Slip up in church

We’re midway through this pagan festival with Christmas caroling out of the way and twelfth night still to come.  (Both caroling and wassailing once constituted a form of busking and usually included a request for alms or some form of refreshment.)

At Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve in Hoarwithy Church, Herefordshire our village quire erefordshire our village quire sang an unusual version of While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night. Unfortunately one of the basses (me) forgets to repeat the chorus and the whole performance grinds briefly to a halt. Tut-tut from the congregation.

Where's London's street music?

Took a couple of long walks through the city last week, Lambeth to Kings Cross, Kings Cross to South Kensington, maybe ten miles of the city pavements.

Admiring the architecture especially the Michelin building in Fulham Road with the pneumatic Bibendum and car chase tiles like this.
Savouring the Christmas air in St James and Hyde Parks.
But where are the street musicians? There was ghastly canned music playing on the South Bank Christmas Market. But that was about it.
Tut tut.

No play today

November. The Grey Month. Time, if you’re in the northern hemisphere, to consolidate, practise, sharpen the sound.

Two stags fight over a good busking spot.

Played Monmouth on a recent Saturday morning and it was good. Moved to Church Street, but stopped playing in an empty shop doorway by a bookseller who’s setting up here (He kindly commissioned a talk from me on Fifty Plants That Changed The Course of History not three months back. We, both of us, were embarrassed to recognise each other. But I had to go.)

The following day to Ludlow, by train. I bought a Remembrance Day poppy before going to play. Then discovered the streets were closed off for the Remembrance Day Parade. No play today!  

Summertime New Zealand

Make a note

It's Saxaphone Day on November 6.
(Of course: you had it written in your diary - you just forgot to look). 


It is the birthday of Adolphe Sax (seen here with professional saxaphonist Mandy Grezeszah html www.mandysax.com/gallery/more.html) who invented the instrument in 1846 for military bands. 
Taken to higher levels by busk-don't-battle jazz musicians, the sax spawned the likes of Johnny Hodges, Lester Young, Charlie Parker and Sidney Bechet. 
I'm working up his Petite Fleur for a street performance in Monmouth on Friday. 
How are you celebrating?    

Catch 22

My soprano sax on holiday in West Wales

"I’m sooo cold," Snowdon tells Yossarin in Catch 22.

Know how he feels. I’m standing in Church Street, Ludlow last Sunday, belting my way through the first set (Blue Moon, Shadow of Your Smile and that odd one I made up, posted on Sunday 10 July).

Foolishly I’ve dressed for the Indian summer that never quite reaches this Victorian passage, shielded from the sun by three storey buildings and given extra ventilation by a curious architectural monument, some kind of a drain, beneath which I play. It’s a three way breeze.  

But it’s good to be out and playing again, even if my fingers are numbing up and my embouchure is frozen in rictus with the cold. I must rethink this if I’m going to play through the winter.  

I’m about to give up when an older lady in blue, comes up very close.

“Are you professional?”

I’m still thinking of the reply when she says . . . bless . . .

“Because you’re very good. Now where do I put this?”

She hovers a pound coin before me.

John Kirkpatrick and man's but an autumnal leaf

To John Kirkpatrick’s Farmers’ Songs workshop and performance at Aberllynfi (Three Cocks in English, but never mind) among those rolling hills west of Hay on Wye. 
And to hear him sing that touching hymn to impermanence:

What's the life of a man any more than a leaf?
A man has his seasons so why should we grieve?
Although in his world we appear fine and gay,
Like a leaf we must wither and soon fade away.

Picked up Brass Monkey’s Head of Steam (no website on the CD cover so you’ll have to search for it yourselves) for its brassiness. Good, but not quite my thing.

The workshoppers rehearsed On Yonder Old Oak and gave such a dreadful rendering during John’s performance that he, quite rightly, foreshortened it. But at least I did get to talk to fellow bassist Roy Hollowell (longest beard in the world) of Still Seeking, who, with his mates busks for charity in Leicester.

Dorothy's Blues

Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet

Is it the performer's curse? The better you know your music, the more mechanical your performance? I'm working on a new routine, maybe with the clarinet in place of the soprano sax. 

