I’ve been feeling nostalgic, and thinking over all the marvellous unintentional insults I’ve received over the past few years. There are so many now that I feel they should be collected together in one blog post, to be admired. [Apologies to anyone who has seen some of them before in earlier posts.]

Folk Clubs

These are excellent places to pick up insults. Here is a selection:

‘I really love the tone of your instrument – but I’d very much prefer it if you’d play some beautiful music on it, like maybe some Chopin?’ – strange old man, after I’d just played some of my own folky-type compositions. I mean, I know I’m not as good as Chopin, but a) it was a folk club, and b) Chopin didn’t write for viola.

‘You obviously know each other very well…. in the Biblical sense, I mean!’ – leery drunk man to myself and performing partner

‘I love the way you play the violin. I’d really prefer to hear you play it on your own though.’ – drunk-seeming woman, unintentionally (or not?) insulting my choice in collaborators.

Folk club organiser, after a gig by a trio in which I used to play viola: ‘…I mean you’ve really got something going – you have one of the best concertina players in the country, an absolutely superb bodhran player, and a …. viola player who … knows what she’s doing …’

‘First there was Michael, playing his concertina… and then he acquired … satellites.’ – Folk club MC, apparently explaining the process by which myself and Sarah had invited Michael to join the band we had started.

‘You should make more of yourselves – I mean, dress up more on stage. You could be like the Corrs…’ – folk club audience member informing me that perhaps myself and Sarah should have worn short skirts and sparkly tops instead of t shirts and jeans and leather boots. And also that we should be on Top of the Pops, not in the folk club?

Busking

Possibly even better than folk clubs:

‘I’d put a quid in if you’d play something decent!’ – man grumpily putting 50p into my hat

‘You have to give the people what they want. Get some Beethoven going! No? Well, you’ll never make any money then.’ – a woman, putting £1 in hat.

‘Those instruments would sound excellent if you’d only play a little bit of Bach on them – but you seem intent on playing that Irish stuff, don’t you?’ – rather patronising passerby

Man: ‘What was that last tune?’
Me: ‘It’s called the Holtwood Reel and it was written by a fiddle player called Jess Arrowsmith.’
Man: ‘Oh I don’t think it was.’
Me: ‘I’m quite sure it definitely was.’
Man: ‘No, it was definitely something else.’

Later that same afternoon:

Same man: ‘Now that one had a delightful celtic lilt to it – what was that?’
Me: ‘It was an English tune called Three Around Three.’
Man: ‘Oh it’s “English” is it? Oh, well I’m not sure about that. I am a player, you know – I play in a group…’

Weddings

This one wasn’t directed at me, but I do wonder whether this man realised what he was saying:

Master of Ceremonies: ‘They say that love is a temporary insanity, curable only by marriage. Well, I’d like you to meet a couple who have been recently cured: please welcome … the Bride and Groom!’

These were received while busking:

Man putting in 50p: “I’d put in a quid if you’d play something decent.” [What?! What?! The mind boggles...]

Woman walking past while we were playing some fast jigs: “Thank you. It’s very calming.” [So how was she feeling before? Crikey...]

Middle aged, portly man with glasses and a beard: “Now, you can very obviously play the violin. That’s good. Now, don’t you think that instrument [pointing to Tom's bouzouki] – now, it’s exactly a lute, is it?… but anyway, it would make a very good continuo if you were to play some Corelli or Vivaldi…”

And so we are brought to two more of our Categories of People Encountered While Busking. The last example actually falls into both at once, and the first falls into one of them.

The first category is: People Who Are Slightly Offended That You Have The Ability to Play an Instrument But Are Not Using It to Play The Exact Genre of Music That They Like.

I mean, how dare we? How dare we spend years learning to play an instrument and not develop a) the psychic ability to determine when somebody wants us to play ‘Wonderful Tonight’ [probably what the first man wanted, by the look of him...] or Vivaldi, and b) a universal knowledge of and ability to play all music ever written? It’s shameful, really. I don’t know how we sleep at night. I do, however, live in hope that someone from this category suggests to us that although what we’re playing in very nice, what they’d really like to hear is a little Stockhausen.

Category 2, for today, is “Experts”.

