Is it just me or......

[fasstrack]

has the romance of hearing a live musician ended?

This is a serious question and I'd appreciate serious answers:

I sometimes play outdoors to keep in shape, make some money, and have contact with people, give and get back. If they stop and lsten it has to be sincere on their part, I figure, b/c there's no pressure or hype. They stopped because they liked the sound.

Even though I had 2 gigs last week and one coming up I go out and did so yesterday. I play in Soho. I don't know if it's because it's summer, ergo tourist season and the NYers are away, or just a general observation, but I'm invisible out there. 20 years ago I did the same thing and people always stopped, listened, appreciated---and I always made money. I'm 20 years better and do exactly what I did then: play melodies as beautifully as I can and I can play melodies. It's really my thing. Maybe I'll play a few choruses for myself once in a while but communcating is my MO. Stevie Wonder. Beatles. Great American Songbook classics of Berlin, Porter, ect. I even do Wake me Up When September Ends Nothing. Nada. Zilch. If I make $15 after my hand practically falls off it's a big day.

I notice people a lot and I cannot read them. They seem afraid to connect emotionally beyond their little cell phone conversations or their iPods. If they look at me at all they are at best confused. A guitar. I saw that on TV I think. A man playing guitar. Oh, I forgot. I have to call Joanne.....

What's up with that? Maybe I'm not getting something or should change my approach. I'm listening---especially to younger people weaned musically in the Internet age.

(BTW, it's not all bad. People do stop, take cards and even buy my demo CD. I get many compliments and people do take the time and stop to listen for a few minutes and chat. I'm happy for that. But I notice this other thing and it troubles my soul. And other musicians and even artists and vendors all pretty much concur).

[Alexander]

I think it's the effect of the homeless boom of the 80s and 90s. During those decades, the number of panhandlers and other street people increased sharply and people developed a habit of ignoring them. I remember when I first moved to Boston in the early 90s. I'd never seen so many people just hanging out on corners in my life, many of them begging for change. Now I know that there's a big difference between panhandling and being a street performer, but I think a lot of people no longer see the distinction. I also know that many cities all over the world have been cracking down on street performers (a friend of mine who spent a lot of time in England in the late 80s and early 90s remembers posters in the Tube that said, in effect, "Don't throw money at buskers...it only encourages them").

[Soul Stream]

fasstrack,

15 or 20 years ago the general public wasn't bombarded with entertainment like it is now. Also, iPods and cellphones have insulated people from absorbing their immediate surroundings as they walk the street.

Now people are watching a Stevie Wonder video on their cellphone as they walk by you playing a Stevie Wonder melody.... Plus, why watch a street musician play a Beatles song when they just saw Clay Aiken sing it last night on American Idol's "Beatles Night." Also, being a singer or musician used to be a somewhat ecclectic idea/lifestyle....now people send their kids to "Rock Camp" at 6 years of age.

People are just so OVER-entertained now. A Street musician just hardly has a chance.

Edited August 6, 2006 by Soul Stream

[fasstrack]

I think it's the effect of the homeless boom of the 80s and 90s. During those decades, the number of panhandlers and other street people increased sharply and people developed a habit of ignoring them. I remember when I first moved to Boston in the early 90s. I'd never seen so many people just hanging out on corners in my life, many of them begging for change. Now I know that there's a big difference between panhandling and being a street performer, but I think a lot of people no longer see the distinction. I also know that many cities all over the world have been cracking down on street performers (a friend of mine who spent a lot of time in England in the late 80s and early 90s remembers posters in the Tube that said, in effect, "Don't throw money at buskers...it only encourages them").

Good points. That last line made me laugh, reminding me of a Jack Paar story where he said a little old lady said of politicians "I never vote. It only encourages them".

[fasstrack]

fasstrack,

15 or 20 years ago the general public wasn't bombarded with entertainment like it is now. Also, iPods and cellphones have insulated people from absorbing their immediate surroundings as they walk the street.

Now people are watching a Stevie Wonder video on their cellphone as they walk by you playing a Stevie Wonder melody.... Plus, why watch a street musician play a Beatles song when they just saw Clay Aiken sing it last night on American Idol's "Beatles Night." Also, being a singer or musician used to be a somewhat ecclectic idea/lifestyle....now people send their kids to "Rock Camp" at 6 years of age.

