End of September Rant About Not Much

Goooooooooooooood evening people of the internet. Again, it’s been a few weeks due to both my lazyness and my inability to think of things to rant about. There is something that I wish to have a rant about today which again really relates to my personal passion that is Jazz and playing the saxophone.

I was busking the other day in a city near where I live where the laws that usually hassle street performers everywhere else do not seem to exist. Thus making it easy for anyone with an instrument to turn up on a street corner, throw a hat down and try to make a bit of money in the sun for a few hours. Now, I’d looked into doing this and have busked here a few times now, playing a range of jazz standards (Summertime, Autumn Leaves, St Thomas) funky classics (Superstition) and random tunes that people know and love (Baker Street, Careless Whisper). I played in what was and usually is a very worthwhile spot for over an hour and made a grand total of… £3. That’s right, mid-summer, the sun was shining, tourist town full of people out for the day. On a great many occasions people stopped to listen and to take photos, but hardly anyone deemed it worthwhile throwing down any spare change. The lack of “donations” isn’t the purpose of this rant as it is understandable that, due to the current economic situation, people will be less willing to give any money to a poor student attempting to entertain the masses. However, what really irritates me is this. A couple of streets further down there was a person with an acoustic guitar playing and singing in a very sheepish manner something that sounded vaguely like it might be something that I’ve never heard (probably because I don’t listen to the charts) There was someone in the park, acoustic guitar and sheepish singing again, who played and sang the chorus to ‘Valerie’ by god knows who it was originally, (there have been so many covers that were there the 1^st time I heard it that it could be by absolutely anyone (But, for arguments sake I’ll say it was by Amy Winehouse, because I think it was her version that I just happened to hear 1^st. If I’m wrong and someone wants to have a go at me for it. Sod off, I don’t care. But I digress…)). There were also innumerable other such examples of people doing the same thing. My argument and problem is this. The repertoire was all samey, uninteresting and played very half-heartedly, yet why were these people raking in the money? People seem to enjoy things that they’re familiar with, which is fair enough I guess, but the way these people were hailing their small change at these three chord zeros, you’d think that they were all the new Hendrix or something. Is it something that I’m doing wrong perhaps? Or is it just that more and more people find that Jazz of any form is completely “old” “outdated” “boring” “music my grandma listens to” (all actual quotes from people I know) and therefore refuse to pay out to anyone not trying to be everyone else around?

WARNING: COMPLETELY UNRELATED RANT AHEAD

My mother has recently agreed to be experimented on by a neighbour who recently completed her course to become a “Herbal Life” diet coach. This has led to my mum spending a lot of money on strange milkshakes and eating as much as she usually does in “health foods” as she used to. While attempts at dieting are commendable, surely there are easier and much cheaper ways to lose weight than paying someone to tell you to buy stuff. Surely just doing it the old fashioned way: Cutting out cakes etc, eating healthier foods, eating less in general and exercising more often is just as effective (if not more effective) and also A LOT cheaper. The argument about people needing motivation and keeping one of those diaries to put weight loss, what you ate and whatnot in is, I admit useful. But surely you can just find an old exercise book (or even buy a cheap new one) to put all the info in without having to add that to an already large expense.

Ok. Random rant about stuff that people really don’t care about over. I hope once again that you’ve enjoyed my general bile and displeasure about anything that I can think of to be displeased about. Congratulations to those of you who have managed to get this far through. You’re obviously as bored as I am writing these. :-P

Keep the peace internet folk

The Jazzman Commeth.

Goooooood evening people of the internet. I'm not entirely what I'm going to write in these blogs. They'll probably be a mixture of angry rants, random ramblings and bizzare observations about life, the universe, everything and a couple of bits and pieces in between.(Also, if the grammer or anything starts to get sloppy, then don't get mad as I'm just typing this all out as a stream of thought kind of thing...) I'll keep these as short, to the point, and as clean and insulting to as few people as I can be. However nothing said in any blogs from this point on is meant to be hurtful to anyone and should be taken as nothing more than a joke and an irritable person letting off some steam. Anything said here is also my opinion and has nothing to do with anyone else (unless specifically mentioned). (and yes, I do have a thing about brackets. :-P )

So, I suppose I'd better kick these things off with a little bit of info about myself (yes, I am a self centred, arrogant show off from time to time. I guess this is a way to get rid of my need to have people listen to what I have to say). I'm currently in the summer holidays in between my second and third years at University. I'm studying Music and History (Not the History of Music, or Musical History. But Music AND History as a combined honours degree). I'm largely a performing musician. Playing Saxophone, Clarinet and un petit peu du guitar. My life seems to revolve around a mixture of rehearsals and essay writing. At the moment I seem to have no idea what I want to do after uni finishes. Ideally I want to do something to do with performance, however it's not what you know, it's who you know with that kind of stuff right...

So, first rant. Watching the news and it turns out that the all-powerful facebook seems to be trying to alter the chat service. So you can do group and video chats... Why would they do this when the bog standard, basic chat where it's just a simple box with text. So how do they expect to make this one work? The deal with Skype, although a good concept will either never work, be very slow, or will crash all the time. A video message service takes so much bandwidth etc that it'll make the whole site run excruciatingly slowly. It's also unlikely to work most of the time there would be too many people trying to use it at once, therefore overloading the service and making very few people able to use it at once around the world. I therefore reckon that the computer whizzes should sort out the ordinary chat before trying to expand it.

Well, for the moment I guess this is all that I have to say for myself. I hope this has been readable and not too self-obsessed or anything.

Keep the peace internet folk.