The plan was to meet Jeff on the 6 Uptown line. It’s always nice to busk ('busking" is a verb for "street performing") with someone, especially if you both have large, non-portable instruments, so that you can take bathroom breaks & coffee breaks while the other person stays with the gear. I’ve also noticed that fewer [crazy] people try to talk to me when I’m not alone. After randomly meeting Rat I headed over to the 6 line and peered down the steps but all I saw was a [growly voice] bucket drummer…. And it was that same bucket drummer who was playing on the 6 uptown last time… And he was playing that same lame basic soca beat. Now, there’s a guy who could really benefit from the Vic Firth drum beat poster. He could learn at least 39 other drum beats to wow the crowds with. I’ll carry one with me next time and drop it in his tip bucket. Hypnotic Brass was in their usual corner—I’ll call it the King Corner (because when you play there and you have enough volume you are the king)—on the mezzanine, just above the 6 line.
I ventured to the other side of the station; maybe Jeff had gone to the L because of the bucket/horn extravaganza. The tap dancing troupe was tapping away above the L line. The smell became thick as I approached the elevator. A mother and child entered the elevator with me. “Push the button for the lady!” the mom cooed. The child rushed over and excitedly pushed the button. Part of me wanted to say, “No! He’ll get sick! At least I’m wearing gloves!” and another part of me felt guiltily relieved that I didn’t have to touch anything on the elevator. I walked down the L platform; huge crowds had formed because something was wrong with one of the trains—a buskers paradise. Only one performer played down at the end, but it wasn’t Jeff.
I went over to the NRW line; I walked close to the center so I wouldn’t drop anything on the tracks. No Jeff.
I went back to the mezzanine and bounced the vibes down the steps of the 6 uptown. Soca Buckets was still playing soca, but sometimes he would mix it up with a static drum set groove by using the metal trash can as a ride cymbal. I rolled the vibes past him but it was difficult to hear even the buckets when Hypnotic Brass played. There, way down at the end, was Jeff (and his brother Joe). His drumset could barely be heard in the awful din. Soca Buckets had set up a few columns away from Jeff and completely overpowered him. We packed up and moved to the L.
Since I had left the L about 30 minutes earlier some bucket drummers arrived there and began to play. I hadn’t seen these two before. They were a man-woman team in sort of matching t-shirts (they both wore green t-shirts) and they played call & answer beats rather than drumset patterns. He played with regular sticks and she played with mini sticks. Their show was high energy, and they kept hollering “Woooo!” and “Yeah!” which had the effect of canned laughter: potential audience members heard the “woo”ing and misinterpreted it for audience enthusiasm. Wanting to see what all the whooping and hollering was about, these potential audience members headed toward the bucket crowd. Once there, it didn’t matter who was making the noise, because the show was energetic and captivating plus, what’s the old adage? ‘Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd’? Something cool was happening, even if the performers created their own audience response. As I studied them, I noticed he was drenched in sweat and she looked exerted. I thought, “These guys will only last another half hour. Then we’ll have the platform to ourselves.” Boy was I wrong.
We set up a good distance away in a nice spot on the L. Over the next three hours, Jeff & I waged an outright sonic war against the Buckets. We played, we drummed, we hammered. I used my hardest mallets and played the vibes so ferociously that the skin on my fingers ripped off. Still, still… despite our best efforts, whenever they played, though they were far from us on the platform, their huge sound completely surrounded us and overwhelmed us. They were so loud from our location that my ears were ringing, so I thought their ears must really be ringing. I figured surely they’ll get migranes and be done with it. When Jeff went on break I tried to work with my enemy and play along to their beats which proved impossible because every beat they played sped up for dramatic effect. Their show was masterfully designed to keep people interested.
The buckets remind me of lions. Non-bucket musicians walk down the lines, introduce themselves and feel you out to avoid confrontation. Bucket drummers are so loud that they don’t care about propriety because they don’t have to, though they all go over the decibel limit allowed on the subway. They set up wherever they want and bully everyone else away. Sometimes they use construction buckets caked with drywall and as they drum they leave a huge mess of spackle dust for someone else to clean up. There’s also an element of pity involved, “Look at them, playing on buckets….” People assume that they don’t have anything else to play on when really, they are taking the easy way out and carrying around a bunch of lightweight buckets because they don’t want to carry drums.
Guy-who-paints-graffiti-on-cardboard walked by with a huge canvas and he was trying to get random people to sign it. I imagine his apartment completely covered in spray paint and permanent marker. He looked at us, “Hey!” Then he nodded towards the buckets, “They are entirely too loud.”
The rhythm of the night went something like this:
Train comes.
Quiet, empty subway. We take advantage of the silence and play for a few minutes.
A crowd builds. Just as we get into our set,
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM Bang do do BOOM BOOM the buckets begin.
We raise our volume, but can’t compete.
People trickle down toward the buckets, or away from us to go somewhere quieter.
Crowd gets bigger. Buckets get even louder and start yelling.
We give up.
Train comes. Buckets stop.
And on and on like this all night.
I really thought the buckets would have enough and leave. But they stayed. Around eleven we packed up while the buckets still boomed. Jeff looked at me and said,
“You know, they won.”
As we left the subway, we took an elevator ride with a man who seemed to have a good heart but a slight mental disability. He carried three or four plastic bags full of who knows what and he shuffled around in untied shoes. We exchanged hellos and somehow we mentioned our bucket frustrations. He said:
“I don’t understand why they play them buckets. Why don’t they get rill instrumenz. Then they could go on some auditions or somethin. If you gonna play an instrumen, play an instrumen. Noone’s gonna be like, ‘hey wanna be in my band’ if you don’t have an instrumen and all you playin is some trash, some buckets. Anyone could go and get some buckets. But an instrumen, not everyone can get that. That’s serious, you know?”
Despite the fact that I too have played buckets, and that Stomp, The Blue Man Group, John Cage and countless others have already shown that great music can be made from everyday objects, I wanted to situationally agree with this elevator philosopher because I was tired of being pushed around by the buckets. “Yeah! Why don’t they get rill instrumenz!” I thought in a rage.
_____________________
Things people said to me:
“Wow, a marimba!”
“I sing opera.”
“Look, the lady has a xylophone!”
loud, frustration,
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
good to see you on blogger....
ReplyDelete