19 Dollar Saturday
I suppose if I was getting out and starting earlier each night, I would be making more than the $18-$18-$18-$19 string of the past four of them.
Last night, it was about 11:45 when I got to the Lilly Pad to find a couple of dune buggy type vehicles, a red one and a green one, parked across from Lafitt's with the red one having music blasting out its back.
I wondered if they had just stopped for drinks, or if they planned upon being "the party" for everyone the whole night.
The music was the kind that is meant to be multi-racial, with an almost rock and roll, Kid Rock or Limp Bizkit beat, but with the distinctive sound of a black man rapping at diverse points, "keeping it real" by repeating "gimme that booty" 32 times, type of thing.
A Danny Young Figure
There was a guy and a lady, both wearing St. Patrick's Day green who seemed to be tending to the red dune buggy, and taking credit for it.
In between songs, as the lady was poking at her smartphone, which I suppose was blue-toothed to the buggy, I asked her if they were going to be there for a while or if they had just stopped for drinks.
She said they had just stopped for drinks but had barely uttered that when the guy was in my face, acting defensive over the fact that I had even spoken to his trailer park queen.
"What?"
He, I guess, wanted me to address all questions to him.
"I was just asking how long you guys were going to be here, before I set up."
He looked me up and down, formed some kind of judgement, and then said: "I don't know, 3 or 4..."
He had suddenly become an amalgamation of people from my past, which I could see, because I was in the present moment.
A Blast From 1985
He was Danny Young, a guy I knew in the mid 80's when I was following the Grateful Dead around.
Danny's father had established Young's Refrigeration and Air Conditioning, and I guess was doing pretty well, and Danny had learned the trade and was being groomed to take over the whole business.
He was a deadhead who arrived at the concerts in a brand new Jeep of some kind which was emblazoned with dead stickers, listening to Grateful Dead music being pumped through a state of the art Jeep stereo "Phil's bass sounds awesome when you crank it up..." and would park it at in the closest (and most expensive) garage, probably right across the street from the venue. He would be wearing a brand new 35 dollar Grateful Dead air-brushed shirt and would proceed to his seat right in the middle of the floor where some of the most expensive seats are, and set up his state of the art Sony tape deck and his Audio Technica microphones to record the show.
He would have purchased in advance, a ticket package for all 18 shows of a tour which might start in Augusta, Maine and finish up in Philadelphia.
When your dad owns the business, it's easier to take off a good part of a month to see the dead 3 nights here, and 2 nights there. It's also easier to take things for granted, I assume.
He would stay in hotels.
When he walked past the hippie type of deadheads with their tinny sounding music emanating from their VW buses and their hand woven clothing and beads and tie dyes and drawings of Jerry Garcia made from macaroni stuck to construction paper, he would give a derisive snicker.
Danny saw me as being in the same general class as him. At the time, I was a Systems Integration Technician at Wang Labs -the number 3 computer company in the world at the time (now defunct in no small part due to employees like me).
I think he thought he was teaching me the ropes in some way.
When we stopped at a breakfast place in Portland, Maine on our way to a show, the waitress approached and asked us if we were ready to order.
Danny growled: "Yeah, I want eggs, over easy, 2 strips of bacon, and..." with the "I would like," and the "please," conspicuously absent -something which my parents had taught me to use when I was 6 years old, and from the look that flashed across her face, apparently the waitresses parents too, when she was 6 years old.
When you make $1,500 a week in the lucrative field of refrigeration and air, you don't ask for, you demand your eggs and bacon.
When dune buggy/Limp Bizkit guy had told me they were going to be there until "Oh, I don't know, maybe 3 or 4," he became Danny Young, and I became a barefooted hippie with a poncho draped over me, who did macaroni art...for about a second.
Then, he became both Danny Young, and the rail yard worker in Mobile, Alabama whom I had asked if a certain row of boxcars were going to New Orleans. A lot of rail yard workers are sympathetic to the train hoppers, but this one had smugly said: "Nope, those cars are going into the shop!," raising his voice on the last word.
After I had then said something about wanting to get out of Mobile and be in New Orleans in time for the fall season, or something, just as an effort to befriend him, he repeated: "They're goin' in the shop!!"
I guess any veteran train hopper knows the frustration of laying down to go to sleep in an empty boxcar only to wake up hours later, not in Long Beach, or Miami, but "in the shop!!" -a huge hanger shaped building that, in the case of Mobile, sits almost a mile down the tracks from where any other train might be hopped. Rail yards can be expansive.
I sat back down at the Lilly Pad, believing the guy's wife that they had just stopped for a drink, and that he had just been Danny Young-ing me and they were probably just waiting for the rest of the party (in the green buggy) to come out of Lafitt's.