I need to beef up my background guitar (recorded on my Edirol, left, and played in the street through my iPod connected to the little Roland amp). It's lost in big streets and I have to find accoustic hot spots like the entrance to the shopping mall in Stratford on Avon for it to work well. 


And I'm looking at new songs. Nice guy asked me to play Take Five in Leominster yesterday. Couldn't oblige.


One piece of music I'd love to add sax to is composer Gavin Bryars' 1971 loop recording of a London tramp singing the hymn Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbczBcz78vo This version has added accompaniment and the gravel voice of Tom Waits.

Street Closures

Ross-on-Wye, Stratford-on-Avon, Leominster-on-Nowhere . . . it's been a busy weekend. Ross and Leominster streets (like Appleby's for the annual horse fair, left) closed off for a French Market.

Ross deputy mayor Caroline Utting invited me to add some street music to the town. Despite complaints (see previous posts) about buskers in the town, it went off all right.
So much so I rejoined the Market in Leominster and did an hour there. In the sun. 

Rounded off the weekend with a stint at Straford-on-Avon. Note: good accoustic in the entranceway to the shopping centre. 

Musical claustrophobia

Working hard on a second set (not least because I’m soooo bored with the first set of thirteen songs: God, does it show? I hope not.) But not confident enough to float any of it yet.

So during a quick blast in Monmouth this afternoon I stuck to the old favourites, you know, Ain’t Misbehavin’, Blue Moon?  Actually, if you’re interested here’s the full list. I plan to run through them at the French Market in Ross-on-Wye tomorrow morning:

Sax in the heather

Dorothy’s Blues (own composition OC)

Fly Me To the Moon

Shadow of your Smile

Keep Young and Beautiful

Mayday (OC)

Soul Le Ciel

Effervescence (OC)

Blue Moon

Descent into D (OC)

Try a Little Tenderness

Warming the Street (OC)

As Time Goes By

Ain't Misbehavin'

So how did it go in Monmouth? Well I shared my spot with John who was having a spot of bother with the cider and the sun. And a nice lady who’s had some heroin damage. Maybe it put off the punters?

Don’t tell anyone but I only took a pound and that from our pal Elspeth who was up for the day.

Still the weather was good. And after a week of rehearsing in the claustrophobia of the cellar it was good to get out.

Pop up busker

Lunchtime busk at Dewsall’s pop up yurt (or is it a pop-up hotel, but real yurts?) Anyway, cool scene at Abergavenny Food Festival for my debut free, but booked, performance.

Ain’t Misbehavin’ seemed to go down best with the dogs and small children. Made two stabs at Sous Le Ciel de Paris, but gave up.

Speaking of which I dropped Charles Trenet’s La Mer because the backing was rubbish. And then there were these two young bloods busking away at it (reading from sheet music) in the town centre.

And I made some little promo cards – and left them at home. Never mind: I’ll do a stint for their morning coffee tomorrow (Sunday). Drop by if you’re passing.

Saturday lunchtime

Looking forward to busking at Abergavenny Food Festival this Saturday at the Dewsall yurt and pop up restaurant. 

It's in Horsington's Yard and promises to be a "sumptuous dining experience" - can you eat and blow at the same time?  Probably not.

Eyes closed

I was miserable after puncturing the LCD on my play-time (and blogger’s) laptop. Thought only tires punctured. Told myself off as I went to do my teaching stint at the College for the Blind, and later to talk to a group with macular degeneration. They were all cheerful enough – how dare I be miserable?

Malcolm, a busker from Three Cocks, playing in Ludlow last year. 

Got me thinking about blind street musicians and Davy’s (you don’t know him) researches into the biwa hoshi musicians or ‘blind priests’ who toured Japan in the 1200s; the blind minstrels of nineteenth-century Ukraine, known as the Kobzarsto persecuted under Russian rule (who wasn’t?); the famous Irish Turlough O’Carolan and the more recent Blind Lemon Jefferson. (Was Jefferson Airplane named after him? Or the spliff-holding device of the same name?)