People are just so OVER-entertained now. A Street musician just hardly has a chance.

Wow. Guess I'll shoot myself. Just kidding. I don't always do this. I have runs where I work some, but not enough. I'll move somewhere else where I'll be busier, that's all.

Thanks for your answer though. You pretty much said what was on my mind in different words.

[JSngry]

To play devil's advocate, let me ask this - why should people stop and listen to another version of songs that many have heard literally all their lives? It's not like most people are going to hear "Night & Day" and say, "WOW! There's one I've been waiting to hear for the last 5 years!"

Then again, if you played something they'd never heard before, I doubt the reaction would be any different. It might even be worse!

I've been saying here for the last few weeks or so that the culture has changed irrevocably in terms of the role that all music plays for "most people". It's become entirely more functional now than it was just a few years ago, and that function has changed from social dancing/listening to "mobile lifestyle accessory/soundtrack". I'll not be convinced othersise.

Whether or not "we" like it or think it's a "good" think is not the point. The point is that, yes, things have changed, and no, they aren't changing back anytime soon, if ever. Myself, I'm ok with that, even if it's rendering me in my current mode obsolete (whether or not I can/want to explore new avenues in music or be content to ride out the horse I've gotten this far on no matter where it leads - or doesn't - is something I've been giving some pretty serious thought to lately). Times change, and people's sense of "time" and "place" have been evolving since the advent of all the digital/portable technology for the last few decades. It's finally reached the "point of no return", and that's just how shit goes, dig? It's our fortune to be alive during what might be referred to by some as a "paradigm shift". Lucky us!

I hope I don't have to say that none of the above is construed as a dis to the old types music or the people who still enjoy playing them. It's not, and I'm one of those who still does both ("freebop", my primary expressive medium of choice, is almost 50 years old now, so any thought that it's still "new" and/or "challenging" is so much bullshit). All I'm saying is that if we continue to play this music out of love, then we're doing it for the only reason that will continue to have any real relevancy, and that's going to be to ourselves. Good enough. But if we do it and seriously expect to make a connection to "the public" at any level beyond that of "charming curiosity" and/or the occasional true "music lover", hey - forget about it. Ain't gonna happen.

And yes, all of the above holds true, imo, to all kinds of live music, although more current idioms might garner more of an immediately attentive short-term audience. Again - people's notions of time and place have changed once and for all, and with them the "role" that they want/need for music to play. C'est la'vie.

[fasstrack]

To play devil's advocate, let me ask this - why should people stop and listen to another version of songs that many have heard literally all their lives?

Because it's good music? And it might lighten their load and think better thoughts or remind them they love someone or remind them of something outside their eworld?

That's why---to me, anyway. It's about using my talent to present a little beauty and human feeling. And getting something back too.

Edited August 7, 2006 by fasstrack

[JSngry]

To play devil's advocate, let me ask this - why should people stop and listen to another version of songs that many have heard literally all their lives?

Because it's good music? And it might lighten their load and think better thoughts or remind them they love someone or remind them of something outside their eworld?

But seriously, why?

[fasstrack]

But seriously, why?

So they can

give me money

[JSngry]

That's even funnier!

[JSngry]

Seriously man, I feel your pain. Felt it myself, and more than a few times. But finally I asked myself the same question - yeah, I'm up here playing as soulfully and honestly as I can, but why should anybody care? And the honest answer was that there's no intrinsic "reason" why they should stop their lives for a few minutes just to listen to some guy playing a tenor. No reason whatsoever.

Not unless I'm telling them something that compels them to. And that means establishing some sort of primal connection. And that means "intruding" into their world with some kind of urgency that they can either be gripped by or repulsed by but can not ignore.

Now - what does it take to do that, to butt into somebody's personal zone and make them recognize? Lots of things work, but very few of them appeal to me. And as the nature of the "general population" changes, even if I succeed, what kind of a message am I going to be able to offer them in terms that they can understand that's not full of hostility and angst stemming from the frustration that comes from seeing all the style-specific musical principles that I've held sacred my entire professional life becoming irrelevant to them at an increasingly exponential rate?

