City Bans Repetitive Performers

Subject: City Bans Repetitive Performers
From: Mark Ross
Date: 22 Aug 09 - 01:25 PM

From the news this morning;

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/08/21/ap/strange/main5257722.shtml

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: City Bans Repetitive Performers
From: Ron Davies
Date: 22 Aug 09 - 01:28 PM

I suspect that even good songs would not really be much enhanced by accompaniment from garbage (rubbish) can lids. I wonder how many songs would benefit from it.

Subject: RE: City Bans Repetitive Performers
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 22 Aug 09 - 04:29 PM

Birmingham could hire that magistrate out to many singarounds of my acquaintance...

Subject: RE: City Bans Repetitive Performers
From: Peace
Date: 22 Aug 09 - 04:35 PM

From Mark's link.

"AP) A city in central England says two buskers who plagued a suburb by repeating the same two songs have been banned from performing for two years.

Birmingham City Council said Friday that the men angered residents with late-night and out of tune renditions of two tracks _ "Wonderwall" by Oasis and "Faith" by George Michael."

Subject: RE: City Bans Repetitive Performers
From: Peace
Date: 22 Aug 09 - 04:39 PM

My vision of Hell is an eternity listening to "Horse With No Name."

Subject: RE: City Bans Repetitive Performers
From: Gweltas
Date: 22 Aug 09 - 09:24 PM

Well the city council's action might encourage the pair to extend their repertoir and to perhaps to change to a more acceptable means of percussion during their 2 years of enforced silence!

Subject: RE: City Bans Repetitive Performers
From: Ebbie
Date: 22 Aug 09 - 10:47 PM

My guess is that those two men are not 'trainable', Gweltas. If they themselves were content to sing just two songs over and over again, accompanied by tuneful (?) garbage can lids there would not appear to be a lot of hope for improvement.

Can you imagine?!

Subject: RE: City Bans Repetitive Performers
From: Barry Finn
Date: 22 Aug 09 - 11:50 PM

improvement at the an early age, maybe., but at there stage they'd be better off shot

Barry

Subject: RE: City Bans Repetitive Performers
From: The Sandman
Date: 23 Aug 09 - 04:57 AM

how about castrating them?

Subject: RE: City Bans Repetitive Performers
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 23 Aug 09 - 05:23 AM

That would not necessarily stop them singing.

Subject: RE: City Bans Repetitive Performers
From: The Sandman
Date: 23 Aug 09 - 06:12 AM

it might improve their voices though.

Subject: RE: City Bans Repetitive Performers
From: Gweltas
Date: 23 Aug 09 - 06:39 AM

Dear Ebbie,
Perhaps someome should encourage the guitarist (during the enforced silence) to turn his energies towards entering and competing in the World Air Guitar Championships, accompanied by his mate on the "Air Bodhrán" !!

See article below :-

"Helsinki - Frenchman Sylvain Quimene is the new Air Guitar World Champion after winning the finals held late Friday in the town of Oulu, northern Finland. Quimene, 28, who uses the stage name "Gunther Love," won a real, hand-made Flying Finn guitar as first prize.
The 2008 world champion Craig "Hot Lixx Hoolahan" Billmeier, from the United States, shared second place with his US compatriot Andrew "William Ocean" Litz.
Quimene scored 35.1 points, some 0.3 points more than the two Americans.
Air guitar performers pretend to play rock or heavy-metal electric guitar solos without an instrument. Their skills are assessed by a jury.
In all 21 contestants entered this year. In the first phase of the finals, they played a 60-second song of their own choice. The 10 best then played a compulsory song - Animal from Finnish band Sweatmaster.
Litz was awarded extra points by the five-member jury when he jumped off the stage and joined the enthusiastic crowd on the Oulu market square during his rendition of Animal".

Subject: RE: City Bans Repetitive Performers
From: Mr Red
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 06:40 AM

And Mosely used to be such an up-market part of Brummagem! They even have their own Folk Festival. And it is not a parochial affair.

Subject: RE: City Bans Repetitive Performers
From: catspaw49
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 10:34 AM

Bruce, I was thinking more "Whiter Shade of Pale" or "Honey."

Spaw

Subject: RE: City Bans Repetitive Performers
From: gnu
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 11:06 AM

When a big name band plays Moncton, they promote it for nearly three months. And not just on the radio. This year, for the AC/DC concert, Sobey's supermarket nearby had a huge display of Pepsi products repleat with big screen TV and loud guitar wailing. When The Rolling Stones were here, I had to stop listening to a couple of radio stations altogether until after the concert.

Subject: RE: City Bans Repetitive Performers
From: GUEST,Eh what?
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 12:22 PM

"Also banned from begging(sic) anywhere in England&Wales"
Brum Corp's getting a bit beyond itself there isn't it?

Subject: RE: City Bans Repetitive Performers
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 12:33 PM

They'll probably get a record deal now. No online evidence of what tey sound like, so far as I can see, as yet. But down at the bottom of this story about them there is a clip of "the world's worst busker", from Frankfort - and I think he'd be pretty hard to beat. (But the street audience loved him - wait till the end for the appluase.)
.............................

"Also banned from begging(sic) anywhere in England & Wales"
Brum Corp's getting a bit beyond itself there isn't it? Nothing to do with Brum Corp - these are ASBOs (Anti-Social Behaviour Orders) made by the court, and there seem to be virtually no limits on the restrictions ASBOs can impose. At least in theory.