Nothing wrong with Malcolm's sight (above). Sometimes, like him, I close my eyes when I’m playing, just to concentrate. Maybe I should wear dark glasses, but then I enjoy the eye contact especially with people's dogs. You feel they'd sit there and watch you all day if their owners would let them. 

Currently rehearsing for a busk at Abergavenny Food Fest. Wonder if I should dress up and look official?

Who's counting?

Took the train to Ludlow for a busk while Martin’s Antiques and Flea Market is on. (Bless him: he dropped a coin in the hat). Train turned out to be a sicky bus (Arriva were fixing the rails) from the Valleys who found his way on Satnav.

For heavens sake: he only had to ask the way. Alternatively Arriva could have booked a local coach driver.

Send me to India!

Travelled up with Max – him left outside All Saints, Hereford. We divied up the sites and he did front of house by the charity shop while I did The Passage. We both like The Passage because passers-by have to pass close by and are more likely to dip into their pockets.

Max is trying to raise the dosh to go to India with (or was it to join?) his girlfriend.

Saw him again today in Hereford.

-      How did you do Sunday? I ask.

His reply impressed me. 

Now I know you’re curious too. You want to know: how much did he earn? Thing is, you stand in one place long enough, playing good music and nice people drop 50p or a quid in your hat. Max did four hours. FOUR HOURS!

I’ve decided to stop counting the contents of the hat.

Like Dave said (previous blog): “Don’t think about the money. Think about the music.”

Working Cardigan

Nice lady from Bean & Gone in Cardigan comes out just as I finish playing by the Market Hall, a hard 50 minutes beside reluctant passers-by.

People seem embarrassed by my music, yet yesterday I gave some joker with a guitar and a bottle of cider 50p in much the same place.He'd got a full 'hat'.

      - Are you doing this for a charity or something?

      - No. I’m a writer. Writing about street music.
     - Well, take this (she slips a coin into my hand). It’s been nice hearing you. 
Bless. 

I should explain that I’m doing a street performance. It ain’t begging. 

Listen. You like it? Fine. Drop something in the hat if you want. No worries if you don’t. 

One fellow is determined to donate his 10p.

- In here? 

Confused, he's looking at my backpack. I stop playing to show him. From now on I'll use the proper 'hat' or pot (traditionally a leather pouch with the throat of a glass bottle neck sewn into the neck so's you could hear if anyone tried nicking your money). (No, that's not a £5 note on the left - just the hat's label). 

Black holes in B flat

I'm playing in Monmouth when a young mum asks: ‘What is it? And is it in B flat like my clarinet? I used to play, but I’ve stopped for so long.’

It is a soprano sax, young lady, and in B flat. Now return home and lift that clarinet to your lips once again.

On the basis that B flat is an important note in the comos (NASA is said to have registered the ‘sound’ of a Black Hole as B flat – 57 octaves below middle C) I try playing on the Pembrokeshire Coast Path near Strumble Head (above).

Surprise! Two dark heads bob up in the sea water before me. Looks like a couple of grey seals attracted by the sound. I play on for ten minutes then take up my binoculars.

Ah, it is just a pair of seaweedy bouys.

Ultimate, lighweight, busker's alto sax

The World's first polycarbonate saxophone (www.sax.co.uk) weighs in at 850gm compared to your favourite old brass alto at around 2.7kg. 

Sax.co.uk says it's not meant to replace your vintage Selmer, but it's a serious instrument and the price of a Chinese student model. 

Made of a blend of polycarbonate and ABS, it has a dark and warm tone. Mornington Lockett - he just played Brecon Jazz - see below - apparently wants one: "It's reminiscent of the old Parker Grafton sound."

And a quid under £350. 


Wonder if I could get a review copy. . .

Old Jazzers at Brecon

To Brecon Jazz to hear Derek Nash’s Sax Appeal (listen to him talk through his collection of saxophones and the Bakelite alto that makes him sound ‘like an old jazzer’ [www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQdPSlmTNcI]). Where last year we watched Hugh Masekela, this year it was a series of fine solos from the likes of Mornington Lockett, Scott Garland, Gary Plumley and the gravely baritone sax of Bob McKay.

