Rock And Roll Busker

A busker is a wee guy (or woman) who plays on the streets for tips. In bands, to busk, means to bluff your way through a song that you haven't rehearsed with whomever you happen to be standing beside on a stage. It may be the first time you have played it. Sometimes you might not have even heard the song before. When there is a big crowd in front of you, listening to every note, that's when the fun starts. This is a passionate, humorous and highly original look at the life of a musician on the road and what it is really like to be a musician. If you love music and you want to know more about what it is like to be a musician, then you will love this book.

Jimmy Devine (guitarist) and Gideon (fiddler) travel to Paris on a short busking tour. Upon arriving, they bump into old friend Johnny Farraway (fiddler), who spends his days sitting on the platform of the Odeon metro station waiting for fellow busker Rob (guitarist), who never shows...They bump into Boru McInerny (singer supreme), who spends most of his days perched on a barstool in the Happy Irishman Pub, near the Louvre. They bump into Celine, an old flame of Jimmy's, who invites the duo to come stay at her place. However, they are staying at Eduard Malvonde's house. Eduard (infamous blacklisted writer) loves chatting over dinner about his favourite French authors, and his food ain't bad either. Jimmy is inclined to lodge with Eduard, but when Gideon suggests that he go and stay with Celine (at her invitation), Jimmy has a change of heart. Suddenly jealous, Jimmy finds himself wanting to stay forever in Paris, in his old girlfriend's place, of course. Love conquers literature, but is it too late..'

Frustrated by the indifference of the music industry and the stacks of homemade CDs gathering dust in their closets, brothers Heth and Jed Weinstein made the radical decision to bring their music directly to the masses. They began playing on street corners, in subway stations, and wherever else they could connect with a live audience. To their surprise, far from this being the terminal stop of a dead-end career, busking turned out to be just the beginning as crowds of stressed-out commuters gathered around, cheering them on, subscribing to their mailing lists, and actually buying some of those stockpiled CDs—40,000 and counting. In Buskers, Heth and Jed recount their turbulent, drug- and crime-filled adolescence in the nowhere-land of Livingston, New Jersey, their valiant attempts to achieve rock ’n’ roll success through traditional channels, and their unexpected path to circumventing the outmoded music industry. They divulge fascinating details about the technical and legal aspects of street performance, New York busking culture, and the lives of their fellow troubadours. A world of possibilities opens up when the brothers take it to the streets, proving the value of their music to themselves and anyone who’ll listen. Read their story, and your commute will never be the same.

From award-winning blues scholar and musician Adam Gussow, a taut, sexy first novel about the summer busking scene in Europe and a pair of wild-hearted young men who make a pitch for fame and glory, finding a girl or two along the way. Busker's Holiday is the story of McKay Chernoff, a Columbia University grad student with a harmonica in his pocket and a blues band in his background. Desolate and despairing after a disastrous romantic breakup, McKay decides to fly off to Paris and reinvent himself as a street performer. What follows is an epic summer voyage into the busking life, propelled by the mad exploits of Billy Lee Grant, a fearless young guitar shredder whose Memphis-to-Mississippi pedigree and Dylanesque surrealism make him, when he explodes into view, precisely the partner McKay has been yearning for. Burning like a latter-day Dean Moriarty, Bill goads McKay into a sun-drenched, all-night bender, stoked by wine, women, mushrooms, and trains, that careens down out of Avignon and across the French Riviera. What happens next--in Florence, Solingen, Amsterdam, Paris--is a story of purgatory, redemption, and love regained. Hope, in a word, as a modern troubadour returns from his wanderings, reborn.

Frustrated by the indifference of the music industry and the stacks of homemade CDs gathering dust in their closets, brothers Heth and Jed Weinstein made the radical decision to bring their music directly to the masses. They began playing on street corners, in subway stations, and wherever else they could connect with a live audience. To their surprise, far from this being the terminal stop of a dead-end career, busking turned out to be just the beginning as crowds of stressed-out commuters gathered around, cheering them on, subscribing to their mailing lists, and actually buying some of those stockpiled CDs—40,000 and counting. In Buskers, Heth and Jed recount their turbulent, drug- and crime-filled adolescence in the nowhere-land of Livingston, New Jersey, their valiant attempts to achieve rock ’n’ roll success through traditional channels, and their unexpected path to circumventing the outmoded music industry. They divulge fascinating details about the technical and legal aspects of street performance, New York busking culture, and the lives of their fellow troubadours. A world of possibilities opens up when the brothers take it to the streets, proving the value of their music to themselves and anyone who’ll listen. Read their story, and your commute will never be the same.

Do you give to someone begging? For centuries, the figure of the beggar has caused public fear, sympathy and confusion. In this book, criminologist Joe Hermer explores how the dilemma of giving to someone begging today has become an unusual site of regulation, public inquiry and law reform. This book investigates why handing pocket change to someone begging is now widely viewed as a gift crime, one that attempts to make the giving public complicit in the policing and control of visibly poor people. Drawing on the historical insight that public feeling is a central problem of policing the vagrant beggar, the author examines how a quirky provincial experiment to stop people giving to beggars morphed into an unlikely movement across England. Hermer ranges widely in his analysis, with discussions of 'diverted giving' schemes, specialised police operations, activist efforts to repeal the Vagrancy Law, and begging-like activities such as busking, Big Issue vending and flag day collections. The author pays particular attention to the Vagrancy Act 1824 and the historic reforms enabled by gift crime regulation to this storied area of criminal law. The consequence, this book argues, is the continuing abandonment of some of the most vulnerable individuals in society through direct appeals to compassion and kindness.

Hemingway's Cuba, jazz in New Orleans, the Italian Renaissance: whether it's art, music, literature or cinema, there's something for everyone in this follow-up to Wine Trails and Food Trails. We present ideas and itineraries for 52 weekends of culture heaven, packed with expert recommendations, maps and advice on how to get there and where to stay.