2 Solid Hours

• $97.50 Friday
• $25 Saturday
  

There didn't seem to be any lack of people in the Quarter, and it kind of amazes me; as someone who used to see tourists come here and act pretty much the same as they did tonight; but, after the Big Reset has gone into play; and given the divisive influence of social media that is owned by the likes of Bill Gates..

I worried that the tourists might have morphed into divisions of highly charged citizens on the lookout for, basically, something to hate someone else for.

But, these tourists are perhaps haunted by the exact same spirits as those that were here 2 years ago, before the flu, and they are hungry like fleas in the rug of a house that's residents have been away from, on a 2 week vacation; and they took the dog with them.

Picture spirits in the empty quarter, with no souls to torment; and then, the gates are open and the tourists flood in. They would jump at their first chances to become embodied and walk Bourbon Street.

Imbibing in many cases plainly too much, under the disillusionment that might fall under the head of: "This is New Orleans, we gotta party!" giving the spirits that much more free reign, and that is one explanation.

I just realized yesterday that, on many days that I had marked as "didn't practice today," because I hadn't done any exercises out of Mel Bay or Chet Atkins nor even the Charlie Byrd, books, but...on that day, I might have spent 45 minutes playing solo ideas over a recording I might have lying around, and maybe another half hour playing a rhythm part; and, while it can be argued that that isn't technically practice -because you are not forcing yourself to play anything that involves a radical stretch or something that works the weakest muscles in the hand, type of thing; just for the sake of it, as you would be, if doing exercises in a method book. They make sure that the exercise, whatever it is, spans all 6 strings, and there are always the notes that have to be reached for...

Improvising The Best Practice of All?

Except when improvising. When doing that, it is quite possible to come up with a device that will lead you to have to make some severe stretches. Like, if you start a certain melodic pattern, it will fall a certain way on the upper strings because of the way a guitar is tuned, and then you might find as you attempt to repeat the melody in a descending way, that when you get to the bottom strings you have had to rotate your whole hand and change the whole angle of the fingers; just like Mel Bay would have you do; but when you are driven by hearing a melodic pattern that you think, in the spur of the moment, would sound really cool repeated an octave lower, you don't have any time to think: "yeah, but that's going to be a hellacious stretch down there at the second fret." You just contort your hand in service of the melody. 

That probably develops nerve synapses at an accelerated rate, over doing the same stretches as part of an etude -the fact that the stretch was made out of a passion to hit the notes to make cool sounding music. 

The Law of Attraction comes into play in music, in a way I discovered way back when I first picked up an electric guitar and had learned basically one scale. I would kind of in my mind make a burlesque of myself as a guy playing the electric guitar; and I would be faking that I was really great. I might just hold one note, but then try to put as much feeling into it as possible; using heavy vibrato; or biting into the strings with the pick; anything to illustrate: this is what the greatest guitarist in the world would play. That way, you are just giving the general idea.

In the movies, they usually get a guy like Steve Vai to play, say the devil's guitar part, and he is able to act the part of the guitarist so good he outplayed the devil, or whatever the plot of that "Crossroads" movie was..

But, a kid coming home from a Steve Vai concert who plays guitar, upon being asked by someone if he enjoyed the concert and if the guy was that good, etc...

That kid could pick up his guitar and try to give his friend the general idea; "He was doing all this crazy kind of stuff, like..." and, even if the kid was nowhere near as good as Steve when he woke up in the morning, The Law of Attraction kind of premises that to the degree that the kid could "fake" Steve Vai, most importantly to grasp how he must feel and what kind of feeling he is trying to get across when he plays; he would have improved his playing to that same degree.

So, the feeling comes before the actual notes are played, and that fulfills the Law.

That kind of reminds me of how Joe Satriani often refers to himself as "the guy," in the context of, the way he explains it, him thinking to himself: "What kind of really freaky solo would the guy play here, in order to make it sound like literally surfing with a literal alien, type of thing. That is a clue into the thinking of a guy who plays guitar "at the speed of thought," Dorise Blackmon once assessed.

So, I guess my point is that the tourists haven't changed much.

I have noticed a little bit of what might be the "woke" culture having, by osmosis from cellphones probably, seeped into the consciousnesses of a few of the people milling about the Quarter; that has kind of reared its head in me having a couple of them asking me if they could have some of the money in my basket. It seems to be motivated according so some dictate that they might cling to in the area of "equality," or some other socialist or woke thing, whereby, my wealth should be "redistributed" amongst my brothers; even if they have just trekked across Mexico and tunneled under Trump's wall, entering illegally or something.

