On this outing I teamed up with Jeff, a metal drummer and my neighbor. He’s been playing in the subways by himself, usually late at night. Our schedules coalesced and we decided to hit the underground together as a duo. We met up with Eddie, an outspoken guitar player who helped us move the drum set and vibraphone from various locations in the Bronx and Brooklyn to the Union Square station. Alas, when we arrived at our L platform location two buskers had already usurped the sweet spots: the Motown singer with the distinct vocal timbre sang at the end of the platform and a bearded soft-mannered cellist played in the middle. Three performers can comfortably fit on the platform, but the cellist had set up too close to the far end and hence negated that third spot. I was surprised to see the Motown singer because he usually sings at the 68th street stop late at night, and here he was, sitting right where we wanted to play. I looked at him with apprehension. Just then we made eye contact and he sang to his karaoke machine the lyrics to a Motown tune: “I SEE you! Lookin’ at me with….. appre-heeeeeeeension.” A few columns down we passed a guy painting “I [heart] NY” on subway maps, then the cellist, who was on a break, and I said, “Are you coming or going?”
“I just got here,” he replied, “But I don’t know if anyone can hear me over that guy,” and he nodded in the direction of Motown singer man.
We decided to give up on the L platform and check out the mezzanine, the 6 uptown, and the NRW line.
Not wanting to carry a drum set and vibraphone up three flights of steps we decided to take the elevator to the mezzanine (my first time in the urine encrusted chambers). The rumors and legends proved accurate: the subway elevators reek of urine and feces, and are in general the nastiest nooks I have ever encountered with the exception of an outdoor drum corps rehearsal I spent on a field next to a catfood factory! In the elevator Jeff grimaced and shook his head as he gestured for me to stop leaning against the filthy elevator wall, “Better not touch anything in here.” We laughed, and then quickly closed our mouths because we could practically taste the thick, noxious air. Eddie, laden with a bookbag full of various drum set hardware, ran ahead to scout out the NRW line. The mezzanine and the uptown 6 line were sonically negated by an extremely loud bucket drummer playing a basic soca beat. We met Eddie on the NRW platform, again taking an elevator ride to get down there. The NRW to Queens (the platform we arrived at) was desolate, but several crowds stood on the NRW to Brooklyn so we decided to switch to that side. We headed for the elevators, and as Eddie swerved to avoid a column a piece of cymbal stand flew right onto the subway track! We heard it clang but weren’t sure where it landed—it couldn’t be seen from our vantage point. A girl on the other side of the platform saw it and she pointed, “It’s over there!” Eddie checked for approaching trains and jumped down on the tracks to retrieve it just as an MTA employee walked by! He jumped up, but luckily we weren’t given a ticket for being on the tracks. We took the elevator back up to the mezzanine and then back down to the NRW Brooklyn side and just as we arrived some guitar player stole our spot! Eddie thought up a fitting name for this guitar player, which I will not mention here.
Back on the mezzanine we gathered, and time was running out; we had to set up—anywhere—if we were going to get in some playing time. Eddie ran ahead to scout the L platform again. He ran back shouting, “The singer is gone! Come on!” We raced back down the nasty elevator shaft and went to the end to take the Motown singer’s place. We passed the cellist; I threw him the ‘peace’ sign, he nodded in return but with a strange look on his face. I found out a few minutes later that Eddie had shared words with him and the cellist was opposed to us setting up on the platform because we would drown out his sound.
The cellist had said, “Do you mind?” and Eddie replied with something like, “***k you, it’s a dog-eat-dog world.” (That explained the weird look the cellist gave me when I gave him the peace sign). As I learned on Excursion #1, it’s against the busker code to set up and chase someone away who was there first, so, conflicted but also frustrated and wanting to set up after an hour of fruitless elevator rides, I suggested that we set up at the very end (not the best spot since people don’t usually wait there) and move closer when the cellist left. We did, and as we set up the talented cellist performed a heart rendering version of Bach’s Cello Suite No.1 prelude with such finesse that I likened it to my favorite recording of Pablo Casals’ performance. Again, I thought of Joshua Bell in the Washington Post article. But alas, we too had trekked in from the boroughs and needed to perform as well. Jeff & I began our set with Robert Schumann’s “Little Romance” (of course to a high energy techno beat) and I wondered if the cellist recognized my transcription.
