Look At The Time!

• 20 Dollar Saturday
• Life Overhaul In Order
• Swinging Songs

Finding out that I had "misplaced" 8 dollars and change on my plastic plasma Visa card yesterday was good. I had had the nagging feeling of having (recklessly) spent the 40 bucks that I had made selling plasma, plus the 16 that I had busked for Friday night, way too quickly. I should still have almost 10 bucks left, I thought.

Determined (for the millionth time) to arrive earlier than midnight at the Lilly Pad, I managed to get there and start playing by around 11:20 PM.

New Trolley

I had nothing to lose, having an all day bus pass, by trying the new trolley, the tracks of which having been under construction for the better part of last year, and the stop at which I could catch it and ride down Rampart Street, to be dropped 2 blocks, now being known to me.

I guess because there were so many out of town-ers in town, the trolley driver had announced: "Rampart; to City Park," or whatever, after the trolley had stopped at Rampart and Canal.
I had known about the new line. It had taken me a while before I actually asked a driver how I might catch the thing, which intersects the Canal Street line at that point.

She had told me that I would have to get off at that spot and wait for it there.

"So, I might have to wait up to another 20 minutes for it?"

"No, there's one right behind me..."

I guessed that they synchronize them that way, since it would be a simple matter of meshing their schedules together.

"So, I would have to get a transfer when I get on at my apartment?"

"Yes."

So, I would pay an extra 25 cents and would have to get off 4 stops short of where I usually do at Royal Street, and then would have to wait, but probably only a few minutes, for the one going down Rampart.

My only concern, as I rode the thing along Rampart Street, after learning from the driver that I could get off at St. Ann Street (and then have to walk 2 blocks to Bourbon Street, and then 1 block to the Lilly Pad) or at Ursulines Ave. (and then have to walk 2 blocks to Bourbon Street, then 1 block in the other direction to the Lilly Pad) was safety.

I could walk the length of Royal Street night and day for a year and never have anything really bad happen to me.

But, the 2 block walk to Bourbon Street from different points along Rampart, fall into that "gray area" of places that tourists can unwittingly stray into; usually because they are religiously doing what Google Maps is telling them to do, rather than having opened their mouth to ask anybody for directions.

That is understandable, as nobody wants to attract a skeezer: "Come on, man, I gave you good directions; help me out with a few bucks...five, twenty, whatever you can afford..." into their life.

Separated briefly from the "safety in numbers" of Bourbon Street, those tourists run a higher risk of being accosted and winding up being the subject of "Man robbed in 900 block of (whichever side street) an article in the next day's paper. These assailants, I would call: "wrong turn" skeezers.

The little old lady who pushes a cart selling flowers was robbed of her cellphone and like 30 bucks in cash a few months ago, right within those 2 blocks of Ursuline Ave, and "just off Bourbon Street" is where numerous drug deals o down after the tourist has said to the hustler on Bourbon: "Mmm, smells good; I wish I knew where I could get a sack," after sniffing a promotional exhaled puff of pot smoke, and then had the hustler say: "Come on, take a walk with me, we can't do it right here on Front Street..." and then they had walked off onto one of the side streets, Ursuline and St. Ann being a couple of those that I could take to get to the Lilly Pad.

The 94 dollar a night Ursuline Inn along my way...

The trolley wound up getting me to the Lilly Pad 20 minutes sooner than if I had stayed on the Canal Street line until it got to Royal Street and then walked the 9 blocks to the playing spot. The walk along Ursuline Street had been about a "7" on the heebie geebie scale; and about the same on the "willie" meter.

A compromise would be for me to get off at St. Peter Street and then have a total of 5 blocks to walk, instead of the 9, saving me perhaps only 10 minutes rather than 20, but conducting me along the well lit safety of St. Peter's Street.

This is such a life changing thing to a 55 year old busker, set in his ways. I almost hadn't wanted to try the new trolley "maybe some other night," last night. But, my goal was to arrive earlier at the spot and I had managed to wind up upon the same trolley that had gotten me there a little before midnight the night before, and so, what did I have to lose? I could break the pattern I've followed nightly for 6 years.

