In a stroke of considerable stupidity, someone – guess who – forgot to wear long sleeves, oversize shades and a comfy, floppy hat. The consequence of failing to emulate Mary-Kate Olsen’s brilliant fashion sense: a nasty sunburn. But this year’s third annual Main Squeeze Accordion Festival at Pier 1 on the west side was so hard to leave! It was so good! 

It didn’t start out that way. The Italian Village Dance band opened, reminding why some people hate accordions so much. Everything the quartet – accordion, guitar, violin and tuba – played early on in their set sounded like that awful Italian pop hit that’s always played in the seventh inning at Mets games. Plus, their accordionist obviously had a chip on his shoulder – bad soundcheck? $400 for gas driving all the way from Vermont? But then things got better. They discovered a minor key, played a sad waltz and a tango and an interesting dance tune from Sardinia in 6/4, sounding totally African. But the bad vibes persisted. And the sun was blazing.

Next up were the Main Squeeze Orchestra. The all-female accordion orchestra, conducted by Main Squeeze Accordion Shop proprietor Walter Kuhr seem to have something of a rotating cast of characters, and this particular 10-piece unit was amazing, despite having to deal with much of their sheet music getting caught by the wind and ending up in the river. They opened with the same amusing oompah instrumental version of the Michael Jackson hit Billy Jean that they played at Make Music NY, but this time with amplification – the sound crew did a masterful job under severely tough circumstances, with a ton of mics onstage and the wind often gusting hard. Whoever was in charge was paying very close attention, with richly rewarding results. After a dramatic flamenco number and an equally intense Piazzolla tango, one of the women came up to sing on an interesting cover of the Joy Division classic Love Will Tear Us Apart. They could have gone any number of places with it, but the only part of the arrangement that deviated from the original was the vocals, the accordions perfectly hitting the strange open chords of Ian Curtis’ guitar and the contrasting smoothness of the song’s mellotron lines.

Continuing with their characteristically eclectic choice of covers, they did an old 70s reggae hit by Jackie Brown and then the old Eurythmics chestnut Sweet Dreams, which wasn’t quite as horrid as the original. They closed their set with a note-for-note cover of Bohemian Rhapsody, which was laugh-out-loud hilarious, nailing every silly motif in a spot-on parody of a parody. If that isn’t New York, you decide what is. The orchestra is off for the month of August, but they’re playing a Halloween show at the Zipper Theatre.

Next on the bill was Argentinan bandoneon player Raul Jaurena and his trio: simply bandoneon, upright bass and piano.  Their sound is classic tango: lush, romantic, haunting and rigorously complex. Jaurena, who represents the old guard of tango, would typically start the song with a long solo on his 1905 model bandoneon (a German version of the accordion with a typically broader sonic capability, especially in the upper registers). When Jaurena’s bassist soloed, he played dark, calm, sometimes fluttering melody, using a bow. The keyboardist’s jazz piano lines were knotty and intricate yet in tune with Jaurena’s melody, equal parts anguish and exhilaration. The highlight of their set was the classic Piazzolla tango Libertad, again begun with a long intro on the bandoneon. They closed with an enticing candombe dance number with the bass playing percussion, later turning the drumming over to Jaurena. There were more than a few moments of pure transcendence in their all-too-short set.

The trio Veretski Pass had a hard act to follow, but were anything but anticlimactic. With an accordionist, violinist and cellist (who slung his instrument over his shoulder like a guitar), they played a lush, gorgeous mix of a wide variety of styles, moving from klezmer to rebetika to Italian dances to full-on gypsy wildness in the course of a single, long, obviously extemporaneous song. In just under an hour, the band played five instrumentals, all introduced by a long, frequently mesmerizing intro from the accordion. The first quoted Hava Nagila early on and then morphed into a jam on Morricone’s theme from The Good, the  Bad and the Ugly. The second began with accordion wailing against ambient strings and built to an intense gypsy dance; the third gave the violinist the chance to set fires with a scorchingly fast series of trills. It would have been nice to have been able to stick around for the rest of the evening – bands were scheduled well into the night – but the prospect of third-degree burns finally made it clear that it was time to call it a night. And stay out of the sun.