Once we got started people trickled down to our end of the platform, but we were so far away from them that they rarely ventured close enough to drop money in our case. We used the first hour as a sort of rehearsal—we had never practiced together. Between songs wafts of Bach drifted down. Once, out of the corner of my eye I saw a cat run by; when I turned to see I realized that it was not a cat, but a gigantic rat, a HUGE rat, the most gargantuan rat I have ever seen! Another rat chased after it; they probably lived with their 17,000 siblings in the elevator shaft. I thought, “Rats! Here we are, freezing our fingers off carrying around these giant instruments riding these stinky elevators stuck with these nasty gigantic rats making about fifty cents when that cellist is in the middle of the platform with a huge crowd probably making all kinds of money.” We and the cellist were back-to-back, Bach-to-Bach, cello-to-rat. It was a low moment I had down there, four stories underground.
Jeff & I started to gel our styles and we started playing extremely well. We pulled our instruments closer to the people (farther from the rats) and a larger crowd began to gather. Our spirits were refreshed when two consecutive people threw in five dollar bills. A nice, middle-aged man with a guitar on his back ventured over and introduced himself. “I thought you were Sean,” he said to me, “He plays the xylophone too.” (Sean is the other busking vibraphone player with the “Alone” album that I mentioned in a previous entry.) We told this guitar player about our trouble finding a spot and the bad vibes we had going on with the cello player. In his glorious New York accent he exclaimed, “***k him! I’m sick of these people. I call ‘em sympathy musicians. They come down here and they’re not real musicians like us. People just give those kind of people money not because they like the music, but because they feel sorry for them. I’ll go over there and start playin’ Led Zepplin right next to him. Have a nice night guys.” It was interesting to hear a talented cello player described as a fake musician and his approximately 300 year old Bachian repertoire described as “sympathy music.” A few minutes later we heard wafts of a Led Zepplin song drifting our way. We didn’t hear the cello.
So, what exactly is success? Is success making the most money, or is it finely playing the most well-crafted repertoire? If success can be measured with money, the polka pianist I wrote about in Excursion #3 is the most successful busker I have ever seen. If it is repertoire-based then perhaps the cellist was successful. Furthermore, who may measure success—should the locus be internal or should success be judged by others? If subway riders would rather listen to Led Zepplin, perhaps the guitarist was more successful than the cellist.
The next few sets Jeff & I played were successful; we didn’t make any mistakes and since it was our first performance together we were both experimenting with the music. Once we both got our bearings and decided what the music would be the performance had a fresh and creative feeling to it. Enthusiastic crowds gathered and gave us great feedback which included clapping, dollars, dancing, and shouts of approval. One lady almost jumped off the subway car and yelled “You guys are awesome!” One guy slowly peeled off two different dollar bills from his wad and dropped them in our bucket. Then, he came back a minute later and peeled off some more. He didn’t smile once, and when he got on the subway car I made eye contact and mouthed, ‘Thank you.’ He still didn’t smile, and left me with a nod. Several MTA employees gathered and even they gave us dollars. “I never seen anyone set up this far down on the platform before,” one of them said.
A girl from Manchester approached us and asked us to fill out a busker questionnaire for a project she was working on. “Are you an ethnomusicologist?” I inquired. “No,” she said, “I’m an illustrator.” I noticed her questionnaire was not a zerox, but a paper card she had just written in purple marker. She asked questions such as “Who is your favorite busker?” and “Do you have another job?” She threw in a dollar and hopped on the L.
We decided to leave around 12:30am but were encouraged to continue playing by a large crowd. We played one more set, and out of that entire crowd we only got one dollar.
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