These are almost invariably slightly portly, bespectacled, bearded, middle aged men, who for some reason are desperate to communicate to us that they know a bit about music too. This desire for recognition generally indicates that actually they don’t know very much about it at all, they just want to – a true academic such as a music lecturer would be more likely to just watch and smile from a distance, and if they were to talk to us it would probably be some kind of sparse compliment such as, ‘Very nice.’ But these chaps who want to appear scholarly insist on telling us all sorts of information about what we’re playing, because apparently they know much more about it than we do. And the problem is that frequently they don’t and it makes it all rather difficult because my natural urge is to contradict them and it’s very difficult to find that happy medium between the inane ’smile and nod’ approach and coming right out and saying, ‘Look. You have gaps in your knowledge. You obviosuly do not know more about my instrument than I do so stop asking me about it and then contradicting everything I say; English tunes are not certified ‘Gaelic’ and why are you asking what that last tune was called just so you can say, ‘No it wasn’t actually, it was this other thing’?” You see it’s tricky. Usually I aim for the ’smile and be ever so subtly sarcastic’ approach, but it really uses up a lot of brainspace which I’d rather use for being able to remember what the notes are etc.

I suspect most of them play the recorder expressionlessly while wobbling their heads, because of some misguided notion that that’s the authentic way to do it.

And here ends today’s rant.

Another regular busking-related occurrence is hearing another busker somewhere around the town centre playing ‘Wonderful Tonight’ by Eric Clapton. This happens approximately 80% of the time. I find it particularly grating because when I was working in a shop once, a man played it outside the shop for forty-five minutes without stopping. He just went round and round the same verses as if on an infinity loop.

Since extremely repetitive music is regarded as torture and a human rights issue, and is, for these reasons, not officially permitted in some prisoner of war camps, I felt justified in phoning the council and getting them to tell him to stop, which I would never do usually with any other musician, even if they were terrible, as long as they played a variety of different terrible music. This is because running to the authorities isn’t something I like doing, particularly as the way the council regulates busking in general appears to be designed to stop homeless people with recorders making the place look untidy. However, my only other alternative was to run out of the shop yelling , ‘Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!’ and I think this might have frightened my customers a bit. Plus they might have stolen the lace tablecloths while I was out of the building.

Had it been any of the other regular staff working in the shop that day, however, I doubt they’d have noticed the repetition. They always, always listened to a double album of Abba on repeat all day on the shop stereo. It was as if they were on some sort of Abba drip-feed and if they weren’t provided with Abba while operating the till, they would faint or something. I was Left A Note About Taking My CDs Out At The End of the Day on the occasion that I accidentally left my Incredible String Band CD in the CD player. I think they must have got a bit of a shock.

This week, as a financial experiment [aided by my new-found delight in Excel spreadsheets, which is becoming out of control and could turn into an addiction] myself and himself have been playing cheerful little tunes on the streets. Obviously standard Pillowfish repertoire is not suitable busking material given that many of our songs are a bit cross with Society in General, and when we are out in Society in General we really want to just take the money and run. So in order to get them to give it to us, we’re playing nice little ceilidh tunes.

We’ve met some interesting people. Some of them are repetitions of each other, and thus fall into categories. Some are great, and some are less great. The primary ‘less great’ category is this one:

People Who Talk to You While You’re Playing And Expect You To Answer

Why? Why do people think that musicians can have a conversation with them while playing music? The only people who ever do this are clearly not musicians, because if they were then they would know that not that many musicians can have conversations while they’re playing. Playing music is Quite Hard. It takes up a lot of one’s brain. The odd thing is that the non-musicians who attempt to strike up conversations in these circumstances seem to have some sort of link missing in their neural circuitry. They must have, otherwise they would make the following connection: ‘This person is playing an instrument. I cannot play an instrument. That may mean it is quite difficult, otherwise I would be able to do it*. Therefore I should let them finish, and not put them off with my inane comments for which I require an answer.” And the thing is, the things they say are usually irrelevant, insulting or both. While playing the fiddle on the street I have received the following:

“You shouldn’t be playing that. You have to give the people what they want. Get some Beethoven going. No? Well you’ll never make any money then.” [said to me by woman who had clearly not seen the fiddle case full of £20 which I'd made in 40 minutes. It had been a rather good day. Except for meeting her, which made me livid.]

“Have you been to the (incomprehensible muttering) club in Hartlepool?” [asked by perfectly sensible looking woman, and we don't know why, and we don't care, and we didn't answer because we were playing a really difficult reel.]

“I learnt the violin at primary school.” [said by a different perfectly sensible looking woman. She appeared to want a reply, but the only ones available are, "Good!", "Why did you stop?" and "Well you should know that people can't easily talk while they're playing one then."]

“Can I change this for a 20p?” [Asked by perfectly pleasant Chinese girl holding 50p, who needed change for the 'public' toilets in York. This was just about OK, although still a little difficult to reply to. I didn't say anything due to trying not play all the wrong notes, but she went ahead anyway, which was fine.]

I will add some more categories in due course, but I think I just had to get that out of my system.

* Of course there is the argument that people have not had the opportunity to learn music due to any combination of circumstances, in which area I know I am very lucky because I did have the opportunity. But they should still know it’s rude to interrupt.