TAKE A STAND -- DON'T TAKE A STAND: HMMM

It is minus 4 degrees.  This lingering spring chill in Regina is, indeed, a force majeure that deters my busking -- alas, prompting another written expression of woolgathering!

When I first began to busk, I ALWAYS took a stand; now when I busk, I NEVER take a stand.  I do believe it is a matter of principle. I remember busking for the tunnel tourists waltzing down Main Street in Moose Jaw, SK, and for the ship passengers scrambling Bastion Square in Victoria, BC, always with my music stand.  No matter where I busk now, be it the bowl in Prince George, or beside the squirt pools at Riverside Park in Kamloops, or even among the market garden vendors at Invermere-On-The-Lake, I never pack one along.

When I first began to busk I needed EVERYTHING.  I needed my two binders filled music sheets, the black one for the top 40 cover songs, and the red one for my cowboy songs.  I also carried on my back both my twelve-string and my banjitar.  I wanted always to look good and convinced myself I needed a supply of cowboy hat and caps, an extra t-shirt, and an extra jacket.  I needed sandals.  And, of course, my music stand – I never left home without it!   

All of the above, save for my instruments, I stacked into a black canvas luggage bag on wheels, which I pulled from buskspot to buskspot.  Because of all this baggage, my entire first season of busking preparedness was clunky, clunky, clunky.  Now I busk clean.

There is a busker who oftentimes plays his saxophone across the street from the Cornwall Center in Regina, SK.  Anyone listening to his tunes quickly identifies this sax guy as a virtuoso instrumentalist. Anyone watching him blow, however, sees a comedic farrago, the wind tugging and tearing his music sheets that are fastened with wooden clothes hangers and paper clips to his music stand, at the base of which, is a chained scotch terrier barking in dissonance to the harmonies of his saxophone.  Such self-abasement I have avoided now for a long, long time.

Such ponderous efforts I have completely ditched for the unfettered salvos of spontaneity, playing whatever notes by my own design and whim.  Dragging my buskbag on wheels was really to thole, and not only that, I was a shining and laughable buskeraster on parade!

Over the seasons, divesting of such clutter has made me a better busker! Such a sea change has served the perfect anodyne, transforming me from a former standophile, to finally becoming an unfettered wayfaring stranger, slinging my guitar (or banjitar -- never both), from town to town downtowns.  I am not yet representing the anthophilous connotation of the 60’s, but I am close.

When it comes to busking --- DON’T TAKE A STAND.

When it comes to gigging --- TAKE A STAND – DON’T TAKE A STAND.

There are gigging times when music stands are more acceptable, and times when they are less acceptable.  Some musicians think they look tacky, while others don’t think about them at all.

Some musicians think music stands to be unprofessional and cheating, yet most audience members could care a less, because to them, it’s only the entertainment value that counts.  Some musicians think the appearance of professionalism declines with the presence of a music stand.  

Fact:  Michael Stipe of REM has one always by his side during live performances.

I’ve been to hundreds of gigs performed by professionals, and I must state that when sitting in the upper balcony in our local show lounge, most bands use either a teleprompter, or have sheet music (giant sheets of music) spread across the very floor they strut upon.  To take a stand or not take a stand depends entirely up to the musician.  A folk singer will often take a music stand; whereas a death metal growler would never consider doing so.

And now the skinny of my essay from the bully-pulpit, my only command on music stands:  

Buskers, never take a stand.  Giggers, even if only for the playlist, take a black Manhasset.

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BREAKING NEWS …

WHILE BLOGGING THE OUTSIDE TEMPERATURE HAS RISEN TO  PLUS 1 DEGREE ...  

IT IS TIME TO BE THAT BRUTTO TEMPO BUSKER THAT I'VE LONGED TO BE!

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Leaving my laptop on the kitchen table, I pack my guitar and head to VALUE VILLAGE.  Cap-a-pie I am hat-less, a thick red plaid lumber jacket over-top my Canadian tuxedo which is over-top a white t-shirt.  I’ve on my ripped Vegas blue jeans; cuffs rolled up once revealing my freshly polished black steel-toed work boots.  (See picture at the beginning of this blog entry.)

Ten minutes into my busk I have to warm my hands, first rubbing them together, then exhaling into them, similar to that of a pitcher in Major League Baseball.  I strum for two songs, approximately six minutes, then rub my hands and blow into my closed fists for five.  This action I do this continually for my entire ninety minute busk, and then decidedly stop to have an Americano Decaf with my new best friend, Mike, who has delivered it in person.

Dear reader, during this brutto tempo busk ... 

I DID NOT TAKE A STAND!

 

  

 

THE LUNCH BOX: REPARTEE AT HIGH NOON

We are continually writing and practicing new material. (Click under Phantom Tide to the immediate right, or to the Buskologist youtube link beneath it, for some of the new songs we hope to record soon.) 

