But, I brought my guitar on this Sunday night, and, who knows, I might find myself out there busking around midnight.
There aren't a lot of tourists, but that can mean that one of them, seeing that this is so, might drop a large tip to compensate....
More from the casino....
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| At Harrah's Casino |
This is how you sneak an "outside drink" in the place.
I did not see Colin Mitchell at the other Starbucks. He is there a lot, as he waits for Tanya Huang to relinquish the corner of Royal and St. Louis at around 11 PM, completing a 12 hour day for her. Colin takes over and plays from then, until about 4 in the morning.
"The very late tippers are the best; the ones who are going back to their hotels at 3 in the morning, and just empty their pockets of whatever bills they have left over from the last hundred they broke..." said Colin last night.
I ran into him after having played at the Lilly Pad for about an hour and a half and gotten about 12 bucks, with there being a 5 dollar bill in there.
He had been sitting at Royal and St. Louis, and it was about 2 AM.
He was talking about leaving New Orleans to busk in Central Park in New York where "I always make at least a hundred bucks there," or to go to Las Vegas. He was using the weather forecast to inform his decision.
He had stayed here after Mardi Gras because we were forecast to get the perfect conditions that we are enjoying, whereas it was forecast to be less favorable conditions in Vegas or the 45 degree New York City.
He had been at the spot for over 2 hours and had not made a penny.
He was complaining about the tourists being "a much younger" set and about them having only plastic cards but no cash in a lot of cases.
"They know there are going to be artists on the street when they get here; who play for their living; they need to prepare by bringing cash, so they can support them!," said Colin.
This kind of raises the issue of: Is it their duty or responsibility, or religious obligation to indeed "support the artists?"
I think not.
If you aren't making enough money as a busker, then you need to find another profession, pure and simple.
It is discomforting that the "millenials," for whatever reason, are lousy tippers (at least the batch of them that are in town now) hinging upon whatever that reason is.
Colin said that Tanya Huang even found disconcerting the amount of tippage that went into her basket.
"Oh, really. At the moment I rode by her, she had about 15 people around her and they all clapped when she finished playing..."
"That's just it," rejoined Colin. "There was a lot of clapping, a lot of dancing, but no tipping; there's a difference."
So, Colin was just sitting there, having turned off his amplifier to save its batteries, due to the slowness.
Then, I took my guitar out and was playing and watching his stuff while he ran to the restroom.
This turned into us jamming on a song, which attracted the attention of a young man who stopped and listened, and then threw something in Colin's basket, before giving each of us a fist pump and walking off.
I really expected Colin to throw me a dollar or two, or more precisely, about half of what the guy put in his basket. We both had been playing, and the guy had actually stood closer to me than him, so that he could hear me over his amp.
When he gave us each a fist pump, it was like: "Nice job, fellas" as in both of us.
I changed my opinion a bit about Colin because of that.f
I'm sure he has an axiom that he goes by, like: "No, this is my stage, on my spot. All the money that goes in the basket is mine. If someone wants to stop by and jam with me, then he gets to have the experience of doing so, and the enjoyment thereof, but the money is all mine!"
And, this is generally the unwritten rule for buskers. But is is still within the discretionary powers of the busker to flip the guest jammer at least a buck, not, perhaps if he is a tourist just having fun on vacation who doesn't want any money; but a busker and a friend(?) who has just shown up and commiserated about the miserly tourists, and how he himself only made 11 dollars that night, and after the money went into the basket under the circumstances that we had, when it was pretty apparent that the guy was trying (at least) to tip both of us, yeah, I could have imagined him looking at the small stack of bills that were the first things to land in his basket all night and figuring that it was intended to be for both of us (especially if it was like 2 ten dollar bills, or 2 fives, or an even amount of one dollar bills) and at least giving me a dollar as a gesture.
But, he almost guiltily sneaked the money into a side pocket of his jacket, further leading me to believe that it was an amount too large to leave in the jar to tempt the street urchins to steal.
I started to paint him as being kind of greedy, at that point.
Then, he began to transform from the disgusted guy who was ready to leave town into a more upbeat and almost giddy one.
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| Ben kind of hard to find today |
Ben Lambie never showed up to pick up his frozen pizza last night. He couldn't get a cab.Colin cont.
Cab drivers don't like to pick up in crack neighborhoods if they can avoid it.
Today, he isn't answering my texts. My fear is that he is going to have some relapse, and that he might be holed up in his airbnb that he left my place for, with a crack rock and a nappy headed whore who is going to steal his brand new i-phone, even if she seems pretty nice.
Then, another 3 guys showed up and asked Colin to play something.
He told them that he was done for the night and would have to hook up all his gear again in order to play. I guess he was satisfied with the amount that he (not we) had made off the first guy -large enough to have prompted him to quit for the night, right then and there, and become giddy and start to say things like: "See, you never know...they came right out of the blue, you never know! Ha ha ha!"
"How much do we have to give you to hear a song?" asked one of the 3 guys.
"Twenty bucks," said Colin, whereupon he was handed that amount.
He set up his stuff, and then transformed into "Mr. Showbiz," I guess.
He hit the button on his phone, whereupon the "music minus one" for "Imagine," by John Lennon began to play.
He strummed along and sang.
When he sang: "us, only sky..." he pointed to the sky with his picking hand. He made another gesture to go along with another line in the song.
I had always cut Colin some slack as far as his busking act is concerned.
A lot of buskers think it's a sin to use a backing track to perform over.
One such guy, who is disparagingly referred to as "Karaoke Guy," and shunned by other buskers, comes to mind. He sings over pre-recorded music, and has a style like John Legend, or Arron Neville; high, falsetto type of "chick music," that has the potential to get the ladies weeping, the way Michael Jackson could do with the song "She's Out Of My Life."