Then, I think what happened was, the guy saw me setting up there, and figured out that I hadn't believed his "3 or 4 o' clock," and read some defiance in the act.
The rest of the party came out with "OK, where to now?" expressions, whereupon the red dune buggy guy seemed to stall them with a "let's just hang out here a while longer," expression.
I had had the notion of waiting out of their sight for them to leave, after each one of them had gotten their famous Hurricane drink; for this very reason.
I moved down to across from The Quartermaster, letting red dune buggy guy with the 3,000 watt sound system have whatever satisfaction he might have gotten in seeing me do so; and had made maybe 8 bucks in the 20 minutes before I noticed no more Limp Bizkit coming from the direction of Lafitt's.
I went back to the Lilly Pad.
Then, one of the Airbnb renters from the place above the postal store diagonally across from Lafitt's began to crank music from the balcony; having moved the speakers (which I guess come with the place) out there, so that they could subject the whole neighborhood to their taste in music.
It's funny; I'm attempting to do the same thing, I thought, before becoming angry at them. I want them to turn their music down so I can subject the whole neighborhood to mine...
It seems like, especially in the past 2 years, being loud in public has come into vogue.
More than half of the pedi-cabs are rolling public address systems now, and at least a couple times a night I have to pause to wait for one of them to get a fare and leave, as they sit there advertising the fact that, yes, I have loud music and you'll be able to feel the bass vibrating the pedi cab's seat, so come along!!
I suppose the upside to that is, there shouldn't be anybody opening their window to voice their objection to my using some kind of amplifier if I get one, because the whole: "this is a quiet residential block; no amplifiers allowed" argument has gone out the window, so to speak.
So, I made 19 dollars in about 2 hours of playing and 15 minutes of toting my stuff from one spot to another; and I can feel a change coming.
Now that I am in the present moment and all that, I'm starting to notice patterns in my thinking...
My attachment to Lilly and the realization that I have been able to make the Lilly Pad "my" spot are both things that must be put through the mangle of seeing things in the light of consciousness...
Lilly only wants to see me doing well, and wouldn't she be happy to see me get a gig playing for 3 hours a couple nights a week in an Irish Pub taking home a guaranteed 50 bucks a night?
And, wouldn't I be able to exercise my busking powers in there, by trying to get people in the pub to throw money in the tip jar to complement the 50 bucks?
And, wouldn't I be able to strive to make that pub "my" place?
And, wouldn't the dozen or so people who make it a point to come by the Lilly Pad to hear me every year when they come on vacation be able to do so at the pub?
And wouldn't the pub have a sound system capable of projecting my lyrics, which are so important to me that I play in a quiet residential block, so they would be heard by the patrons?
There is one big difference, though, one that I still haven't meditated upon enough yet to draw a conclusion about.
When you are in a pub, you are the guy that the pub has put in there.
People walk in and there is a bar, and there are cool things hanging on the walls, maybe a pool table or a pinball machine...and they've got a guy who comes in and plays music from 9 til midnight every night. You are part of the establishment (God, I cringe just hearing myself say that...) whereas, on the street you are only part of yourself.
I think I could make a living off of people tipping me on the street with the attitude of: "Keep at it, you've almost got it, you'll make it into the pubs one day, if you...if you keep at it!!"
But, it is time to think seriously about some kind of amplification.
 |
| Happy St. Patrick's Day!! |
I suppose if I was getting out and starting earlier each night, I would be making more than the $18-$18-$18-$19 string of the past four of them.
Last night, it was about 11:45 when I got to the Lilly Pad to find a couple of dune buggy type vehicles, a red one and a green one, parked across from Lafitt's with the red one having music blasting out its back.
I wondered if they had just stopped for drinks, or if they planned upon being "the party" for everyone the whole night.
The music was the kind that is meant to be multi-racial, with an almost rock and roll, Kid Rock or Limp Bizkit beat, but with the distinctive sound of a black man rapping at diverse points, "keeping it real" by repeating "gimme that booty" 32 times, type of thing.
A Danny Young Figure
There was a guy and a lady, both wearing St. Patrick's Day green who seemed to be tending to the red dune buggy, and taking credit for it.
In between songs, as the lady was poking at her smartphone, which I suppose was blue-toothed to the buggy, I asked her if they were going to be there for a while or if they had just stopped for drinks.
She said they had just stopped for drinks but had barely uttered that when the guy was in my face, acting defensive over the fact that I had even spoken to his trailer park queen.
"What?"
He, I guess, wanted me to address all questions to him.
"I was just asking how long you guys were going to be here, before I set up."