The same shoplifters seen pillaging stores in San Francisco, when on vacation in the French Quarter, might ask me if they can have a couple of the dollars in my basket, behind a similar philosophy which motivates that. I don't think I'm reading too much into it; it just seems like someone who is an advocate of "critical race theory" might just ask me for a couple dollars out of my basket. It would create more "equality" all the way around, type of thing. Other than that, the tourists are acting uncannily not much different from 2 years ago, hence the spirit theory.

It may be that 90% of tourists that come here are white supremacists, this might just be a hot spot for them, and they are conservative, as in no, they aren't going to change; they are going to resist change, and throw me a large bill (instead of change) for playing "Imagine," the same as they would have 2 years ago. 

And, sprinkled in among them might be genuine BLM and Antifa members; ones who protested and burned businesses chiefly in areas where businesses were being subsidized by the government, that the government is going to buy back the smouldering remnants of for pennies on the dollar, so they can construct Chinese style apartment buildings, to house the citizens of a green new world, but I'm getting ahead of myself...

Friday night, Jacob and I went out to busk; arriving at pretty much 11:45 and then playing until around 2:40 in the morning.

The money came to $97.50, counted behind a stack of boxes at the Unique Grocery Store. $32.50/hr. if you're calculating...

So, some of that was, I'm pretty sure because the combination of Jacob and I was more valuable than whatever I could have mustered by myself; the bass and guitar are becoming more synchronized. I'm still playing at about 70% with stretches of near virtuosity sprinkled in...

So, I came up with the system of splitting the money 70/30 between Jacob and I.

My theory can be broken into 2 points. Using Tanya Huang as the example; she no longer has her playing partner, Dorise Blackmon accompanying her. Her income has dropped due to the absence; but it hasn't dropped to half of what the two were making, more like 70% of what the pair averaged, from what I've been able to intuit, based upon peaking into her tip basket on the sly a few times...

Another way to look at it is; if I walked up on her one night and said: "Hey, I have my guitar and my little amp, let's do a few songs," her first thought, from a business perspective would be to note that it would be really hard for the combination of us two to double the amount going into the tip jar. We wouldn't have worked out songs through rehearsal, and her violin already sounds very good, and any accompanist would risk sinking into the background and making her sound better, but not worth double what people would have tipped just her and her pre-recorded background music.

So, she would balk at us teaming up from the perspective of it resulting in a pay cut.

So, if I ever did that, I would append: "We can split 70/30" which she might go for, as she would be gaining company at pretty much no expense to her. It might make her night go by "faster," I might contribute a certain amount of patter and joke making with the audience; the songs would have the ability to breath, as in slow down or speed up or be extended if a group are dancing, type of thing; and those benefits would wind up with her making about the same amount of money. A lot of people throw a little extra when they know it is going to be split between more than one musician; they just don't exactly throw double the amount (that is most likely if they were going to throw a dollar but throw two because there are two musicians, but if they were going to throw a 50 because they were so entertained, it would be a hard sell to get them to tip a hundred bucks).

My experience has shown that if you add another musician, you are ticking your income up about 33%, maybe...give or take a percentage..

When I was in St. Augustine, I had a friend who played what turned out to be an authentic Native American drum. I really enjoyed his company, it was fun just hanging out and playing music; but, I had developed a pretty good sense of what I could expect to make on a given night and I found that when I usually made, say, 58 bucks on a crazy, packed with tourists, Saturday night; it would be more like 75 bucks with Doug (as that was his name) playing his drum beside me.

So, Doug agreed, after initially being offended, to split our tips 60/40. That was giving him the benefit of a little bit of doubt that the addition of him was boosting my revenue by 40% but Doug was as homeless as me; and his needs, gauged using whiskey and tobacco as the measure, were adequately covered out of his 40% and he was happy.

In the beginning, I was able to mollify him by pointing out that I both sang and played the guitar (but not the harmonica yet) and that, if we had a guy that played guitar, and another one who sang, then we would be splitting the money 3 ways and his 40% would drop to 33⅓%.

What was the clincher was that, when he played his authentic Native American drum, which he had to regularly tighten the rawhide bindings of and which wasn't really very loud, he would struggle to break 10 dollars on any given night; and it was usually a nail biter on his part, the prospect of him making his whiskey and tobacco for the night. That was just because one guy tapping out a beat on a drum made out of buffalo butts, well; people are modest in their appreciation of such a character.

