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Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour

05 Jan 10 - 07:16 PM (#2804392)
Subject: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Desert Dancer

Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour

Police: Denver Man Involved In Bus Stop Argument

POSTED: 8:19 am MST January 5, 2010

ASPEN, Colo. -- A banjo player accused of assaulting another man with his instrument will get to keep playing while awaiting his trial.

Thirty-three-year-old Joseph Stancato, of Denver, faces second-degree assault charges after allegedly hitting another man on the head with his banjo on New Year's Eve. Authorities said Stancato got into an argument with two men at the Rubey Park bus stop in Aspen.

District Judge James Boyd, on Monday, approved Stancato's request to be allowed on the road to tour with a band while awaiting his next court date on Feb. 6.

The banjo is considered "a deadly weapon" under Colorado law, so Stancato could face prison time, the Aspen Daily News reported.


05 Jan 10 - 07:18 PM (#2804396)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: olddude

ONLY DEADLY WHEN I TRY TO PLAY IT


05 Jan 10 - 07:22 PM (#2804399)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: astro

Some would say that the crime continues until he goes to jail, some would say....not me...


astro (beating lovingly my mandolin right now)


05 Jan 10 - 08:12 PM (#2804433)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Charley Noble

Banjos do not maim or kill! They need not be outlawed.

It's the occasional banjo players who needs to be locked up.

I wonder what kind of banjo it was?

Charley 5-String Noble


05 Jan 10 - 10:21 PM (#2804484)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: autoharper

If we live in fear of the banjos, then the banjos have won.


05 Jan 10 - 10:28 PM (#2804488)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: bseed(charleskratz)

Stancato must be a bluegrass player; we old time pickers are much too laid back for that kind of activity. In addition, our banjos weigh a heck of a lot less and are less likely to inflict deadly injuries. But historically, it's blues harmonica players ya gotta watch out fer.

Charles (both a banjo and a harmonica player)


05 Jan 10 - 10:40 PM (#2804491)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Artful Codger

I wonder if the banjo was in worse or better tune after the cranial adjustment.


05 Jan 10 - 11:07 PM (#2804493)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Ebbie

Who knows? *g*


06 Jan 10 - 04:55 AM (#2804638)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: GUEST,Roger Knowles

So there it is! Proof beyond doubt that banjers is vishuss!!
Licencing the under a new law, the 'Vicious Banjos Act of 2010' may help.
Having worked professionally with several banjo players in my musical career, I can say I lived in fear most of the time that a banjo case was opened in my presence.
Nights were worse than days.


06 Jan 10 - 05:02 AM (#2804646)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Will Fly

Banjo players are tolerant and responsible members of society. I had a wooden resonator fitted to mine so that, when I walloped anybody with it, they were only being hit by wood - not the metal pot.

You can't get much more caring than that.


06 Jan 10 - 05:14 AM (#2804656)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: MGM·Lion

I query the wording of the original report, & of the title of this thread derived from it. A 'wife beater' beats his wife, he does not use her as an offensive weapon to hit someone else with: ditto a 'child beater'.

So a "banjo beater" must surely mean someone who beats, or over-frails, or kicks out at becoz it won't stay in bloody tune no matter what he does, or in some other way abuses or misuses, his banjo. I don't see how the term can be used, as it appears to be here, for someone who uses his banjo as an offensive weapon with which to assault someone else.

Moderators, may we have a more accurate title for this thread, please?

MEtheGM aka Mike-the-Pedant


06 Jan 10 - 05:18 AM (#2804661)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Will Fly

A 'wife beater' beats his wife, he does not use her as an offensive weapon to hit someone else with...

Now there's an interesting concept. Must have a word with Mrs. F. and see what she thinks about the idea.

Perhaps not - the banjo's much easier.


06 Jan 10 - 05:30 AM (#2804679)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: eddie1

Many moons ago, in a previous incarnation when I was one of the very few Scottish singing cowboys in the USA, I bought a guitar from Baltimore Bluegrass (an institution I have been led to believe is sadly no longer with us?)
While having some adjustments made, I was allowed to enter their workshop to find, proudly displayed on the wall, a newspaper clipping about a man accused of beating his wife with a banjo. When the banjo neck broke, he continued beating her with a second banjo.
Whilst condemning the whole concept of domestic violence, I have to admit the man showed class!

