Busker moved on

Subject: Busker moved on
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 06 Jul 05 - 06:36 AM

Hi.
I just walked into an internet cafe on Grafton St. in Dublin to let you know that I just saw a wonderful musician - jazz guitarist - being moved from in front of a store where he was playing some tasty stuff. I had just tossed a few euro into his gig bag and asked him to play Nuages if he knew it. He had a small battery-powered amp and he wasn't too loud when an officious young lady came from the jeweler's store across the street from where he was playing - not the store he was actually playing in front of - and told him he had to move. Not "Please turn it down a bit," but you have to move. He shrugged at the small group listening attentively and packed up. I asked her why she was moving him when there were musicians playing 30 yards away on either side of him.
She glared at me and walked into the store. I shouted after her, "Well, will you give me back the three euro I gave him for my request?"
No reply to that either.
I'll go out now and see if he's found another spot.
There's a classical string octet playing outside the cafe here, and further up the street, a bass, a fiddle and a hammer dulcimer.
A great day for street music unless you're a jazz guitarist, I suppose.

Seamus

Subject: RE: Busker moved on
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 06 Jul 05 - 08:03 AM

From across the street?

I'da told her to chew it....

Subject: RE: Busker moved on
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 06 Jul 05 - 08:32 AM

I'm always amazed that businesses seem to NOT want a crowd in front of their store - to make it look busy... perhaps they think everybody else is like them and would just take the crowd as cover to lob a brick in the window and steal stuff....

Subject: RE: Busker moved on
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 06 Jul 05 - 08:36 AM

PMT??
G.
















[I'll get flak for that!]

Subject: RE: Busker moved on
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 06 Jul 05 - 08:55 AM

Well, I guess the M stands for 'Muso'...

Subject: RE: Busker moved on
From: mack/misophist
Date: 06 Jul 05 - 08:56 AM

What I would have done, and have done, is enter the store and tell the manager they had an undesireable employee; rude and officious. Never let such things pass.

Subject: RE: Busker moved on
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 06 Jul 05 - 09:02 AM

... and the T for 'Tirade'...

It probably WAS the manager mack/misophist

Subject: RE: Busker moved on
From: alanabit
Date: 06 Jul 05 - 09:10 AM

In practice, any shop manager has the "right" - or at least effective power - to order away buskers or to order the police to remove them. The happy side of it is, that in many places, the police do not necessarily respond to the call with blue flashing lights. On the whole, if the shop staff were rude to me, I usually extended my stay.
It sounds like this woman was a damned fool. I am willing to take Seamus's word for it that the man was good. I believe the Hothouse Flowers began life as buskers on Grafton Street.

Subject: RE: Busker moved on
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 06 Jul 05 - 01:11 PM

I can see how a listener would be disappointed in seeing the guitarist move on, but there are other things to consider, things a passer-by might not know.

1. Did the jewelry store play music, so that the employee had to listen to two different kinds of music at once? Nobody should have to endure that.

2. Did the guitarist play the same pieces in the same spot every day? Remember, she's trapped by the need to have a job.

3. Did she have to listen to the quartet and the guitarist at the same time?

4. Seamus says the amp wasn't too loud, but maybe her hearing was keener than his. There's no way to know.

5. Maybe she and the busker were in cahoots. After he's been playing a while, she asks him to move so as to stir up sympathy for the underdog.

6. Maybe a customer was irritated by the music, and she had to ask him to move as part of her job.

Remember that old Native American proverb - don't judge a person until you have walked a mile in her Reeboks.

Subject: RE: Busker moved on
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 06 Jul 05 - 01:21 PM

Yes, and by the time he realizes it, you're a mile away with a new pair of shoes!

Dave Oesterreich