*Doug did have kind of a side gig which was in pulling behind a bike that he had fitted for the task, a huge trailer, loaded up with enough stuff to furnish a small apartment. I don't know if he distrusted other homeless people too much to leave his stuff at a campsite while he was away, or what. But people would marvel over the evidence that, even a homeless guy could be an inveterate hoarder. He was easily toting 25 times as much stuff as an average homeless person might carry around.

Doug's trailer (which he might have fashioned out of a rickshaw or something) was also the apple of photographer's eyes; making them feel like they were working for National Geographic and taking a "Look at how some people live!" Pulitzer Prize contending picture. Imagine having so much stuff, and pulling it around everywhere!

I had seen people walk past him, maybe giving him the same cursory glance that an Indian puffing on a peace pipe and tapping the peace drum might get from them, but then, seeing his bike and trailer, exclaim: "Wow, look at that," followed by asking Doug if they could take a picture of it, and dropping a 5 spot in his Native American tip receptacle.

Jacob and I might be getting to the point where the sum is greater than the parts, but Jacob is kind of in a similar boat with Doug, as in, it might be a challenge to make the same 28 bucks that he wound up with, as his 30%, if he was playing solo bass on the sidewalk somewhere. I have seen a young guy busking on solo tuba a while back, and he was pulling in decent tips; but tuba is loud enough to carry 12 blocks, and the v=$ (where v stands for volume) formula was in effect with tuba boy.

I remember asking him who the Eddie Van Halen of the tuba is: "Like, are there any tuba players that blow you away so much that they inspire you?"

He actually gave me the name of some guy, which I might be able to dig up (probably just by typing "tuba" into the YouTube search box, and letting it auto-fill "

Van Halen of Tuba" in the suggestion box, or certainly there will only be one tuba player in my viewing history and it would be that guy.

I think the tuba guy on Royal Street was impressed by how it was a really skinny kid (kind of tall, with curly reddish hair, I recall) and I guess the amount of sound the guy could put out in units of pounds per decibel (P/D). And he played really fast little arpeggios in the highest register of that brass life vest-like instrument.

I think the 70/30 split is fair, is my conclusion. Besides, the tips that I have gotten of over 100 bucks have all come from solitary guys who had sat down on the step next to me and asked something like "So, where were you born, and how did you get into doing this?" which had led to conversation, and optimally, songs that go with parts of my life story..."Yeah, we used to scale this gate and sneak into a church, that's the kind of stuff that floated her boat...I, um, actually wrote a song about her (that goes a little something like...)"

And, those were my biggest tips. The $270 one, came from a guy who said "I'm the millionaire in that song, and my daughter is Britiny.." referring to the "Crazy About a Crazy Girl," song, which I might just shorten the title of to "Colonapin" and saying that the song had encapsulated his family in a nutshell, everything about the Britiny in the song was applicable to the guy's daughter.

That is because the environment that went into the creation of Britiny of St. Augustine, Florida, is prevalent just about everywhere. In this homogeneous country, you could fall from space and land in any urban area and there would be a McDonald's down there, past the Walgreen's and a Burger King the other way, past the Boost Mobile store and the Family Dollar. The houses would all have been built using cookie cutter type construction.

I like New Orleans, because just about the whole place, especially the French Quarter, looks like it was made by hand. There are actually a lot of places where it's hard to tell if the telephone pole is leaning a little or the house behind it. Maybe that is the appeal that still seems to be drawing swarms of tourists, being in a place that is actually different than 90% of the rest of the country. If you get to Waffle House, you went too far...

Last (Saturday) night I didn't leave to go out until 11:20 PM, and brought my own milk crate, so I could make a beeline for the Lilly Pad and not have to waste time looking for a crate. Those have been harder to find, post pandemic (or mid pandemic, depending upon whether or not you're talking to someone with interests in Big Pharma).

I made just about 25 bucks, with all of them being one's. So, I could look at it like, people aren't really rich, they've broken all of their big bills already, down to a few singles; but even though money is tight, that song really rocked! type of thing..

There weren't as many people as yesterday, but they were steady; every 2 minutes another group of 4 or 5, type of thing...

Well, I'm going to try to put up some music here from live recordings done at the Lilly Pad. And that can be expected in about 12 hours from now...