I'm not sure if I've written about the Rastafarian busker who used to pitch himself at the bottom of the escalators at Piccadilly Circus tube station accompanied by a saxophone player. The saxophone player would play 'Pennsylvania 6-5000' and the Rastafarian would shake a big tambourine full of coins as percussion while singing 'Piccadilly 52 oh oh oh'.
One of my big loves is terrible entertainment, not because it is so bad it's brilliant, but because it is just bad. Sometimes a really shit act becomes a work of art and it makes you wonder if these people have ever had a friend who was honest enough to tell them how shit they were. Does a truly bad singer really never reach that point in their life when it is time to take stock and come to terms with the fact that they should get a proper job.
In York there used to be a busker that my daughter and I referred to as 'the singing dogs man'. He sat playing (if I remember correctly) an accordion with his two dogs barking accompaniment. For example, he would sing "How much is that doggy in the window" and the dogs would "woof woof" the next line. This was rather impressive the first time you witnessed it, but when you saw it more than once and got a bit closer you realised that the man was actually making the noise through his harmonica. Nottingham still has a handful of crap buskers, although we don't see the knife person anymore. The knife person had about an hour long routine involving laying on nails and inviting someone to stand on him, juggling knives and as a finish he would dive through a toy hula-hoop that had Stanley knives taped round it. He might be dead now that I think about it.
Today I saw a remarkable talent, a man who had made a sand sculpture of a dog (as depicted in the picture above). The sand sculpture was rather good, obviously a dog standing up would have been difficult because it is only sand after all. I was so impressed I gave him every bit of change I had in my pocket, which was somewhere in the region of one pound twenty three, but he was worth every penny.
However, on the other side of the city centre, about ten minutes walk away, was another man making a sand sculpture. Somehow he had managed to make an identical sculpture of a dog, as seen in the picture below.
Either these guys were telepathic or there is some kind of scam going on involving a mould of some description. Obviously I am being sarcastic, these men are frauds. What bothers me is that people are walking past and seeing this for the first time and think that they are witnessing a true talent at work rather than some twat basically just making a sandcastle. How are they getting away with this fraud? Decent musicians get moved on and have to jump through hoops to get permits in some areas, yet utter shit like this and the annoying guy in the city centre who pretends to be a blues musician yet isn't actually singing or really playing the guitar. I don't want the devil may care travelling minstrel nature of the busker and think that they should be allowed to just turn up and play, but maybe there should be an audition process. As far as I'm concerned pretending to have made a sand sculpture of a dog is as bad as a singer miming in the street.
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