My mixed feeling about Colin as a performer, I kept to myself.
He is very much visually oriented.
I always pictured him as being like a puppet and people putting coins in a slot to get him to "play" for a few minutes, like those pony rides that used to be in front of supermarkets that you could put your kid on for a couple minutes for a quarter.
He is almost like a performance artist, in that sense, like a guy in a busker costume with a fake guitar who isn't really singing or playing, but is mimicking a busker.
I have meant to talk to him about that; but, what would I say to him?
He reaches his extreme when he puts on a certain Stevie Wonder song that the vocals have not been removed from and then strums along with a smile on his face while the recording of Stevie singing plays.
He said that "the people" like to hear Stevie Wonder singing "...and so I don't even try to reproduce his vocals." He strums his guitar along with it, just like he does when he is in Starbucks and song comes on their house system that he knows.
I have meant to ask him also, on that head: "Has anyone ever complained about you playing in Starbucks; anyone ever said: 'Hey, man. Starbucks provides music for the entertainment of its customers; and I usually enjoy it; I didn't come here to listen to you play your guitar; nothing personl, but I happen to like this song, and you're ruining it for me by playing over the top of it..."
Colin does that, hoping that people might remark: "You sound pretty good on that guitar, where do you play at?" and then he can direct them to his spot, where they would surely tip him.
"You see, I'm a businessman," said Colin.
But, the songs where he basically puts on a commercially available CD by some artist and then strums along while it plays, have had me leaving the area as fast as possible in the past: "Well, I'd better get home..." because of how lame it is, in my opinion.
Sure, he has the cowboy hat and the outfit and the guitar, and he smiles and bounces up and down and sways a bit while he strums along; trying to sell the enjoy-ability of the music; and he points at the sky to underscore lyrics and at the paying customer when singing "YOU may say I'm a dreamer..." but that is Carlos Santana, to give one example, ripping it up on lead guitar while Colin poses as "the busker" and takes credit for Santana's work.
After he had put the twenty dollar bill in his pocket along with whatever money the first guy had intended for both of us, he was in high spirits, giggling and telling me how amazing it was to have played for a couple hours and not made anything, and then suddenly -bam, out of the blue!
And he stopped short of saying "out of the blue..." and then giving any amount ("-bam, 60 bucks, just like that!") which was conspicuous in him, because he will often give me a run down of his night, mentioning all the amounts involved. "...One of the ladies put 5 dollars in my basket, then they dance a bit, then the other one put another 5...etc" and I couldn't help thinking that he didn't want me to know how much the guy who was apparently trying to tip both of us gave him; for that very reason -in case I said; "Yeah, we were both jamming together when he did that..."
He's a businessman.
A 67 year old retired accountant who came from some foreign country, and still bears the accent, who knows the power that appearances hold over people and takes advantage of it.
But, I have changed my opinion of him.
It reminded me of when Travis Blain gushed with excitement and giddiness after he learned that the security people at Sacred Heart don't keep an accurate count of the number of days that guests have been there and was basically telling me: "I can probably stay here as long as I want; what a great thing for me, Travis Blain, I've been blessed!" I was supposed to be happy for him; when in the back of his mind he was thinking: Plus, I'm not going to give you half of what I promised, so I'll be alright there, too! Go Travis, go!
I started to see Colin in a similar himself-at-the-center-of-the-universe light after it became apparent that he thought I would enjoy sticking around hearing him relate even more stories about himself, when had materialized out of the blue. "I'm happy for you, Colin...60 bucks in 10 minutes; way to go, Colin. Let's jam out on a couple more tunes, you play rhythm and I'll play lead; maybe the two of us, working together, can get your tip basket up over 100 dollars...
I had never told him about the 169 dollar night that I had last week, but I mentioned it in the same vein with his tales.
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| Buskers should be seen, and not heard... |
"Yeah, but that was about a year ago, right?" he asked, thinking of perhaps another story I had told him about that, and realizing that it is apparently important to him, how much I make.
I'm sure he sees an implied competition between his style, and my substance. ...If Daniel would just dress the part, he might do so much better
"No, that was a week ago Friday,"
I saw some combination of jealousy and anger cross his face. It was a bit of a dark aspect and almost a "You dirty bastard!" communique -certainly the opposite of a "I'm happy for you" expression.
It was like a student telling me "I hate you," back in high school, after I had gotten a higher grade than him on a test, with his anger being based upon the fact that he had studied for hours and "You hardly ever study..."
I left him there at about 3 AM, before he started to strum along with "Layla," while Eric Clapton's recorded vocals sang.
He belongs in a museum, behind glass. "The Street Musician," could be on the placard and all the music can be piped in, to go with the sight of him...and he could smile and make a fake strumming motion, his pick obviously not even touching the strings. ...you'd be surprised how few people notice that; they just keep putting their money in the slot...
There is a reason he has no CDs for sale; you wouldn't be able to see him when you listened to it; and so there would be 'something missing."
I am not really angry, and I'll get off Colin Mitchell in a second- just miffed a bit
I do know that the busker on a particular spot has a right to any money that goes in his basket, regardless of the circumstances surrounding it; I just thought the incident revealed a selfish side to the guy.
That kind of fits with him taking out his guitar in Starbucks so that the whole place has to hear him, whether they like it or not, as he advertises himself.
He is a functional musician, slightly above intermediate level, but is not a songwriter dr artist in that regard; I would say 75% show, 25% substance.
Sunday sucked ass here too. I played about 2 hours and only made $4. I felt like a loser but a guy I know who plays recorder and generally gets good tips only made $1 that night. There were lots of people around but they just didn't feel like tipping.
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