Eddie


06 Jan 10 - 05:49 AM (#2804697)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: John MacKenzie

Pick your weapons, for Duelling Banjos. I don't recommend a Deering 'Good Times' it's too light.


06 Jan 10 - 05:52 AM (#2804700)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Young Buchan

"Banjos do not maim or kill! They need not be outlawed."

But did not the sainted Blair say we must be tough on banjos, tough on the players of banjos?


06 Jan 10 - 06:41 AM (#2804729)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Will Fly

But did not the sainted Blair say we must be tough on banjos, tough on the players of banjos?

He did indeed. And has there been a reduction in banjos, or their causes? Not one whit - the buggers are still as plentiful as ever. Complete policy failure, in my view.


06 Jan 10 - 06:58 AM (#2804736)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: John MacKenzie

Was it a 'weapon of man's destruction?'


06 Jan 10 - 07:27 AM (#2804753)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Will Fly

LOL - good one, John!


06 Jan 10 - 08:07 AM (#2804771)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Charley Noble

"Banjo player's rage"?

After reviewing this thread I think I'm feeling some symptoms.

And some of you I've marked down for further attention.....

Charley 5-String Noble


06 Jan 10 - 08:09 AM (#2804772)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Will Fly

All in fun, Charley.

Will (tenor banjo) Fly


06 Jan 10 - 08:20 AM (#2804780)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: John MacKenzie

Weapon of mass distraction?


06 Jan 10 - 09:43 AM (#2804824)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Mark Ross

They did find WMD's in Baghdad, turns out Saddam Hussein had a banjo!

Mark Ross


06 Jan 10 - 11:13 AM (#2804905)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: TheSnail

From http://www.ghost-story.co.uk/stories/alcatraz3.html

"After more than three years on the Rock, Capone was on the edge of total insanity. He spent the last year of his sentence in the hospital ward, undergoing treatment for an advanced case of syphilis. Most of the time he spent in the ward, he spent playing his banjo. His last day on Alcatraz was January 6, 1939. He was then transferred to the new Federal prison at Terminal Island near Los Angeles. When he was paroled, he became a recluse at his Palm Island, Florida estate. He died, broken and insane, in 1947."

Let that be a warning to you.


06 Jan 10 - 12:12 PM (#2804977)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: bill\sables

I have a photograph of Saddam Hussein playing his banjo. it seems he was part of a Baghdad Bluegrass band


06 Jan 10 - 12:30 PM (#2804988)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: olddude

Can't stop Laughing, this is priceless. My 5 string is too heavy to swing properly


06 Jan 10 - 12:49 PM (#2805006)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: open mike

did the guitar player tune thusly: BAGDAD?


06 Jan 10 - 12:59 PM (#2805013)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: kendall

Banjos done assault people...People assault people.

From my cold, dead fingers....


06 Jan 10 - 01:04 PM (#2805021)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: MGM·Lion

Maybe Kendall - but the question remains, as I said above: Do people assault banjos - which is all that "Banjo Beater" can possibly, idiomatically, mean?


06 Jan 10 - 01:16 PM (#2805035)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: John MacKenzie

You may go blind, if you beat your banjo


06 Jan 10 - 01:36 PM (#2805056)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Bat Goddess

Until I find and transcribe my newspaper clipping (of unknown date) this will have to do. (I have a photocopy of the clipping and I THINK I have a transcription on another computer and in an incompatible format -- give me a bit of time.)

Meanwhile --

WEST MILTON, Ohio (Reuter) -- A 63-year-old man who played in a bluegrass band has been charged with murder after beating his wife to death with a pair of banjos, police said Thursday.

"I've been an officer for 30 years, and that's the first banjo killing I've seen," said Charles Price,
chief deputy of the Miami County sheriff's office.

