Lob-stars

I'm not a newb to busking. After doing this for a year in New York, I thought I couldn't be taken off guard by much. The climate, however, is a different matter.

For the second outing in a row, I got some nice red lobster claw hands after strumming for about an hour. I decided to keep going. Tough it out, right? Well, this worked until I got pangs of anguish from the cold. I decided that as cool as they make it look in all those civil war movies, amputation might be overrated. It was a short-lived set.

One story of note: When I first set up the other night, I kicked off with "Heart of Gold" because it's easy and people don't think I'm doing some half-baked original mopey song, and sure enough, a guy approached me and asked who wrote it. I told him Neil Young (it was my chance to take the credit, but I just couldn't do it...damn conscience), and he told me that if I played it again, he wouldn't make me leave. I did a few double takes, he flashed his badge at me. Stalemate. It was probably a plastic "Special Police" badge from $1 Creations, but he seemed cool enough so I rolled with it and played the song again. He amscrayed a few minutes later, giving me a chance to let loose with the Strokes' "New York City Cops."

(The pic is another Eggleston gem. So awesome.)

Frostbite

Quick shameless plug: ye olde myspace page has a new song up that you should check out so it looks like people like me and such. Click on all this gross highlighted text to listen to "In Your Dark." Thanks.

I came home with a completely scarlet, frozen hand after busking for three hours. That was fun. I got to soak it, which gave me a nice, feeble old man look. On top of my usual evening ritual, which involves sipping tea and reading fanatasy novels, this new addition probably aged me at least thirty years. Wish I could say it was worth it, but evidently everyone's wallet was frozen to their cold hearts, so my profit thermostat reached a new low. Okay, so that was pushing the metaphor.

Busking is awkward when you run into people. They tend to think you're homeless, or horribly desperate. I'm not saying those things aren't true...but it's still awkward. All the other pitches were taken up, so I had to set up camp at 28th Street, which happens to be precariously close to the Magnet (where I do improv) and my agency (where I...hope to get work). But hey. I was desperate. And yes, almost homeless.

(The photo is by William Eggleston, who you should also check out.)

I'll be a blue moon in the dark

The grinning asian fiddler was in my pitch tonight (that's right....23rd Street belongs to ME), and I didn't want to give in. So I played at 23rd Street anyway. On a different train line. But my point was clear. No amount of dopey grins is going to repel me from my habitat.

My Dylan phase, as with all of my phases, seems to have died off as quickly as it came into being, making way for an Alex Chilton craze! It'll probably be short-lived, as his body of work is miniscule in comparison to Dylan's, and I'm really only familiar with his stuff with Big Star. And I'm sure Dylan's gonna make a comeback within my brain.

I was out for about three hours tonight, and almost nothing happened. People either paid attention to me or didn't, liked me or didn't, gave me money or didn't. I did some cool songs and some songs I hadn't tried much that didn't work, had a couple good harp solos and a couple that blew, had a couple strings in tune by the ned of the night and a couple warped into flatness by the cold. Pretty standard fare.

Oh, and for the record, even if I like Wilco, people are not generally going to be taken in with a song that starts with:

"I dreamed about killing you again last night, and it felt all right to me."

I broke the subway!

Okay, so it was cold and my fingers were getting numb so I wasn't playing so well and I forgot a chord here and there had the wrong harp for the key I was in and I totally sucked....but I didn't think I was bad enough to stop a train dead in its tracks.

It seems even I have a way of going above and beyond expectations. And, for the record, a lot of the above was for the sake of hyperbole; I definitely didn't mix up my harps.

The 1 train got about ten feet out of the station before dramatically screeching to a halt, launching its occupants hither and thither, and more importantly, ruining an awesome chord change in the folk song I was playing. I mean, come on! Nobody -- but nobody -- interrupts Simon & Garfunkel, Mr. Big Important MBTA! If you want to be all loud why don't you start making official MBTA amps so I can buy one and blast my folk-rock all over the place? Well? I thought so. I mean, honor me already! I was practically Bruce Willis from Unbreakable tonight! Surviving stuff all over the place. I may not have had to deal with stupid M. Night and his stupidness, but I had to deal with cold fingers! A-ha!

Okay, okay. I'm blowing this out of proportion 'cos it was a pretty awful night. I made 8 bucks. Enough to buy a hot dog and consider picking up a newspaper. Just consider. That's right, people of New York: I won't read a newspaper until you start giving me more money! You just better pray that there's not another gas leak in Chelsea, because the only way I'm going to find out about it is when they wrap up my stiff corpse with newspapers detailing the horrific details of the disaster.

That's right: I'M ON A NEWS STRIKE.

(By the way, I didn't mention nytimes.com in this boycott).

Bog Iron

Had a whole mess of new songs tonight (covers, that is), including Dylan's "One More Cup of Coffee," off of Desire, which I just recently obtained. It's insane to me that he managed to be good for so long....Desire's a mid-period 70s album, and it's absolutely fantastic. Most people know it for "Hurricane" and maybe "Sara" I guess, but the whole thing is just one big artistic stretch for him that totally works. Ugh. May I only live to accomplish such a feat. Then again, he kinda sucked in the 80s, so I guess things even out.

Sparse night...people kinda tumbled in and out of the station with the cold. My case got fed, meaning I did too, but it was nothing amazing, and I didn't feel like my voice or playing was doing any cartwheels to write home about. You can always count on someone in Chelsea to recognize an obscurity...one gentleman had heard "Rain" (Beatles' B-side to "Eleanor Rigby") before, though he couldn't place it. I wonder if forty years from now, some weird, young song collector like me will be playing "Hey Ya" on an acoustic guitar in a monorail station. There certainly won't be anyone playing "Please Please Me," judging by how many people recognized that one last night.

Heatwaves and Hazes

Having recently returned from NC, I made a point of busking last night before a couple of social things spirited me away into the warm New York night. I was only out for an hour, but it payed for my dinner (which was much needed), and gave me a chance to play "Nowhere Man" and "I Will," two Beatles songs that I'd stupidly never learned until yesterday.

I rang in the new year by finally getting all my music copyrighted. For those of you lurking about in subway stations trying to bootleg my performances so you can claim my priceless, porcelain songs as your own, I'm afraid you've waited too long, though I admire your spirit, and wish you a proseperous New Year as the fine folks of US Airways did wish me but a few short days ago, despite having sliced a rather eminent chunk of my potentially prosperous new year away from me as we were grounded in Charlotte for two grueling hours with no explanation and with flight attendants who seemed to be grumpier than any of the passengers, one of whom was a drunken old man in front of me who spilled his bloody mary all over the History of Airplanes picture book he'd purchased for his grandson which had evidently been pulled out of his bag due to sheer boredom (I admit, US Air magazine is not that riveting) and regrettably placed under the precarious tray table housing his aforementioned bloody mary. So yeah, copyrighting, woot.