Polka News Network: Lips

Hello, if you're a young person joining us through the Facebook for the first time. We're grinding the terrible, out-of-touch, decision the Grammys organisers made in dumping polka from the awards in their faces.

(A moment's pause as the young persons joining us through Facebook scramble for the exit again.)

If you need further evidence of just how huge polka is, though, look no further than The University of Oklahoma's Academy Of Contemporary Music. For who should turn up there to play a polka masterclass than Steven Drozd of the Flaming Lips:

When Steven Drozd was growing up, his father led a polka band called Vernon Drozd and the Texas Brass, which recorded several songs in the late 1960s. Sitting behind a drum kit, Steven Drozd pounded away to “Juarez, Mexico,” a 1969 recording by his father the younger Drozd had on his iPod Nano.

“I remember my dad bought me a little toy drum set when I was about 5, and I tore it up in just a couple of days,” Drozd said. “But I loved it, and I think my dad saw that and thought, ‘Maybe there’s something here.’”

In other words: banish polka, and you banish the whole world.