and the library will be closing at 4 p.m., because of Mardi Gras parades.
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| People pay to hear his style of music... |
People were already migrating towards the eventual parade route.
There were musicians along Royal Street, every 100 feet or so, and all of them seemed to have around 20 bucks in their cases at that point in time, except for a guy playing a very loud clarinet, accompanied by a boom box playing music that was very polished...using the same kind of polish that Kenny G. uses to shine his horn...
That guy had about 100 bucks at that point in time.
I went along with my normal schedule, played on Decatur Street for about 2 hours and only made about 4 bucks, which can be rationalised away with "Everyone is at the parade."
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| At 2 Dollars each, they are slightly above my "means," but I can always cut back on things like basic hygeine, and the like.... |
Somebody threw me a ten, which made me think that I was sounding pretty good, at the time they walked past, at least.
I jumped between "Heart of Gold," "Chinacat Sunflower/I Know You Rider," and anything else I could think of to employ the new notes that I have learned to bend to and from on the harmonica. (I'm getting a B flat now, opening up the key of C minor in the "cross harp" position, and songs like "All Along The Watchtower" and "Things We Said Today," by The Beatles, and of course the extended jam in "Shakedown Street," by The Grateful Dead, when it jumps into C minor for a spell).
I should leave here soon and start to play earlier than usual, and stay a little later than usual.
I almost had decided not to play that last set last night, but got a second wind once I started and became about 16 bucks richer in an hour. Not bad, in this land of broken dreams and shattered hopes and general futility.
Keep in mind Kenny G is indeed popular for some fairly elementary reasons. He's long-haired, a negative in my book but he looks like he's showered recently. He plays smooth, moody but not too moody, more like contemplative, stuff, rather than angry stuff about burning down the town, or scruffy-hippy dirges about the latest time he got crabs. The loud-clarinet guy is pretty smart to hang on Kenny's coat tails.
ReplyDeleteAnother reason why the clarinet guy is probably doing pretty well is, he's probably playing standing up, and while the clarinet is not as loud as some things, it's 100X easier to hear on the street than an acoustic guitar.
I'm typing this furiously while, for some reason, the Internet is taking large chunks of it and "disappearing" them. This blog is a heroic effort on your part, but trying to relate to people through the Internet means working through a narrower and narrower straw. None of us out here know what you sound like, although I surmise you're fairly good just from what you talk about. But if you're out here, in Sunnyvale and Palo Alto and Mountain View, now you're relating to a lot of people who have two nickels to rub together, face-to-face so they can hear you.
It's Saturday and I just finished writing on my blog-that-no-one-reads lol. I'm hoping you went over and checked for the goody box I sent, with the strings and the USB cable. Tomorrow's prezzy-dents day, so I guess I shouldn't expect another post until Tuesday.
ReplyDeleteI've been putting up crap daily on my own blog, but it's still nowhere near as good as this one. I can only hope that it will become a help to new buskers - blogs by buskers with daily posts (or nearly daily) are rare.
I think sound clips can be put on here, can that fone of yours record sound? I picked up a crappy little camera from some Mexicans at a garage sale, that actually takes video with sound. And the mic seems to be pretty good. So, I may try putting something on my site so people can hear me fucking up the C major scale or something.