Crate, Just Crate

On Friday, whilst imparting the dulcet folk tones of "Blow Ye Winds" to the fine patrons of 23rd Street's famed 1 subway line, I was approached by a father and his young son, who kindly donated unto me a farthing, or something of that ilk.

The dad told me that it was "nice to hear somebody still plays great folk music." Then, like a guy who finds out that someone who reads his blog also went to school with his aunt, I totally spazzed out and got all into talking about sea shanties. Turns out we had both heard the song when we were younger and visiting Mystic Seaport (which, if you're up to date on the influences portion of my myspace profile, you'll be able to vouch for the truthfulness of my side of this claim)! Anyway, it was a great moment. Man, I sure do love folk music. And man, I don't yet understand why that doesn't make me super freaking popular.

Wanting to change things up a bit, I walked over to a (now) great Chelsea bodega before busking, and asked for a milk crate. The swell folks there forked over a great one, and so began my first evening of busking while sitting on my (now) polygon-etched duff. A strangely foreign concept for me, this busking-sitting thing. I know people do it all the time, but I never had a crate, so I never did it. Times are changing like lightning, friends. Soon enough I'll be glowering over you on a Times Square billboard. Probably because I got kicked out of my apartment and the Cup of Noodles billboard seemed like a warm place to be, what with its 24-hour stream of steam and all. But I'll still be there, damn it. Like that magician guy who hung in a ball or something above the street for a week. I never actually saw that, and I'm kinda glad I didn't; ever since he had to live in his own feces-filled goldfish bowl, I kinda feel like he might be a health hazard to all of mankind.

It's interesting how the crate changed up my dynamic; I almost exclusively did mellower, fingerpicking songs instead of my usual fervent lineup, and I also improvised a lot more with my guitar playing (chord substitutions) and harmonica yarping. That's a new word, don't tell anybody. It just sounds like what somebody does on a harmonica, right? Well, it's just gone into the public lexicon as of...me typing that, so if you're reading up on this blog later on and you have no clue what this jargon means...well, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you were pretty far behind on catching the cool train. Maaaaybe you could say you've got a finger's hold of the caboose railing. Pumping frenetically on one of those seesaw pushcarts behind the cool train is really more like it.

And that, as Phil Ochs said, is all the news that's fit to sing.