"Pretty songs" more often than not ain't gonna get it. )You want people to feel warm and fuzzy, get them a puppy. Or a Nintendog. ) Not unless it's "pretty" in a way that they understand to be pretty. And that can be problematic for obvious reasons. Because people's basic means of perception, and therefore their basic concepts of expression/feeling are forever changing right before our eyes. If we choose to hold on to the "old way" for whatever reason(s) - some good, some not - then we better prepare ourselves to be met by increasing indifference and not be getting all pissed about it. Because life will continue to pass us by, and it won't be anything personal.

The alternative is to, instead of trying to "remind them of something outside their eworld", actually get inside that world musically and talk to them there in those terms. I'm not at all opposed to doing that, it excites me, actually, but at 50, I have doubts as to how far and how organically I'd be able to do that. But somebody's gotta do it, because that's not the "world of the future", that's the world of today, and it ain't going away anytime soon, dig? And it's a world with its own pulse, rhythms, colors, dynamics, the whole deal. It may not seem real to us, but there it is anyway. And it's full of people.

It's also full of music and ideas that could probably benefit all concerned by the influx of some truly human imagination and soul. I'm hearing lots of things that are really solid as far as they go (the superimposing and shifting of various hi-hat patterns in house music is truly amazing sometimes), but the problem is that they don't go very far, at least not in terms of what I already know (Sly's dictum that all we need is a drummer for people who only need a beat still holds true, but you'll notice that he didn't stop there...).

So what do we do? Hell if I know. Hell if I know if it's even my job at this stage of my life to figure it out. But I do know that if I play a beautiful solo on Ipanema at a wedding (and frankly, I have, and more than once), and nobody notices, it's not their fault. Because A) it's a song that's been so damned overexposed that you can't blame anybody who tunes out after the first few notes; & B) it's a wedding, not a concert. People got other things on their mind, and they should.

And those two things pretty much hold true across the board - people have already heard the songs too many times to expect them to come to a screeching halt in rapt anticipation of hearing anything "good", much less "profound", and people have too many other things to do to expect them to etc. I can understand this even if it kinda bums me out sometimes.

Dude - we're relatively old, and the world is changing with or without us. Simple as that.

[Soul Stream]

All this said....I have a gig now where I play 4 nights a week at one place...playing standards, bebop, ballads, blues and funk (the usual organ thing)....and I have more people interested in this stuff than ever. Why? I have no clue. I do think there is a sort of backlash that might be happening with young people. I've been benefiting from it lately I'd say. Live music can be valid and of interest...even today.

[JSngry]

And to think that just a year or so ago you were ready to quit for good because nobody cared anymore! See, times really are changing!!!!!

Here's hoping that each of those young folks brings a friend who in turn brings a friend and so on. Pretty soon the joint will be SRO every night and the gig will run for years. That's usually how these things work, especially with the youngsters!

[.:.impossible]

All this said....I have a gig now where I play 4 nights a week at one place...playing standards, bebop, ballads, blues and funk (the usual organ thing)....and I have more people interested in this stuff than ever. Why? I have no clue. I do think there is a sort of backlash that might be happening with young people. I've been benefiting from it lately I'd say. Live music can be valid and of interest...even today.

Glad to hear you found a good gig!

[.:.impossible]

fasstrack, try setting it up as a game... challenge the people on the street to name the tune and win a teddy bear.

Of course that is a joke, but people seem to pay attention when there is something (of material value) in it for them.

Let's see... how can we turn solo saxophone into three card monte/find the lady?

[Soul Stream]

And to think that just a year or so ago you were ready to quit for good because nobody cared anymore! See, times really are changing!!!!!

Here's hoping that each of those young folks brings a friend who in turn brings a friend and so on. Pretty soon the joint will be SRO every night and the gig will run for years. That's usually how these things work, especially with the youngsters!

Yeah Jim, what a difference a day makes (...year).

I guess it's good advice for fasstrack too. If you can tough it out through the rough times in music, perhaps you'll make it somehow. I've noticed music is not so much about talent or making money, but who can hang in there and survive and still love music in the end. Hopefully, I can be one of those people.