He looked me up and down, formed some kind of judgement, and then said: "I don't know, 3 or 4..."
He had suddenly become an amalgamation of people from my past, which I could see, because I was in the present moment.
A Blast From 1985
He was Danny Young, a guy I knew in the mid 80's when I was following the Grateful Dead around.
Danny's father had established Young's Refrigeration and Air Conditioning, and I guess was doing pretty well, and Danny had learned the trade and was being groomed to take over the whole business.
He was a deadhead who arrived at the concerts in a brand new Jeep of some kind which was emblazoned with dead stickers, listening to Grateful Dead music being pumped through a state of the art Jeep stereo "Phil's bass sounds awesome when you crank it up..." and would park it at in the closest (and most expensive) garage, probably right across the street from the venue. He would be wearing a brand new 35 dollar Grateful Dead air-brushed shirt and would proceed to his seat right in the middle of the floor where some of the most expensive seats are, and set up his state of the art Sony tape deck and his Audio Technica microphones to record the show.
 |
| ..found him (and son) on Facebook! |
When your dad owns the business, it's easier to take off a good part of a month to see the dead 3 nights here, and 2 nights there. It's also easier to take things for granted, I assume.
He would stay in hotels.
When he walked past the hippie type of deadheads with their tinny sounding music emanating from their VW buses and their hand woven clothing and beads and tie dyes and drawings of Jerry Garcia made from macaroni stuck to construction paper, he would give a derisive snicker.
Danny saw me as being in the same general class as him. At the time, I was a Systems Integration Technician at Wang Labs -the number 3 computer company in the world at the time (now defunct in no small part due to employees like me).
I think he thought he was teaching me the ropes in some way.
When we stopped at a breakfast place in Portland, Maine on our way to a show, the waitress approached and asked us if we were ready to order.
Danny growled: "Yeah, I want eggs, over easy, 2 strips of bacon, and..." with the "I would like," and the "please," conspicuously absent -something which my parents had taught me to use when I was 6 years old, and from the look that flashed across her face, apparently the waitresses parents too, when she was 6 years old.
When you make $1,500 a week in the lucrative field of refrigeration and air, you don't ask for, you demand your eggs and bacon.
When dune buggy/Limp Bizkit guy had told me they were going to be there until "Oh, I don't know, maybe 3 or 4," he became Danny Young, and I became a barefooted hippie with a poncho draped over me, who did macaroni art...for about a second.
Then, he became both Danny Young, and the rail yard worker in Mobile, Alabama whom I had asked if a certain row of boxcars were going to New Orleans. A lot of rail yard workers are sympathetic to the train hoppers, but this one had smugly said: "Nope, those cars are going into the shop!," raising his voice on the last word.
After I had then said something about wanting to get out of Mobile and be in New Orleans in time for the fall season, or something, just as an effort to befriend him, he repeated: "They're goin' in the shop!!"
I guess any veteran train hopper knows the frustration of laying down to go to sleep in an empty boxcar only to wake up hours later, not in Long Beach, or Miami, but "in the shop!!" -a huge hanger shaped building that, in the case of Mobile, sits almost a mile down the tracks from where any other train might be hopped. Rail yards can be expansive.
I sat back down at the Lilly Pad, believing the guy's wife that they had just stopped for a drink, and that he had just been Danny Young-ing me and they were probably just waiting for the rest of the party (in the green buggy) to come out of Lafitt's.
Then, I think what happened was, the guy saw me setting up there, and figured out that I hadn't believed his "3 or 4 o' clock," and read some defiance in the act.
The rest of the party came out with "OK, where to now?" expressions, whereupon the red dune buggy guy seemed to stall them with a "let's just hang out here a while longer," expression.
I had had the notion of waiting out of their sight for them to leave, after each one of them had gotten their famous Hurricane drink; for this very reason.
I moved down to across from The Quartermaster, letting red dune buggy guy with the 3,000 watt sound system have whatever satisfaction he might have gotten in seeing me do so; and had made maybe 8 bucks in the 20 minutes before I noticed no more Limp Bizkit coming from the direction of Lafitt's.
 |
| Yeah, why don't you move down to the Quartermaster! |
I went back to the Lilly Pad.
Then, one of the Airbnb renters from the place above the postal store diagonally across from Lafitt's began to crank music from the balcony; having moved the speakers (which I guess come with the place) out there, so that they could subject the whole neighborhood to their taste in music.
It's funny; I'm attempting to do the same thing, I thought, before becoming angry at them. I want them to turn their music down so I can subject the whole neighborhood to mine...
It seems like, especially in the past 2 years, being loud in public has come into vogue.