Police said Edward Benson bludgeoned his wife Katie with one banjo until it broke and then grabbed a
second and continued the assault until she died Wednesday at the couple's home of massive head injuries.


06 Jan 10 - 01:48 PM (#2805067)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: SINSULL

Must be the same clipping Eddie1 mentioned.


06 Jan 10 - 03:04 PM (#2805126)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: TheSnail

Can't find the lyrics anywhere, but Tim Lyons' "The Grisly Murder of Joe Frawley" is pertinent to the case.


06 Jan 10 - 03:15 PM (#2805141)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: katlaughing

Mike the Pedant (we've a few of us around here), good catch, but as you will see, if you follow the link, that is the same wording used by the Aspen newspaper quoted. I know that is not a reason to perpetuate the mistake, but perhaps an email to the editor of the paper would be a good idea? In the meantime, I think we will leave the title alone. We are fairly informal about such things and it has engender a good spate of repartee, wouldn't you say?:-)

kat - mod

As far as I know, my dad never had to use his banjo as a weapon..he had a six-shooter behind the seat of his truck for that!


06 Jan 10 - 07:02 PM (#2805295)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Desert Dancer

Indeed, that's the headline in the link, and I thought it made an interesting twist in the story...

~ B in T


06 Jan 10 - 07:20 PM (#2805310)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: catspaw49

If I hadn't read the article, I'd have to go along with MtheGM and so would start referring to the penis (have to be correct here for MGM) as a "banjo."   I have a long neck one myself...........wait............ohmygawd.........................................Maybe they've used that term for years! Maybe I just missed it.................................yeah.............that's it...................................sweet jesus in a diaper....That Andy Devine was really a sick fuck with that "Pluck your magic twanger Froggy" bullshit........probably a pedophile..............damn, what a preeevert!


Spaw


06 Jan 10 - 08:14 PM (#2805353)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Dead Horse

Good job he didnt play pianna then!


06 Jan 10 - 09:39 PM (#2805410)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Seamus Kennedy

When banjos are outlawed, only outlaws will play banjos...


06 Jan 10 - 10:13 PM (#2805423)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Artful Codger

Mike-the-Pedant: If a banjo-beater must be one who beats banjos, how do you interpret "ax-murderer"? I don't think it refers to Pete Townsend.

I also question that "banjos don't assault people." Ever hear one? If a person didn't have a banjo, he could only beat you with his fists.

(Yes, I dabble with the banjo, too, but responsibly--at home, alone.)


P.S. I've heard the Republicans want to pass a law making it illegal to possess more than one ounce of banjo strings. It's the first step in their "War on Banjos"--finally, a war they might win.


06 Jan 10 - 10:55 PM (#2805439)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Charley Noble

I don't know why people are always picking on banjos when they don't know a thing about banjo picking!

To paraphrase the New Lost City Ramblers:

It ain't right to beat your wife with a banjo on Monday, when you got Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday too --
It ain't right to beat your wife on Monday!

Charley 5-String Noble


06 Jan 10 - 10:56 PM (#2805440)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Lonesome EJ

I have suffered numerous banjo assaults, sustaining damage to my ear drums, my sensibilities, my psyche, and my soul, and the assailants have walked free every time.
I have tried restraining orders to keep all banjo players at least 50 feet away from me, but that's not far enough.


07 Jan 10 - 12:44 AM (#2805485)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: MGM·Lion

Artful Codger - It just happens to be the linguistic fact that, in the case of murderers, the weapon is idiomatically linked to the deed, as in 'axe-murderer'; whereas, in the case of assault or corporal punishment, this is not the case - nobody would have called an old-fashioned schoolmaster a 'cane-beater', but a 'caner', or a 'caning teacher'; because it was not the cane that he beat, but his ill-behaved pupils, using the cane as his instrument.

Maybe the language is inconsistent in this; but I insist that such is the idiomatic or colloquial fact of the language nonetheless.