Subject: RE: City Bans Repetitive Performers
From: Little Hawk
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 12:44 PM

Gawd...it must have been hell around there till they banned those 2 chaps. I shudder to think of it. ;-)

Subject: RE: City Bans Repetitive Performers
From: M.Ted
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 03:24 PM

Need I remind you that Stomp-The Musical which relied heavily on
banging garbage cans and their lids, was well received on Broadway and in the Westend--

Subject: RE: City Bans Repetitive Performers
From: Dave Roberts
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 03:32 PM

Perhaps 'My Old Man's A Dustman' might benefit from an accompaniment of (metal) dustbin lids.
The plastic, or rubber, variety could be utilised for pianissimo passages.

Subject: RE: City Bans Repetitive Performers
From: Jamming With Ollie Beak (inactive)
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 03:35 PM

"Need I remind you that Stomp-The Musical which relied heavily on
banging garbage cans and their lids, was well received on Broadway and in the Westend--"
- M.Ted

There's a massive difference between the two, believe me, one you have a choice of listening to, or not, the other, there was no choice on the part of the general public at large, call me a cultural Phillistine, but banning these two yahoos was a good move.

Charlotte Olivia Robertson (Ms)

Subject: RE: City Bans Repetitive Performers
From: Don Firth
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 04:54 PM

Perhaps he has gone on to busk on that Great Street Corner in the Sky (or more likely, in The Other Place), but some years back, a day or two after Thanksgiving, this trumpet player would manifest himself on the corner of 5th Avenue and Pike St. in downtown Seattle, in front of one of the bigger department stores, and from then until Christmas he would hold forth from morning until well after sundown.

For four or five weeks, he would play two pieces:   "Deck the Halls with Bows of Holly" and "Rudolph, that Bloody Red-Nosed Reindeer!" All the flamin' day long. First one, then the other.

This wasn't too bad for the shoppers, or passers-by, because they could escape the area after doing their business. But the people who worked in offices within earshot tended to grow very strange and agitated. "I'm gonna murder that son-of-a-bitch!!" was a phrase one would hear often, from doctors, lawyers, clerks, stenographers, priests, ministers, rabbis, street corner Santa Clauses. . . .

And the guy was not that great a trumpet player. He sprinkle his playing with weird, unintended notes fairly frequently. He may very well have had a damaged lip from people frequently succumbing to temptation and trying to cram the trumpet down his throat.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: City Bans Repetitive Performers
From: reggie miles
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 06:24 PM

Don perhaps you're referring to someone I know of. I won't bring his name into this conversation. He's been a long time street performer with his trumpet on the streets of Seattle but no, he wasn't very adept in his abilities on the horn. In his defense, the trumpet is a convenient instrument to pack around and that might have been what caused him to choose it.

However, after speaking to a friend last week, I learned something that I didn't know about this busker. I learned that he was an idiot savant. His instrument of choice is piano. On this instrument he is as adept as any master player that you might imagine. He can wow any audience when he plays piano and does just that around town where pianos are available to play.

It ain't what he makes on the street that supports him. He also has a genius level talent for writing music. His music has been sought after by some of the most prominent musical artists known today. I imagine, that might be how he makes a good portion of his living. My friend mentioned one artist that paid $30,000 for some of the music he's written.

It's not unusual that we would rush to judge folks on their surface appearances or in this case their musical sounds. It's something that we all do and something that we shouldn't do. It took me a few decades to even hear about the kind of background this guy had. Like so many, I had only seen one side of his musical life.

These guys in this press story are no doubt enjoying their new found fame. Just like those pointed out by TV competitions like American Idol as being totally bizarre and having little real talent, these guys are probably gonna get hired and/or filmed and might just make a bundle due to their celebrated, albeit, repetitive nature. It sounds as though, from the story, that these guys actually could play the songs well and now they've gained world wide recognition for their efforts. I know musicians, entertainer/performers and songwriters who spend their whole lives hoping for what these guys have managed to do in a mere 18 months. I'd say they've managed to find one of the keys to success.

Subject: RE: City Bans Repetitive Performers
From: Don Firth
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 09:36 PM

That could very well have been the fellow, Reggie. I had heard rumors that he was a) a bit mentally off or at least a bit strange, and that b) he was really a fine musician. Unfortunately, this didn't seem to manifest itself in his trumpet playing.

I found him tolerable because when I heard him, it was limited to about an hour, although hearing the same two tunes over and over again got a bit—um—repetitive. It was my dentist at the time (6th and Pine building) who really suffered. I was sitting there with jaw full of novacaine and the sound and vibration of his Black and Decker drill in my gaping mouth, while he got the full benefit of the Christmas serenade. Thank God he maintained a steady hand and didn't totally lose it!!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: City Bans Repetitive Performers
From: Ron Davies
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 09:48 PM

I've thought of some songs which would benefit from accompaniment by garbage can lids. I'd think that "My Baby Does the Hanky Panky" would improve.   As would "Honey" by Bobby Goldsboro (I think that one was already suggested). The vast majority of Barry Manilow--say "I Write the Songs"--that would be a hit. And virtually anything by Neil Diamond.   I'd love to hear the above duo do any or all of the above.   (Admittedly, one time through would be sufficient).

Subject: RE: City Bans Repetitive Performers
From: frogprince
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 10:00 PM

This gives me a flashback to the one and only time in my Chicago years that I went downtown for the St.Patricks day parade. I would have loved to met the person who arranged for the music that played on the street throughout the event. The first song was a worthless doggerel lyric, "The Irish in Chicago", to the tune I know as "Christmas in Kilarnee". The next song was "The Irish in Chicago, followed by "The Irish in Chicago". After that, "The Irish in Chicago". Then came "The Irish in Chicago"....

Nothing else; no single moment of actual Irish or Irish-American music. Just that piece of drivel, nonstop, for the duration of the parade. It may actually have played nonstop for the entire day.

       NEVER AGAIN.