Now, I’ve heard there was a secret chord
That David played and it pleased the Lord,
But you don’t really care for music, do you?
If Leonard Cohen was a busker in Melbourne would he be dismissed as a talentless singer by Lord Mayor Robert Doyle?
Melburnians would know that the new Lord Mayor wants the city to be free of bogans and buskers who can’t hold a tune.
At the time of writing it hadn’t been confirmed what Cr Robert Doyle plans to do about talented busking bogans.
The adept young man who was recently spotted on Swanston Street wearing clown pants and a ponytail didn’t look much like a bogan but his antics on the electric guitar would’ve warmed the heart of any fan of flannelette shirts.
It’s true that Melbourne buskers, like buskers everywhere, are everything from awful to superb to troubling and sad.
The guy playing the drum is gloriously energetic; the woman strumming her acoustic guitar and singing folk tunes is improving and the magicians in Federation Square usually put on a good show for children and adults.
These buskers may well get through to the final round of Melbourne Idol (with Cr Doyle as Kyle Sandilands), however, where does the Lord Mayor’s policy leave those who busk but have no talent and health issues?
There’s a youthful man with an intellectual disability who’s often seen in the city singing along to the music playing on his portable CD player.
He can’t sing at all, but he seems to get great pleasure from warbling.
Perhaps he also gets a sense of purpose from having a job of sorts to go to.
A failed candidate for the Lord Mayor’s role opined on PM that the “dedication” of the former Lord Mayor, John So, had made Melbourne an “inclusive and engaging, vibrant city”.
While views on So’s legacy will differ, there’s a widespread view that Melbourne’s a culturally exciting and diverse metropolis.
The issue of whether Cr Doyle’s intentions in relation to buskers may lead to the promotion of culture at the expense of diversity remains to be seen.
At the very least Cr Doyle’s statement about “a crazy, unshaven guy playing the guitar on the corner” should be of concern to mental health advocates.
Incidentally, one of the most wonderful buskers recently witnessed in Melbourne was an old woman with long grey hair and a mouth that appeared to be largely devoid of teeth.
Her beautiful playing merited the pile of coins at her feet and the enthusiastic audience.
A hip dude in muso attire listened to this woman for a time and then gave her the thumbs up before walking away.
That’s Melbourne for you.
Note: I’d like to take this opportunity to wish Larvatus Prodeo readers all the best for the holiday season.
I started my performing career in 1979 as a busker on the streets of Melbourne.
The whole notion of busking is that anyone can get out and do it and (dare I say it) free market principles apply. If you are crap, you won’t last long as no one gives you any $$. I did OK enough to buy a house and 30 years later I am still a full time performer
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Even 30 years ago there was talk in Melbourne about licensing buskers, limiting numbers, all sorts of things. Nothing changes.
Yeah, I am biased, but I think a city without buskers would be a less interesting place to live or visit.
I rarely get into the city, but the buskers I’m exposed to out in my Eastern Suburbs locale tend to be pretty good as many of them are students at a near-by TAFE college music department.
But, yes, Melbourne’s CBD buskers are more colourful. That’s part of why we’re the second city in this great nation of ours.
If Doyley’s ambition for his term is to stage a Giuliani-style ‘Disneyfication’ of the territory he governs, then let’s hope he gets the arse next time round.
(Though personally I don’t begrudge him wanting to make something of his up to now failed political career–when God gives you lemons you make lemonade.)
Er, I mean the possibility him getting ‘the arse’ next time he goes to the voters
A good argument against licensing buskers is Brisbane’s Queen Street Mall, where it seems that a total absence of musical ability is a prerequisite for a buskers’ license.
Bogans can talk about Bogans. Fine.
Private school concentration-camp Gruppenfuhrers talking about Bogans concerns me.
I don’t think they should get away with that.
It amounts to hate-speech and verges on incitement to violence imo.
Psychological terrorism even. This bully, Popeye Doyle, needs a bloodied nose either formally or informally dealt to him.
Melbourne would be far the better off without Doyly types as mayor. They knew his form yet stll gave this horrible bore a gig. It really is hard to feel sympathy, now.
Leonard Cohen looks very young in this clip, (and a bit like a young Dustin Hoffman in profile.) But brilliant as always.
George Kamikawa, Dub FX, India Bharti, Darren on the dulcimer. Get rid of buskers and you may as well white wash the art off every city wall as well. We’ve got great music and art in our streets in Melbourne. Without them it wouldn’t be a city worth visiting or living in.