Afterwards to meet accordionist and busker Francois who, in his lilting West Wales accent, tells how the business of street music is being jeopardised by gangs of Roma musicians. He reckons they’re being bussed into town by old fashioned gang-masters and let loose on the unsuspecting streets. Fine for passers-by, he says, but when they’ve only got one or two tunes in their heads and play them ad nauseam it gives other buskers a bad name.

Hum. My journalistic senses are aroused. Is there a story here?

Wow – it's (was) WOMAD

Shackdusters at WOMAD

Talked to Kev and Gary, solid musicians and long-time buskers (http://www.youtube.com/user/shackdusters). 
Their Shackdusters blues sounded excellent.
‘Street music? It’s vital,’ says Kev. ‘I played everywhere, in bands, the lot, but playin’ the streets is the most important.’

Kev started in 1958 – ‘I used to hitch down from Preston to London and busk there. The money was good an’ all. Street music: it’s called to me all my life.’

There were a few young buskers around too, like this guy (left). 

I risked life, limb and street cred by joining Brassroots’ workshop. Didn’t have the nerve to solo with them.They played a hell of a set in the evening. Fantastic!

WOMAD? We love you. 

Derby buskers festival

Buskers at 2010 Brecon Jazz Festival

While Ross-on-Wye Chamber of Trade looked at ways of banning busking (hence my letter to the Ross Gazette, see earlier post) Derby Town is running its own Buskers Festival through July and August.

The one downside is that the Council require buskers to have a licence – its free, they say. Suspect a licence is but one short step away from total control of the streets. 

But here’s this positive email from Haley at the Council: "The event has worked well so far so we will definitely be organising another next year, I will keep your details for then.  

"In the meantime please feel free to busk in Bradford City Centre, the best spots tend to be at the top of Darley Street and round the Kirkgate Centre."

Meanwhile, in Ludlow to busk last Sunday where a kindly lady stops her disability scooter and commands me to take 60p. "Very nice," she pronounces before setting off "to see if I can kill anyone. I'm ninety-three...."

Struggling with camellias

In an effort to refresh myself (I'm struggling with the history of that nineteenth-century romantic, the camellia, inspiration for Alexander Dumas - La dame aux camelias - and Giuseppe Veridi's La Traviata) drive to Monmouth for a busk.
Discover I've left my backing track behind and, after ten minutes unplugged (how can anyone sustain solo sax without a backing?) give up.
Collect backing and try Leominster instead. Generous Marcus (above) passes me his spot. Marcus - he's cool.

'Roma guy tries out Marcus' fiddle

I'm playing Manchester City FC's anthem Blue Moon (Rodgers and Hart, 1934) when a couple of Roma guys stop to chat: 'Votre music, Roumanie, nest'ce pas?'
One lady tells me: 'You're very brave.' (Did she mean 'to stand here and play so badly?')
Another declares: 'Lovely,' as she drops a coin in the pot. 'That's cheered us all up.' Bless.

Nothing from dapper local MP, Bill Wiggins who slips by. I think there was a bit of an expenses issue recently: maybe he has to watch his acounts more carefully these days.

Dear madam

It's a mistake that older people often make - writing to the Letters column of the local newspaper in the belief that they have something worth saying.
I've resisted it all these years. 
Suddenly I'm overcome with the need to do so. Absurd.

Reeds r Us

When I started playing (thank you, Terry the Teacher, seen below in a fetching portrait by Jenny Williams) I thought you just bought one of the instruments invented Adolphe Sax (1814 – 1894) and got on with it. No-one warned me about Reeds.

I’m a bass in a community choir and when I sing my vocal chords vibrate. When I play it’s the reed which vibrates. And I learn from The Rough Guide to Saxophone (Hugo Pinksterboer Penguin) that they’re cut from the plant Arundo Donax, a hollow cane, related to bamboo and grown mostly in the Var, southern France.

Harvested at two to three years old and cured for a year, the cane tubes are cut to length, split lengthways into four reeds and shaved to an accuracy of half a thousandth of an inch. (Do we need to know this? Yes, maybe?)

