Ah, yes, Ectoplasm. It doesn’t get much more haunting than that.
Robot Arm
I live in Boston and I see you live in Newton, MA.
DAMN – I missed Bach and Vivaldi playing accordians?
Where and when was this?
Sheesh, I bet that’s an act to which even T_SQUARE would give a generous donation.
T_SQUARE
Okay, moving to a more serious note (F# perhaps?), being a musician I was a little shocked by the title of this thread. However, when you explained the extremely boorish and inappropriate behavior of these alleged musicians, I could see your point.
When I lived in Sydney there used to be a guy in the same spot everyday just outside Enmore station - he’d set up boxes to look like drums and play them for money. My sister and I used to call him ‘Pissy Pants Man’ because he’d usually peed himself. One memorable day I came home to tell her that Pissy Pants Man was dry when I went past! Never sure how much money he made.
I get a little irked with buskers who complain that people aren’t giving them money - even if you have enjoyed the music/act it is still up to you whether you give them money or not, that is the nature of the employment.
Toronto is another city where they have to audition. Some years ago, a friend of mine was a Toronto subway busker. IIRC, the transit system “assigned” him a subway station and then would change it every so often–this way, the buskers were rotated so all had a fair chance to play the high-traffic busy stations. He even had to have his subway busking license (complete with photo) displayed at all times, and he could set up only in the designated area for busking.
The auditioning system in Toronto worked pretty well. The musicians were always placed such that if you wanted to listen for a while, you could do so without getting in the way of busy commuters. And if you did stop to listen, you were generally in for a treat–the musicians were quite good. My friend did pretty well at it.
This is something else that they do in London, and it doesn’t help anyone, because specific stations have specific audiences. A classical musician is going to be far more popular at South Kensington (for the Royal Albert Hall) than at Camden Town (filled with teenage goths and tourists who would rather hear a guitar)
I agree that the London Underground system is a really good way to deal with it; the busking pitches are marked out clearly and are placed so that they will not cause an obstruction, but still get plenty of foot traffic passing by.
I’ve heard some really rather good acts on the tube - sometimes it will just be a bloke and a guitar, but sometimes you get string quartets and everything. The worst will be some guy playing his instrument (usually a clarinet) against a recorded backing track, but even that’s not unbearable.
Representing the “Folks On The New York City Subway System With Enough Brains To Bring A Little Reading Material On The Subway” (FOTNYCSSWEBTBALRMOTS), I’ve got to confess I hate these fuckers, who make my reading time a living hell with their cacaphonous incompetent noise and self-indulgent bullshit, but I hate even more the fools who encourage this boorish and illegal interruption of a relatively quiet subway car by paying these obnoxious fuckers money.
You want money for your shitty music? Get a gig. Oh, you can’t find a gig? No one wants to pay you for your shitty act? Gee, maybe that’s a clue as to your talent level, or maybe to appropriate behavior in public, asshole.
(Thank you for your attention. Let the pelting with soft tomatoes commence.)
On the Königstrasse in Stuttgart in March of 2000.
I was on my way to the train station to go to Munich (There was another train in an hour), and I saw these two guys starting to set up. I didn’t know how long they’d be, so I kept walking. Then, from behind me, I hear the opening notes of the Tocatta in D Minor. I had to go back and listen. They did the Fugue, too. Then Winter from The Four Seasons.
I would never have thought someone could play that music on those instruments. I wasn’t out looking for street musicians. But at that time, in that place, it was absolutely right. And those guys were good.
I am not on the Subways often, but in NYC, I have never seen a musician on the train playing. It is actually illegal to do so. They can and do play at the stations. I actually look forward to them. I am surprised the Paris Police do not crack down on this.
Jim
This must be a new development because I’ve always seen musicians on the trains…there was a group of mariachi musicians who would play constantly on the B train. I didn’t mind them, as long as they didn’t suck - usually, they lasted one or two stops and then moved to the next car.
I much prefer the musicians over the subway evangelists who claimed we’re all going to hell, or the chick who used to ride the 2/3 trains at 1 AM begging for money, and would then pick out one person on the train and berate them for laughing at her (they were never laughing at her…).
E.
I commute in NYC every day, and I see (mostly bad) musicians on trains all the time. Ride the A train going south any evening at about 6 and you’ll likely run into the hip hop kids. Two or three kids enter the car with a boombox, one herds people out of the way, saying “Showtime, showtime!” and the other(s) start breakdancing and using the poles to do flips. I’ve seen people ducking and flinching to avoid getting a swift kick in the head, and should the train come to a quick stop mid-flip, some kid’s going to end up with a broken neck. I guess I don’t mind playing/dancing in stations, but on the trains, it’s getting more than annoying and moving straight into dangerous.
Are there no security guys on trains in NYC?
In Sydney they patrolled the dodgy areas regularly.
Okay, it looks like in my limited subway trips, I have just been lucky to avoid these Subway train musicians. I was very much under the impression that one of the Giuliani Quality of Life laws was keeping the musicians off the trains and limiting the numbers in the stations. My apologies for the bad information.
Jim
Something almost exactly like this happened to me on the Paris Metro, only the guy had a saxophone, and my head was directly above it. I was hung-over, sleep-deprived, lugging a thirty-five-pound backpack, and over-jazzed on that wonderful French coffee. I might have come close to strangling the guy. I’m serious. I was so strung-out and akathisic the experience felt almost hallucinatory, and wringing the bastard’s neck was nearly a compulsive urge. Anything to make it stop.
Ditto all of the above. Loud, loud guitar and harmonica on the buses in Puerto Vallarta. Pretty hard to listen for your stop over all of that.
Yes, FUCK them! FUCKIN’ BEGGARS!
Subway musicians are only marginally better than the Subway prophets. Not the ones who actually get a permit to play in the stations; rather the ones who go car-to-car. Unfortunately, if I were to give these disruptors the beatings they so richly deserve, I’d be the one in trouble. Life just ain’t fair.
There are a couple hard-to-find CDs called “Street Dreams” put out by Clay Dog Records. One is from Chicago and the other NYC where they record various street/subway musicians in their elements.
(Back to your scheduled pitting)