FYI - the busking scene is alive and well in the UK and Ireland. The winter drives them into the Underground or the shelter of ancient buildings, but in the three remaining seasons, there are *amazingly* talented people to be found liberaly littered in random places making fabulous music. And *every night* in every wee hamlet frae John O'Groats tae Land's End, there are jaw-dropping pickup sessions that wend well into the wee hours of the night, producing angel-music at 3 am by peat fires in long-since closed pubs. God, how I miss it all !!

I just returned from the better part of two years in Scotland, and did some busking myself at the Fringe each year - pyur deid brillyunt, as they say in Glasgow ! But here behind the Orange Curtain in SoCal, no such gatherings are allowed, and no pub scene flourishes.... so I sit by the stereo, listening to all those badly-taped-on-a-walkman sessions, remembering, singing to myself, and dreaming of a day when music gains as central a place in life here in the States.

Slainte and Cheers.