More than half of the pedi-cabs are rolling public address systems now, and at least a couple times a night I have to pause to wait for one of them to get a fare and leave, as they sit there advertising the fact that, yes, I have loud music and you'll be able to feel the bass vibrating the pedi cab's seat, so come along!!
I suppose the upside to that is, there shouldn't be anybody opening their window to voice their objection to my using some kind of amplifier if I get one, because the whole: "this is a quiet residential block; no amplifiers allowed" argument has gone out the window, so to speak.
So, I made 19 dollars in about 2 hours of playing and 15 minutes of toting my stuff from one spot to another; and I can feel a change coming.
Now that I am in the present moment and all that, I'm starting to notice patterns in my thinking...
My attachment to Lilly and the realization that I have been able to make the Lilly Pad "my" spot are both things that must be put through the mangle of seeing things in the light of consciousness...
Lilly only wants to see me doing well, and wouldn't she be happy to see me get a gig playing for 3 hours a couple nights a week in an Irish Pub taking home a guaranteed 50 bucks a night?
And, wouldn't I be able to exercise my busking powers in there, by trying to get people in the pub to throw money in the tip jar to complement the 50 bucks?
And, wouldn't I be able to strive to make that pub "my" place?
And, wouldn't the dozen or so people who make it a point to come by the Lilly Pad to hear me every year when they come on vacation be able to do so at the pub?
And wouldn't the pub have a sound system capable of projecting my lyrics, which are so important to me that I play in a quiet residential block, so they would be heard by the patrons?
There is one big difference, though, one that I still haven't meditated upon enough yet to draw a conclusion about.
When you are in a pub, you are the guy that the pub has put in there.
People walk in and there is a bar, and there are cool things hanging on the walls, maybe a pool table or a pinball machine...and they've got a guy who comes in and plays music from 9 til midnight every night. You are part of the establishment (God, I cringe just hearing myself say that...) whereas, on the street you are only part of yourself.
I think I could make a living off of people tipping me on the street with the attitude of: "Keep at it, you've almost got it, you'll make it into the pubs one day, if you...if you keep at it!!"
But, it is time to think seriously about some kind of amplification.
If you're going to play inside a pub, you'll have to get a haircut and bathe rather regularly, and wear decent clothes etc. Are you prepared to do that?
ReplyDeleteAlso, playing in a pub means keeping 'em happy and drinking. So, if they want to hear "Woolly Bully" all night, that's what you give 'em. I mean, even the pub owner might get tired of it by the 10th repetition, but that doesn't mean you get to switch to insightful Grateful Dead stuff, it means you play something else of the same basic genre, maybe "Louie, Louie", to keep the crowd in the mood.
That's the trade-off. You'll make money in a pub, but you probably won't write originals in one.
I'm just not sure how much the musicians in pubs are making. You see, there are tons of people who can play guitar, drums, sing, etc. And to almost all of them, success means playing in a venue, and it's that or not at all. To put not too fine a point on it, compared to the average person, you, I, and Marvin Naylor have got massive balls, playing out on the street. If these masses of people who could do quite well as buskers, ever got the courage to go out that first 2-3 times and learn that by an large, no one cares that you're playing music, a few do and will tip you, and the one who says "You suck!" is vanishingly rare.
So ... my impression, when say, I got to Cafe Stritch to hear some jazz, is that the musicians up there are maybe getting something like $30 and a few free drinks, maybe a burger. Maybe they're just getting the drinks and the burger.
I have been meeting "Nathaniel at the Uxi Duxi" standards lately...he fired a guy because he thought that that guy smelled; and he didn't hire me, back when I might be wearing a shirt that Harold slept on; or my backpack might not have been washed in a month (it gets rained on; spores from the air land on it; it absorbs a faint odor from the exhaust of cars or maybe when you put it down at the Lilly Pad it picks up essence of spilled beer and vomit even though the sidewalk looks clean and I can't smell it because I'm not Nathaniel...
ReplyDeleteThe Uxi Duxi is redolent with incense and all kinds of teas and CBD dab smoke etc. so I don't only take a shower every day; I use different body washes each time, different scented conditioner; this is so I might become hire-able, but also out of respect of the fact that the place just might be where people who are smell-oriented congregate...
I don't think I'd need a haircut, the hat is enough...
I came back from Santa Cruz one day and the guy whose place I was living in, asked if I'd been smoking. I don't smoke. I said I hadn't, but had been in Santa Cruz, and he sorta ... seemed to be sure I'd engaged in some sort of smoking debauchery and was not stand-up enough to admit it.
ReplyDeleteI'd simply been in Santa Cruz, where various cigarettes, legal and not, were smoked routinely.