I’m impressed. But still such a novice that I’m best with number 2. My music shop’s run out. Full marks to Sax.co.uk for this: 

and then there's the mouthpiece

Rico Royal- Very much the ‘standard’ reed for a large proportion of players. These are filed, relatively bright and (potentially) loud. A lot of players start off their careers using these. They’re something of a ‘blank canvas’, responsive, flexible but without much character of their own- and, as such, work very well for beginners. The majority of more experienced players move on to reed types which suit their particular style of playing- but Rico Royals are good for keeping your options open.

Mayday in Alhama, Spain by streetsax

Take a pound

Cadeem, or Gauntlett, is a fine sax player from the West Midlands who might be found busking in your town. Take note (forgive the pun) of that beautiful Yanagisawa soprano sax, and the sound he makes with it.

He wasn’t in Monmouth yesterday when I did a forty minute stint with my newly arranged repertoire (start with a blues, finish with a blues). It was slow, but OK. 

I was collared by one old fellow, his jacket lapel peppered with musical symbols including a sax.

‘You on the dole?’ he asked sympathetically.

Nope.

‘Well at least you’re not one of them Polish.’

I am Polish, actually,’ I told him in my best English.

‘No, you’re never. Take a pound anyway.’

Thanks. So what do you play? I point to his music badges.

‘These? I just collects ‘em. Lovely playin’.’ And off he toddled.

Everyone wants to know: 'How much do you make?'

The late, great Alex Stewart, right, one of Scotland's best box accordion players, said his father John used to busk for charabancs in Glencoe.
'He and ma muther ust' tae take somethin' like a hundred and forty pound a week sometimes. He niver touched his pension while he was buskin'.' This was just after World War 2 when John had finished a lifetime of tarmacing.

So what did I make this time in Monouth? Not enough to pay the parking and petrol to get there. But the audience more than made up for it.   

Who are they?

Cadeem in Stroud.

The late Alex Stewart. . .

and Terry Evans, blowing his horn in Hereford..

What do these guys have common?

Musical autopilot

Played the streets of Stroud the other day, struggling to get going at first, then switching to autopilot, playing as I watch the world (and the Roma Big Issue seller) go by.

"Nakal korey padi askal" - "It's by faking that you get to the real," Mimlu Sen is told in her book The Honey Gatherers, about the bards of rural Bengal, the Bauls.

Bauls (from vatula, ones possessed by the wind, errant, drifting) are wandering musicians who busk from village to village, train to train, even bus to bus. They featured in Georges Luneau's Le Chant des Fous 1979. (And check out www.bauliana.blogspot.com)
"To the poor they offered the divine light of inner vision; to the sick and ageing, they gave the comfort of faith and cured them with songs, natural mediciene and yogic practices," writes Mimlu.
Dressed in their long, flowing alkhallas, the Bauls, once patronised by local villagers, struggle to cope with the new way of life in India. According to the book's jacket (Rider Books, 2010) Mimlu Sen collaborates with Baul musician Paban Das Baul. 

On another note.
Philharmonic Orchestera saxophonist returns home after his performance of Maurice Ravel's Bolero.
'Who was conducting?' asks his wife.
"I didn't look," replies the sax player.

Just Do The Music

dave d. was playing the streets of Shrewsbury last September during the town's weekend of street entertainment. He started playing five years ago after being made redundant. "I was a property supervisor in a stately home and before that worked as a stage manager at a theatre."

I was still trying to find the courage to make a start on the street and told him so. 

"It's all right," he said. "First time it's a bit scary and hard, but you've got to just do the music. Never mind the money - just enjoy the music."

Sound advice.

Sunday collection

I used to receive sixpence to put in the silver salver, passed from pew to pew amongst the congregation of Llansteffan church, as a boy. My donor’s role mystified me. Was I giving on my parent’s behalf? Was I meant to pretend to be generous with my pocket money?

