JONATHAN BROCKLEBANK: Oh, to be the Simon Cowell of Glasgow buskers: 'Sorry, but it's a no from me!'
Twenty years ago I was enjoying a brief lunchtime stroll when I came upon a group of buskers who were really quite good. You could tell they had done some practising.
They were performing a cover of the Britney Spears song Hit Me Baby One More Time and I liked the way the bass player leaned in to harmonise on the singer’s microphone on the chorus. I could see that working on stage.
Others seemed to think they had something too. Office staff, sandwiches in hand, stopped in their tracks to give this combo on Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street a moment of their time. The crowd swelled rapidly.
I forget how many minutes passed before it dawned on this audience member that the band he was watching was Travis. Perhaps I needed to hear their signature hit Why Does it Always Rain on Me? to be sure.
Suffice it to say I was impressed with them long before I twigged who they were. With apologies to my erstwhile boss, I have to report that my lunch break was duly extended.
Rock band Travis once took to the streets ahead of a sell out show in Glasgow - but most buskers fail to impress passers by
I recall this tale now because it is the last time I remember being so taken with street buskers that they ended up moving along before I did.
Of course, they weren’t really buskers. They played a sell-out show at Glasgow’s Barrowland that night.
In the intervening two decades there have been hundreds more lunchtime strolls and no fewer street performers craving the attention of passers-by like me.
I don’t say they all stink, by any means. A veteran electric guitarist on Argyle Street used to make a pretty good fist of numbers by The Shadows. It was a sweet sound to walk by to.
The occasional Buchanan Street songbird can hold a tune. I prefer the ones who play their own instruments rather than rely on backing tracks blasting soullessly from an amplifier.
But, in the main, they serve only to remind lunchtime strollers why the people whose songs the buskers are singing are famous. Simply, they’re better.
Gratuitous
It is no accident that Ed Sheeran is a millionaire while the chap with a few coins in a hat is merely a gratuitous contributor to city centre decibel levels.
Some renditions, I have often thought, border on criminal. If one of the greatest musical injustices in history came on the day the police pulled the plug on The Beatles’ rooftop concert in 1969, why are reparations not made by pulling the plug on those street-level acts who truly deserve it?
Well, it has taken rather longer than I hoped, but at last Glasgow City Council is singing my tune.
I am delighted to note a crackdown on the most turgid and repetitive performers will not only see them being silenced but – in the worst cases – their instruments confiscated. Reports could even be sent the procurator fiscal’s way.
As a music lover who also has a deep appreciation of the sound of silence, I have to say this is perhaps my favourite by-law ever.
Indeed, I’m tempted to inquire whether there are any positions going as ‘street performer talent compliance officer’ or some such.
In middle age one starts to think of giving something back to society – and how precious the gift of respite from cacophony.
Oh, to be the Simon Cowell of Glasgow central business district. ‘It’s a no from me, chaps. On your way or I’m calling for back-up.’
Some argue that buskers add to the vibrancy of our town and city centres – or that the pavements and pedestrian precincts are the training ground for the Ed Sheerans of the future.
I see them more as gatecrashers on our public spaces, inflicting their musical ambitions on passers-by who are too polite and too inured to background noise to tell them to belt up.
Training ground? It’s a high street. Do budding gymnasts bring their pommel horses onto city centre pavements? Do aspiring trampolinists drag their apparatus to the nearest town square?
Why are public spaces any more of a training ground for wannabe pop stars?
There are in Glasgow and almost every other community of a reasonable size in Scotland real training grounds for musicians. They are called open mic nights.
The idea is that performers who want to be there do their thing in front of punters who also want be there. It is a tidy arrangement whose success derives from an understanding between audience and artist. One is there to hear and see the other.
Grievous
The street performer breaches this contract and insists on being heard and seen whether the audience wishes to comply or not.
The least one should expect is music pleasing enough to banish thoughts of occasioning grievous harm on their sound equipment.
That would rule out those kilted Braveheart types with wild hair and big drums who used to assault the ears of anyone going near Buchanan Galleries of a Saturday.
When their thudding stopped, they used to hold up CDs. Yes, for a small charge, you can have splitting headaches at home too.
Nothing would have given me greater pleasure than to see the lot of them marched away in handcuffs.
Now, please, new signage for our city centres for those who loiter there with sonic intent: duff musicians will be prosecuted.
