Musical Blog Post
My latest idea is to do a musical blog post every Sunday, or so... Instead of writing it; I will sing it... I got to the playing spot on 5th Street in Baton Rouge, Louisiana at about 10 p.m.
My goal had been to get there by about 9 p.m. and I had told Sherman so much.
If,for any reason I got there too late, and lost the spot to Gabriel, I would be extremely pissed and would have to have a serious discussion with myself about what went wrong and what could have been done differently.
The implication was clear. I would blame him.
I got to there and made about 8 bucks rather quickly.
It was only about 10:40 when I decided to make a dash to the beer store for one 24 oz. can of Huricane Lager.
Returning at 11, I saw no sign of Gabriel. It had been a calculated risk to take a break then. Gabriel usually shows up around midnight, having figured out perhaps that the money made between that hour and 3 a.m. is usually triple the money made in the 4 or 5 hours leading up to midnight.
Then Sherman showed up and stood by me as I played.
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| Sherman |
Then, I started to become distracted by him. I could almost read his mind ...you aren't doing so well...
"I think you need to move to your other spot," he eventually said, confirming my suspicions.
"...I'm not making anything because of the weird guy standing around..."
I felt like I was under his microscope and being judged by the lack of money going into my case. This was purely my own mind working against me and my own fault, but I was hoping he would say something like "I'm ruining your hustle standing here, I'll go.."
He mentioned that there hadn't been as much noise the previous night.
By then, the saxophone player had stationed himself on the opposite corner of the building, where Gabriel used to play before he discovered the excellent acoustics of my spot.
Sherman was getting on my nerves.
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| Rain Is In The Area |
I understand that he was trying to be supportive, but the last thing a busker needs is someone to stand next to him as if interested in seeing how the busker is going to do money-wise but never having it occur to the person that the reason that nobody is tipping the busker may very well be because he is standing there trying to see how the guy is going to do money-wise.
There are several reasons for this.
Maybe most of my tip money comes from people who (correctly) see me as a guy who carries all his worldly possessions on his back and who comes into town to share songs about the life of being a busker, and maybe that whole image is compromised by a guy with an expensive bike, wearing a flashing helmet, standing there next to the guy...is he a roomate, is the guy not really homeless, are they gay, is the guy waiting to jump on his bike and go get a crack rock as soon as I throw 5 bucks in his case???
These and a ton of other questions are not even an issue when there is nobody standing next to you as you busk.
Then, I started to wonder if Sherman was thinking things like "He's playing the wrong music, he's not loud enough, he's not making eye contact" and a slew of other criticisms that were becoming self fulfilling prophesies as my energy for playing the best possible music was being funneled into my growing resentment over the fact that he was standing there.
I Haven't Made A Cent Since You've Been Standing There
I Haven't Made A Cent Since You've Been Standing There
Finally, I just came out and said "I haven't made a cent the whole time that you've been standing there."
I thought that it was a rude thing to say as soon as it had come out of my mouth, but he seemed to take it pretty well, and got on his bike and left, but not before inviting me to crash at his place when I was done, rude comment not withstanding.
I managed to make a few more dollars, bringing my total up to the unimpressive amount of the title of this post.
Then, I walked the sidewalk, picking up butts.
A young lady in front of one of the bar/restaurants asked me if I was hungry.
I supposed that I was. She came out with a Styrofoam of fried seafood and a pack of Marlboro cigarettes and gave them to me.
At least I didn't have to face the problem of weather or not to spend 4 bucks out of my 22 bucks on cigarettes.
Ventanas XP
Ventanas XP
This morning, Sherman and I went to Computer Heaven (where good computers go when they die, I suppose).
They plugged a good power supply into the Samsung and voila! it came to life, sporting a Spanish version of Windows (Ventanas?).
I can't believe you went to Office Depot and shut off all their laptops and walked nonchalantly out, that's a scream!
ReplyDeleteThe "I haven't made a single cent all the time you're standing here" is a simple observation, it's not like you lied, so you did the right thing.
That was *very* nice of that lady to buy you food and cigs. There are a lot of nice people out in the world, I learned that when I was a spare-changer and I harbor no illusions: I'm only a short distance from having to hit the hobo road again, and a lot of people know it could be them.
My laptop here is at least 5 years old, maybe closer to 7? I'm not sure. Anything a mere year old is an amazing thing to have. Maybe you can sell it and use the money to get out of there (if you want to get out of there). Sue has most of the attributes of a successful professional panhandler, the only things holding here back being quirks like carrying cats and pigeons around. If she were "all there", she could easily have a house, car, etc. only panhandling a few hours a day. You should either keep her because she can make a lot of money and keep you in stuff like a new laptop when needed, or get out of there and never look back because she *is* crazy.
Ahh Monday ... I need to install a hanging-loop on the guitar case and hang it up, otherwise I don't have any place to put it, while I mess with the violin. Today's the day I string it up, rosin up the bow, hook up the "awesome" $30 Fender amp, and get my first squawks out of the thing. The way I am, sadly, what's probably going to happen is, the violin is going to take up my time and concentration, because I've been to lessons and know all or at least most of, the stuff I need to work on. Ed "busking" Chester on YouTube may be a success with the public, but his bowing sucks ass and the world does not need another one of him.
ReplyDeleteWhat's kind of cool is, I'll be playing the Mel Bay stuff I've done on guitar, in a week. And my "blue" microphone will get a lot of use, since I'll need to listen and evaluate, a lot. I've managed to change over the dumb piano blog to "my electric violin", and a rule I'm setting for myself is no more stealing photos off of Google, I have to take my own. And since I'll be recording a lot, I'll have recordings of my playing on the blog using some hosting site like you do.
On the upside, apparently the public is ga-ga over the electric violin. To me, it's one advantage is durability. Notice the Chinese gal and her Black friend are playing carbon-fiber instruments. Neither of 'em cheap, the violin is about 6 grand, and I'm not sure about the guitar but it's got to be at least 2 grand (still cheaper than replacing wooden guitars periodically). I got my present fiddle for $200, and can get a really nice one for $600 which I'll treat myself to if things go well.
Hey ... why don't you save up for a Dobro? Those have got to be hard to break.
Because I can't think of one Dobro song (Curtis Lowe included) that has ever made me think; wow I wish I could coax those sounds out of one...and my opinion of the instrument is: I'll find a way to break it, trust me...lol
ReplyDeleteOh OK I guess I was thinking of a Dobro as simply, "A louder shiny guitar" and that's probably not right.
ReplyDeleteI've actually taken the electric violin out of its case where it's sat on top of my book shelf for a week, and looked it over - other than its very ugly and complicated shape, it's a fairly decent-looking instrument.
And I've actually put my guitar onto Craig's List. I *have* to get things down to what will fit into one van-load. I can't take up too much space in the commercial building I'm likely to move to, or in a rented room or what-have-you. And if this violin turns out to have some kind of a problem I'm like as not just going to fix it or say Screw it and go ahead and get the NS-Design one. Since I'm getting rid of everything I can, I'll actually have money in abundance for at least a short while.
I actually am looking at, within 2 months, leaving here and moving into the commercial building of my friend's, and having enough money on hand that I can pretty much take it easy and fuck off through the winter. Busking? Yes indeedy, but *fun* busking. I can hop the hippie bus down to Santa Cruz and busk down there, I can hop the train up to the City (SF) and busk there, and just look around. Hell I could even take the Amtrak somewhere.
Hey, email me a shipping address for you, since I have two Lee Oskar harps, an A and a G, that I'll probably not be using. And I won't get shit for 'em at a swap meet.