, i lved watching him play. i even got a photo with hi after the show, i just wished i bought a c.d.
by ttm on September 17th, 2008
i just realized that liam might actually read this… in which case, either erase my previous comment, or let me say, liam, i really liked your show, and your wife is a fantastic singer, i just was distracted by the spinning thing, but that’s probably only because i have a.d.d, and do quite a lot of drugs, so my mind tends to wander durring repetitive acts. keep up the good work.
by ttm on September 17th, 2008