I had always found it a hindrance to have to walk the length of Royal Street each night, where I might encounter other musicians, whom I might feel compelled to stop and chat with, while the clock ticked away.

The well lit safety of Bourbon Street

Sunday The 26th

It is Sunday evening. My all day pass is good until 3:30 AM, as that is apparently the time at which I had boarded the trolley for home, after having played from 11:20 PM until about 2:30 AM.

Three hours for about 20 dollars.

I thought I might stay up a few hours and then ride over to the plasma place to make 40 dollars for my 7th donation of November, and leave there early enough so that I could catch maybe the Patriots game at the casino, with 60 bucks or so on me, and making plans to work on the abandoned rectory recording studio situation.

I find that I can sing loudly enough in my apartment so that, if I were Gordon Lightfoot, for example I would be able to cut my vocal tracks right there in the apartment. Bono from the band U2, not so much...

The hissing of water through the pipes of my heating and air unit, which used to peg about -30 db on the Audacity meter, before I learned how to shut it off, has been supplanted by the sound of my freezer in the kitchen as the reigning nuisance. This pegs about -40 db.

The sound of the water hose that you can still hear after closing the valve, although faint, still makes the meter jump around in the -48 db range. A loud vehicle going down Canal Street, by comparison will spike up to around the -35 db of the hose when it had water gushing through it.

Swing Amount

I laid down a rhythm track with the "swing" value set to a full minus-1. This is the fully swung amount that a drummer would use to keep a strict sense of breaking the beat into 3. As a song speeds up, it is human nature to cheat a bit and make the notes fall somewhere between fully and not so fully swung notes. Otherwise it would sound too stiff. It's all about "feel."
I then put another few minutes with the value set to -.93.
When I played over it, and then played it back, it did indeed sound kind of stiff until the drums changed, signaled by my having swapped kick drums and percussion instruments, about half way through, and the song began to sound more swinging; or the drums more natural, or both...

I wound up pushing back the plasma trip to another day, tomorrow. I still have until the end of the month to capitalize on the sad fact that I've been there 6 times already this month; the sadness stemming from the fact that I had deemed those trips to be preferable to busking those same hours; a vote of no confidence for Tuesday evening busking, that.

Bobby is still planning to go ahead and buy me an electric guitar and amp "for Christmas."
He has indeed investigated the Orange brand of portable amps, but is leaning towards getting me a Blackstar brand one.

The staff at Guitar Center seem to hold a lot of sway with Bobby, in their recommendations of products. "They said this one blows all the others out of the water!," is something he might say. It hasn't escaped my cynical notice that these seem to be always the "Guitar Center" brands of things, such as Mitchell guitars and, I guess, Blackstar amplifiers.

I will have to plug the thing in and record a tribute to Bobby, in some way, if I get the stuff.
I'm not exactly sure what motivates Bobby in doing this. On the surface, it is similar to some of the tourists who have given me large tips in the past, wishing only that I use it to buy better equipment so that my music can be better heard by better people.

I think people relate to the artist who can create, but who has no facility in going from point A to point B, as far as the practicalities of his art form entail. This guy would sound awesome playing a nice guitar, but can't save up for one because of the daily burden of surviving; they might think.

I will say that I have always thought that there is a "the rich get richer" mechanism in place as far as street musicians go. The most talented people eventually seem to wind up with the nicest equipment because they sound OK enough on a cheap guitar to soon be able to afford a very decent one, sound even better, fetch more tip money etc; and will wind up like Brian Hudson, who busks on Royal Street using a 3 thousand dollar Martin guitar, and singing through a good mic and amp.
"The rich get richer," I thought, a few years ago, when I would hear Brian play and then think that it was then incumbent upon me me to go out and "compete" with him, using my 80 dollar acoustic with no amp nor mic.

But, I suppose if I found a Stradivarius violin in a dusty moldy case in the crawl space under the abandoned rectory, I would be tempted to just give it to Tanya Huang. Just hearing her play it and knowing that she loves it, would be enough reward.

Though, I would ask her if she would trade me any old violin that she might have laying around for it. "I want something to experiment with and try to learn a bit of violin; but it doesn't have to be a Stradivarius."