07 Jan 10 - 02:09 AM (#2805509)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Artful Codger

Still not buying that linguistic "fact". As in many cases in the language, there is a referential gap, and consequent ambiguity, when one couples a verb and noun into a single term because the relationship between the two is no longer clear. The noun may be either the agent, the recipient or the instrument of the action. The language is not consistent in the case of either murderer or beater (or many other such words); consider child-murderer, where child may be either the agent or recipient, but is unlikely to be the instrument, contrasted with ax-murderer, where it is naturally understood as the instrument. With "beater", all three are possible (though agent is least likely), and context is what determines the sense, not some fictitious linguistic rule.

Hence, "banjo-beater" may be either one who beats banjos or one who beats using a banjo, given the limited ways English provides for combining such elements. Without further information, you might leap to one meaning over the other (after all, what is more natural than wanting to smash a banjo?), but the original reporter is not wrong in his choice of the term. You would have it that the miscreant could only be labelled a "wife-beater", but spousal abuse is fairly common, whereas inflicting pain (physically) with a banjo is not--for this reason, "banjo-beater" is not only correct in this situation, but rightly places emphasis on the more newsworthy aspect of the story.


07 Jan 10 - 02:16 AM (#2805511)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: GUEST,999

Lest we confuse an egg beater with a banjo beater, allow me to elucidate. If you crack the shell and a yolk comes out, that's an egg. If you beat the egg with a banjo, that's just plain foolish. A REAL banjo beater uses an axe. And there you have it.


07 Jan 10 - 02:22 AM (#2805513)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Artful Codger

Brilliantly expounded! LOL


07 Jan 10 - 02:27 AM (#2805514)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: GUEST,999

The following is listed on Google Images as a "Plastic Egg Beater". WHY would one want to beat plastic eggs? Obviously to find out where the hyphen went to.

Artful Codger: I was encouraged by your paragraphs. LOL too.


07 Jan 10 - 03:40 AM (#2805539)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Artful Codger

It might be a machine that pelts distant objects with plastic eggs.

Does this qualify as thread creep or thread galumph?


07 Jan 10 - 03:49 AM (#2805546)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: GUEST,999

I think I had galumph in the 1960s.


07 Jan 10 - 03:55 AM (#2805547)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: MGM·Lion

I personally call it a load of old banjo — a phrase I dredge up from my long-ago youth to mean a load of old nonsense. Was it a widespread usage or simply common to my circle of friends? Not in Chambers English Dict nor Partridge's slang dict, nor readily confirmable on Google - anyone else remember it?


07 Jan 10 - 04:13 AM (#2805552)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Sugwash

Did not 'banjo' used to be a term for giving someone a beating. The last verse of Barney Rush's 'The Crack was 90 in the Isle of Man':

The Isle of Man woman fancied Whack; Your man stood there till his mates
came back
Whack! they all whacked into Whack, and Whack was whacked out on his back.
The police force arrived as well, Banjoed a couple of them as well,
Landed up in the Douglas jail, until the Dublin boat did sail,
Deported every man, The Crack was Ninety in the Isle of Man.


07 Jan 10 - 04:27 AM (#2805558)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Will Fly

So, if someone is "banjaxed" - are they hit with a banjo-guitar? (Or is that guitar-banjo?) Either way, that's one weird instrument.


07 Jan 10 - 04:32 AM (#2805561)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: GUEST,Ewan McVicar

It occurs to me that some of the anti-banjo comments above arise from 'banjo envy'. Back in the 1960s a young man I knew who loved widely but not wisely was referred to in a staff magazine as 'dragging his banjo round town'.
Ewan


07 Jan 10 - 05:29 AM (#2805581)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Artful Codger

Are you insinuating those with banjo envy lack pluck?


07 Jan 10 - 06:39 AM (#2805609)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Young Buchan

Cluedo 2010

Mr Stancato
At the bus stop
With a banjo


I win


07 Jan 10 - 07:48 AM (#2805641)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: catspaw49

Hey Will......I have less fear of injury being banjaxed than I do being "Framused." Smacked with one of them old suckers might even kill you. As I recall, the extreme danger inherent to the Framus forced it to be used only as a guitar when it was banned as a Field Hockey stick. That was such a terrible thing......they made great field hockey sticks......................