Every time Darren, the phantom, and I practice, he brings his Batman lunch box. And whenever I see his Batman lunch box, I magically rewind to the yestertech days of slide rules and compass sets, the days when wetware was the only ware, the days when I had my very own Wild Bill Hickok and Jingles lunch box. (This was in the 50’s, when I rode the big yellow school bus along the historic Red Coat Trail through the Bone Creek Municipality from Scotsguard to Shaunavon.)

Grandma would pack into that lunch box, peanut butter and crab-apple jelly sandwiches, a couple of dill pickles, some cinnamon sticks, and a thermos of milk (evaporated can milk mixed with water … yuk). 

During those school lunches in Shaunavon, Saskatchewan, I always sat with my two friends, Herbert and George. Strangely, I remember those Herbert-George lunch conversations – they were always about shows on television.  I remember when the school day ended, riding the bus back to the farm, then wandering the farmyard and fields watching for swallows, kingbirds, meadowlarks, and gophers.

Sadly, when Herbert was seven, he was killed falling out of the box of his dad’s half ton. George, on the other hand is alive and well, working as a counsellor at Mental Health Services, just one block down the street from where I presently reside.

Moving off the farm from Scotsguard to Vanguard, Saskatchewan, I became a town kid.  I quite liked being a town kid, walking home every noon hour, alongside the Hopfner boys and Anderton boys, to indulge in the nonversations and halfalogues at the dinner table with my Grandma and Sid. 

As we farm kids did in school at Shaunavon, the farm kids at Vanguard too, ate their lunches in the classrooms. I especially remember James, one of the farm kids, always crunching his dill pickled carrots, salting his hard-boiled eggs, and washing his peanut butter and jam sandwiches down with his thermos of farmer’s milk (freshly squirted that morning from the cow’s teat), during the class before the dinner bell, so he could get the whole hour playing ball in schoolyard.

When the school days ended for the farm kids like James, they rode the bus home to do chores. When the school days ended for the town kids as I, we played pool until suppertime, and then after supper played hockey at the rink in the winter, and in spring, summer, and fall, just hung around the Chinese café every night.

Fifty years hence, lunchtime is still a favorite part of my day.  I’m a guidance counsellor in a high school, and I, along with most of the teachers of the same school, all being soldiers in the academic trenches; climb out only at lunchtime for the social succor from the morning sessions of classroom management (teaching).

The delightful synchronicity of our daily lunch demands that all the usual characters must be seated in their habitual spots for the noon repartee to begin.

At the head of the table always is the urbane and unflappable Anne, a vegan sylph who is the English teacher.  Anne is witty and lovely (beautiful actually) and her foodstuffs, which are contained in a plastic square, she always warms in the staffroom microwave.

In the middle of the pack sits oenophile Paul, the verbose utility shop teacher.  Food is Paul's daily theme of conversation, and his lunch is always the leftovers from whatever he and his sweetheart had prepared and eaten with the accompaniment of a bottle of wine the previous evening.

Next to me sits Rob, the shooter, who typically eats the wild game that he’s tracked and hunted.  Rob is our Resource Officer, a Constable of the Regina City Police, who frequently shares his quarry at our lunch table.

Then there are the sandwich guys, Jason and Chris, who always sit next to Ann.  I’ve bracketed them together because they are both fine artists and vintage car guys, and they are buddies.  And they are both the raconteurs, the undergird that launches our lunchtime banter.  I call them the sandwich guys because they often venture out for lunch, bringing back sandwiches big enough for bouldering. 

As for myself, I prefer to eat the daily specials on the menu in the school cafeteria.  Most things I like, except for the pork or perogy dishes.

Now to my point, this is: The number of lunch kits around our staff room table is zeroth.  And to explain why this is, I shall offer for those of you who were not there, a vicarious brief history of lunch kits.

In 1950 Aladdin introduced the first lunch box to feature a television character, Hopalong Cassidy.  This is not surprising, since television too, was introduced to the masses in the 50’s.  The increased popularity of television throughout the 50’s and beyond prompted manufacturers to produce lunch kits that catered to school children, stamping popular television characters on both the tin lunch kits and the accompanying glass-lined thermoses. 

For example, in the 50’s, lunch boxes depicted Hopalong Cassidy, Howdy Doody with Cowboy Bob, and the king of the cowboys, Roy Rogers.

In the 60’s, Bonanza, Have Gun Will Travel, and Zorro were popular.

(Cowboys were the hits on television, probably one of the reasons I still, today, fancy myself as a cowboy!)

The 70’s had the cowboys riding off into the sunset, making room for the likes of Sesame Street, the Fonz, and the Brady Bunch.

And in the 80’s, the science fiction and fantasy of Star Trek, Star Wars, and Masters of the Universe, seemed to take over. 

In the 90's, the prevailing zeitgeist of the tin lunch box came to an end.  For those shiny little people in school, their lunch kits were quickly replaced with plastic and vinyl. (But for the other people who ate out of a lunch box, the not-so-polished olla podrida of construction industry, they are still packing their lunches into those black mail-boxes, the ones with the silver thermos stored inside along the top.

  

Dear reader, this is not an entry of woebegone; it is a regular woolgathering day whilst on my first busk of spring at VALUE VILLAGE.