Edited August 7, 2006 by Soul Stream

[Hot Ptah]

I found this thread interesting and read it. I hope that you don't mind if a non-musician offers a few ideas.

fasstrack. you may be playing for the toughest audience in the world outdoors. Maybe they are just jaded. If you came to another city, you might find a different result. Try Kansas City for a weekend, for example. You would really clean up playing on the streets of the Plaza district, where the trendy, upscale shops and bars and restaurants are. We are stuck with a sax player who sits at a crowded spot and plays the head of "Love Me Tender" all night because that is all that she knows how to play--literally, over and over. And people throw money into her case. Also, there is one other street musician, a guy who sings the Top 40 of 1970-74 in a barely adequate voice as he strums a guitar--he is so irritating that I could scream every time I hear him. He sits there at the best corner, night after night, year after year, raking in the dough.

I saw Winard Harper's sextet with guest Bobby Watson at the Blue Room in Kansas City on Saturday night. The place was packed, the audience was attentive, they literally screamed with approval after several numbers. The audience consisted of young, old, black, white, all kinds of people, totally engaged in the music--it can happen now as well as it could any other time.

[DatDere]

What's up with that? Maybe I'm not getting something or should change my approach. I'm listening---especially to younger people weaned musically in the Internet age.

Maybe younger people aren't as familiar with the songs of the Beatles and Stevie Wonder as you might think. I'm 28 and a big Beatles and Stevie fan, but a lot of people my age I know are barely familiar with even their biggest hits. That's not really surprising as their material is 30+ years old and comes from a different generation than mine.

I must also admit that most of the exposure I've had to the Great American Songbook comes through the versions I've heard by jazz musicians instead of the original Broadway or other vocal versions. That might be more of an European thing, though... I don't know.

[7/4]

I have a friend who plays on the street in NYC and he's always complaning about business. Apparently you have to keep it simple with dumb pop songs to attract attention.

Where exactly are you playing?

[Jim Alfredson]

I think people are just inundated with music and so they could care less when they pass by it, even if it's someone playing live rather than music being piped out of some speakers.

Think about it: Everywhere you go, there is some sort of music on. It gets to be too much.

[Harold_Z]

I'm curious about some statistics. For starters...what percentage of students play an instrument today as opposed to various decades in the past? If it is a declining number (I would think so) is it a steadily declining number (again my suspicion)?

[JSngry]

Think about it: Everywhere you go, there is some sort of music on. It gets to be too much.

Maybe there's money to made in providing an escape from music. You could take requests for diferent kinds of quiet, with or without various background sounds. It would take years of practice to master getting the different ambient sounds down to a perfect timbral and proportionate balance that would have an aesthetic appeal. A real virtuoso would get the sounds moving in some sort of rhytmic motion too, one that makes itself felt w/o calling undue attention to itself. Pretty soon, that might be the new music!

Oh, wait, that's another thing that already happened in the 20th century. Never mind.

[fasstrack]

I saw Winard Harper's sextet with guest Bobby Watson at the Blue Room in Kansas City on Saturday night. The place was packed, the audience was attentive, they literally screamed with approval after several numbers. The audience consisted of young, old, black, white, all kinds of people, totally engaged in the music--it can happen now as well as it could any other time.

That's nice to hear. BTW, just so y'all know I'm not a professional busker. I've worked a lot and with great people (and all the other kinds). It's just a slow summer and a few things fell through, etc. Plus I really like to play for people, especially when I'm getting paid.

But these observations are of a more general nature. Almost all the musicans I know who once had plentiful work are hurting pretty bad just now, so in that sense it's not just me. But I'm also talking about trends of atomization I find disconcerting. This Internet thing is a mixed blessing. I've made friends and gotten gigs from these music websites, and recently where someone I'd had a running beef with we sat down on his gig and played a few tunes and the thing was washed away. That's the power of music and actual contact over electronic.We had to meet and play and it was another ballgame. So people are 'knowing' over the web without actually knowing. They think they are connected but really are not---until they are. The cell phone, the iPod, the self-absorption---it's hard to cut through those things, and I just happened to use busking as an example. I think a lot of young people are so unindoctrinated with real musicians and instruments through lack of exposure/education that when they see or hear them they are thrown for a loop---no associations. Music is something you download. Concert? What's a concert? I was listening to some friends play not long ago and these two girls came and sat at the bar. They were yammering so loudly and oblivious to the music I actually came over and shushed them (politely, I hope) because all I could hear was them. They became indignant, saying "it's a bar!". To which I replied "and those are musicians. And I'm trying to listen to them" The idiot barmaid began kissing their asses, though I was a paying customer also. She was saying "don't worry about that asshole". My friends and I just left.