Spaw


07 Jan 10 - 08:33 AM (#2805662)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: GUEST

If I were to find fault with every bit of bad grammar and spelling on this forum, I'd have little time for anything else.


07 Jan 10 - 08:33 AM (#2805664)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: John MacKenzie

My mther always said, "Don't pick it, it'll never get better"
Don't they say, mothers are always right?


07 Jan 10 - 10:35 AM (#2805726)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Will Fly

Jaysus, Spaw - I haven't heard the word "Framus" in nearly 40 years. There could be worse things than being hit over the head with a big Swedish box - but if there are I haven't heard of them...


07 Jan 10 - 10:45 AM (#2805731)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Dave Hanson

Banjos don't assault people, people do, that's priceless, maybe we could wheel out Charlton Heston to defend us banjo players like the NRA do.

Dave H


07 Jan 10 - 11:54 AM (#2805785)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: GUEST,Songbob

"did the guitar player tune thusly: BAGDAD? "

No, the tuning is DADGAB (Arabic reads right-to-left).

And Framus instruments are Bavarian (German), not Scandahoovian.

And it has always occurred to me that an open-back banjo would be easier to use in an assault than a resonated one, since the strut (if it has one) makes a mighty fine handle. You could use the peghead as if using a bayonet, aiming for the eyes, and then, wham! up comes the shell, right in the teeth! As my basic-training US Army drill sergeant might have said, "Vertical shell-stroke -- Hoh!" (As you can also probably guess, there is a bit of repressed agitation, or even rage, in my banjo-playing past).


Bob


07 Jan 10 - 01:08 PM (#2805843)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: GUEST,999

I think banjo playing is a mild social deviation and that the players of banjos should come home carrying them or on them.


07 Jan 10 - 01:08 PM (#2805844)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Cool Beans

So the guy who killed his wife with banjos would be both a wife beater and a banjo beater?


07 Jan 10 - 01:29 PM (#2805862)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: katlaughing

She might've survived if he'd only been a pole-axer. I've heard poles are not considered deadly weapons.


07 Jan 10 - 01:44 PM (#2805873)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: GUEST,999

I'm still tryin' to figure out why "Dueling Banjos" in the movie 'Deliverance' featured a banjo and guitar. Like, ya know?


07 Jan 10 - 01:58 PM (#2805882)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: John MacKenzie

You can beat this.
It's an egg banjo


07 Jan 10 - 03:52 PM (#2805979)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: GUEST,999

The guy's thinking, "I don't know what it is, but I'd like to be three hundred miles away when it hatches."

(That's from a Herman cartoon, but I couldn't find it on the web.)


07 Jan 10 - 05:17 PM (#2806060)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Cool Beans

Maybe the banjo beater had a breakdwon.


07 Jan 10 - 05:31 PM (#2806072)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Artful Codger

Why a banjo and guitar for "Dueling Banjos"? OSHA wouldn't allow them to have two banjos in the same studio.


07 Jan 10 - 06:39 PM (#2806135)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Lonesome EJ

At a jam when my friend Lindsey the banjo player finds himself sitting next to another banjo player in the circle, and says "we should split up the banjoes."
"Wouldn't it be easier," says I, "to just take them out in the parking lot and run over them with a truck?"


15 Sep 10 - 08:24 PM (#2987656)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Desert Dancer

More banjo violence - but this is self-defense.

~ Becky in Tucson


16 Sep 10 - 02:06 AM (#2987768)
Subject: RE: Accused Banjo Beater Allowed To Tour
From: Slag

"Your Honor, my client pleads 'NOT GUILTY' by reason of insanity!"

"Uh, let's see...Oh this is the bango, er, banjo assualt case, right?"

"Well, yes, er no, it wasn't the case he assualted your Honor."

"What?"

"No your Honor, it was a banjo."

"Oh, I see, he assualted a banjo? That doesn't seem to serious."

"No your honor. My client is accused of using a banjo to assault another person."

"Oh? Who's banjo was it?"

"It belongs to my client, your Honor."

"Alright then: Not guilty by reason of insanity. Next case please."