The blues in Ludlow courtesy of Reverend Ferriday

This Sunday, tho’, I’m happy to pop 50p (is that a 200% hike on the old sixpence?) in the plate of Reverend Ferriday, busking with his steel guitar in Ludlow Market Square.  (myspace.com/revferriday)

I’ve been playing round the corner from the Reverend. While an endearing 18 month-old performs a slow dance to Ain’t Misbehaving, and I’m photographed five times, my playing is weak and woolly. That darned reed needs replacing.

Buskers are friendly towards each other. (Nice guy with a violin, dog and roll-up in Leominster last week told me: “Give us half an hour mate, then you can have this pitch.”) The Reverend and I agree: today’s a lovely Ludlow day. Plenty of people and the sun’s shining.

Bloody Buskers

Buskers are annoying us, reports local newspaper, the Hereford Times.
The musicians who "normally come in pairs or threes," says complainant Andrew Meek, director of a Ross-on-Wye, England software company, just play the same tune all day.
"They do get quite a lot of money from shoppers, who probably like what they are playing, but for people trying to work it can be annoying."

I was a bit annoyed yesterday when I found the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI: www.rnli.org.uk) - our gallant lifeboat service - occupying my favourite spot in Monmouth, with orange inflatable and collecting tin.

The RNLI in action; give generously!

So it was off to Church Street to try my luck there. Despite the poor accoustics of an empty shop doorway there were plenty of nice comments, including one from a RNLI volunteer:
"I've been standing over there for forty minutes: made my job easier listening to you," she said, slipping a coin in the pot.

Made my own donation to the lifeboats later: never know when you're going to need one, do you?

Gypsy musicians at the Derby, Epsom

Musicians at the Derby (Surrey History Centre www.surreycc.gov.uk/surreyhistorycentre)

Gypsy street musicians at the Derby, Epsom at the turn of the century are a far cry from the Travellers Got Talent event at this year's Derby.
As our newly-wed Royals (including the former Kate Middleton) swan around and the jockeys' helicopters swarm in and out of Epsom like flies, around 100 Travellers and Gypsies gather to perform and judge one another's performance in the first round of this event.
Travellers Got Talent came out of the Gypsy Roma Traveller History month and has become a startling celebration of the culture. Maybe it also serves as a timely reminder to my mates in the media that most of our reporting of Gypsy issues is racist. 

Whatever. Here on Derby Day, in between the races (a flash of silks, thundering hooves and an arc of turfs sods flying through the air) professional Gypsy musicians including Kerieva (left) are followed by amateurs like Claudia (above) and Tracy (who wins this round) belting out their own music to an appreciative crowd.
Reminds me of another Traveller musician, Alex Stewart, who died last year a few months after sharing his final interview with me. I'll come back to him.

Saxism?

Did I mishear that? On The Archers, BBC radio's long-running soap drama, Brian asks of ex-offender Matt on tonight's episode:
'What was he like? Was he a bit odd?'
'Well he hasn't got two heads. Or a saxophone,' replies Matt.
Is the sax weird? The clarinet normal? 

This from Collins Encyclopedia of Music  (Wm Collins, 1957): '(It: sassophone; Ger. Saxophon). In 1846, Adolph Sax patented the saxophone, an instrument, although made of brass, belongs rather to the woodwind group.'And mark this: 'Of the seven members of the family the little used soprano in E flat is straight like a clarinet.'
Here we are, already deferring to clarinet (Fr. clarinette, Ger., Klarinette; It., clarinetto), a single-reed instrument, dating from the late 17th century.
'Why does Matt not say - "Well he hasn't got two heads. Or a clarinet."' 
I may write to the BBC advocating an anti-saxism approach to programming.

Wet busking

Too wet to busk. In Leominster the street slicked with rain. No passers-by passing by.

In Teguise, Lanzarote, this guy found a novel way to busk in bad weather. He plays from an upper window, but leaves the pot downstairs in the street. 

Teguise is home to the Casa-Museo del Timple, the world's only timple museum. The timple is the Canary Islands' national instrument, a cross between a guitar, mandolin and cuatro. 

Here's mine: wish I was competent enough to busk with it. Check out  http://youtu.be/n_qonKQSE9o