Maybe I'm a luddite and an old fart, but I prefer actual interaction, romance (as an artistic ideal), and actual friendship to these techno modes everyone seems to be living in. The technology is a great tool, but I miss the heart. I don't hear it in music, I don't see it in movies. I want it back, damnit! But I'm also wise enough to know that everything is cyclical. I believe people will sense what's missing in their lives if they aren't already. Then guys like me and my ilk will be waiting in the wings having quietly and patiently gotten better at what we do.

Edited August 7, 2006 by fasstrack

[JSngry]

And the big bands are coming back too!!!!

[fasstrack]

Seriously man, I feel your pain. Felt it myself, and more than a few times. But finally I asked myself the same question - yeah, I'm up here playing as soulfully and honestly as I can, but why should anybody care? And the honest answer was that there's no intrinsic "reason" why they should stop their lives for a few minutes just to listen to some guy playing a tenor. No reason whatsoever.

Not unless I'm telling them something that compels them to. And that means establishing some sort of primal connection. And that means "intruding" into their world with some kind of urgency that they can either be gripped by or repulsed by but can not ignore.

Now - what does it take to do that, to butt into somebody's personal zone and make them recognize? Lots of things work, but very few of them appeal to me. And as the nature of the "general population" changes, even if I succeed, what kind of a message am I going to be able to offer them in terms that they can understand that's not full of hostility and angst stemming from the frustration that comes from seeing all the style-specific musical principles that I've held sacred my entire professional life becoming irrelevant to them at an increasingly exponential rate?

"Pretty songs" more often than not ain't gonna get it. )You want people to feel warm and fuzzy, get them a puppy. Or a Nintendog. ) Not unless it's "pretty" in a way that they understand to be pretty. And that can be problematic for obvious reasons. Because people's basic means of perception, and therefore their basic concepts of expression/feeling are forever changing right before our eyes. If we choose to hold on to the "old way" for whatever reason(s) - some good, some not - then we better prepare ourselves to be met by increasing indifference and not be getting all pissed about it. Because life will continue to pass us by, and it won't be anything personal.

The alternative is to, instead of trying to "remind them of something outside their eworld", actually get inside that world musically and talk to them there in those terms. I'm not at all opposed to doing that, it excites me, actually, but at 50, I have doubts as to how far and how organically I'd be able to do that. But somebody's gotta do it, because that's not the "world of the future", that's the world of today, and it ain't going away anytime soon, dig? And it's a world with its own pulse, rhythms, colors, dynamics, the whole deal. It may not seem real to us, but there it is anyway. And it's full of people.

It's also full of music and ideas that could probably benefit all concerned by the influx of some truly human imagination and soul. I'm hearing lots of things that are really solid as far as they go (the superimposing and shifting of various hi-hat patterns in house music is truly amazing sometimes), but the problem is that they don't go very far, at least not in terms of what I already know (Sly's dictum that all we need is a drummer for people who only need a beat still holds true, but you'll notice that he didn't stop there...).

So what do we do? Hell if I know. Hell if I know if it's even my job at this stage of my life to figure it out. But I do know that if I play a beautiful solo on Ipanema at a wedding (and frankly, I have, and more than once), and nobody notices, it's not their fault. Because A) it's a song that's been so damned overexposed that you can't blame anybody who tunes out after the first few notes; & B) it's a wedding, not a concert. People got other things on their mind, and they should.

And those two things pretty much hold true across the board - people have already heard the songs too many times to expect them to come to a screeching halt in rapt anticipation of hearing anything "good", much less "profound", and people have too many other things to do to expect them to etc. I can understand this even if it kinda bums me out sometimes.

Dude - we're relatively old, and the world is changing with or without us. Simple as that.

Yep. Duly noted. How do you 'get inside that eworld musically' without being a phoney or like those ridiculous guys we used to see at Bar-Mitzvhahs years ago trying to act young dancing the Frug with their paunches sticking out of their gold lame Nehru jackets?