Oops, nearly forgot to mention the “Sonic Manipulator”. The guy in the space suit, that’s what I’m talking about. Melbourne rocks and if someone wants to get in the streets and bang a stick on the ground or whatever for money or fun they should be allowed to.
A mayor should stick to what he/she knows best, whatever that is.
That’s a wonderful apt quote for this post, Darlene.
Doyle as the Lord, though. As we say here in Melbourne, “Robbie Doyle, ha ha ha!”
I heard there was a song by Oils
That buskers played, it annoyed the Doyle
Cos he don’t really care for music, do he?
Oh phooey!
Oh phoo..oo..ey…
If the Melb lord mayor wants a city that puts on an acceptable arty front for a few festivals and is largely uninspired the rest of the year, he should just come over here to Adelaide. I’ll continue to make my regular trips to Melbourne, which is really the only city in Australia that is genuinely culturally dynamic.Melbourne doesn’t have to invent a “Living Artist’s Festival” as Adelaide embarrassingly does…the streets of Melbourne, courtesy of it’s citizens, ARE art, 365 days a year.
I think those that vote for the Mayor are probably have a vested interest in making the city look like everywhere else…..franchise owners aren’t know for their originality. The good news is, they could probably borrow Adelaide’s “Festival of Ideas”, where, for a few weeks, we get a thinker in residence to do the thinking for us.
I like k d lang’s version of Hallelujah.
To be fair to Doyle he probably thinks the permit process will allow the good buskers through, while knocking out the bad ones. I imagine his thinking is influenced by the one truly awful busker who never goes away. (I assume this guy gets no money but does it because he likes it, thus undermining the free market theory that normally works.)
The first problems is obvious – the taste of the permit committee may be a lot narrower than society at large. But the other one is about the bureaucracy inherent in the selection process.
Penelope Swales, from whom I took half my pseudonym, once found herself homeless and penniless on the streets of Sydney with nothing besides a cracked guitar, a stunning voice and a knowledge of Dylan’s entire back catalogue between her and literal starvation. If there had been a process to get a permit she would never have had the time to go through it, and presumably would have been arrested. Instead she raised the money to live, buy a car and get the hell out of there.
It’s an extreme case, but one wonders how long Doyle expects budding young artists to wait to have their abilities assessed.
There’s a youthful man with an intellectual disability who’s often seen in the city singing along to the music playing on his portable CD player.
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Yeah I wonder about him.
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I’ve seen him sell Big Issue but the constant rejection makes him very unhappy. When he sings he really gets into it. He loves music. Trouble is he can’t sing and he doesn’t realize because he’s always plugged into headphones. I like to watch him from a distance tho’ ’cause it’s obvious that music’s his reason to live. Sad tho’, there’s a lot of emotional intensity in his voice but out comes a fairly harsh noise especially when he’s amplified.
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But he causes no pain unless he’s playing next to a tram stop you’re stuck in when it’s raining on a Friday night after a shit week. Then it’s, um, a test.
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He can be painful but so are people who drive SUVs.
All forms of Officially Sanctioned Art should be always condemned (so maybe this comment should in the condemnation thread!). At the end of the day truly great art is only made if you let people fail spectacularly as well. It cannot be legislated into or out of existence.
There’s a reason that American and Britain alike make both spectacularly crap television and cinema and also breathtakingly innovative and interesting forms of the same, while the Australian industry is mostly moribund, full of the “safe” choices, and uninteresting middle-of-the-road blandness. I believe much of the same can be said for the music industry as well – it’s no coincidence that nearly all of our best musical exports: first, had almost no brand recognition here “in their day”; second, then left for better pastures overseas; and third, then returned to rapturous applause in effect in the twilight of their careers. Everyone loves a winner. It’s also why I’m almost reflexively against anything that succeeds from within Australia’s music industry as I’m of the view, it’s entirely middle-of-the-road, etc.
I second Tyro R: Officially Sanctioned A** is not art, it’s Muzak, or worse. See a busker, watch the crowdpersons tap their toes or sing along. Crikey, a bloke should be allowed to sing out loud in the street WITHOUT a hat in front of him.
Next, Robert Doyle’ll want to ban the “Big Issue” vendors.
And Doyle’s supporters are probably the same people who say “we can’t have Government running child care / education / alternative energy research / it’s picking winners”!
Oh, but Helen, a Lord Mayor is an Officially Sanctioned busybody.
As I’m from NSW can anyone tell me if I’m right in assuming this troglydite Lord Mayor is a Liberal?
Yes, Paul, he is. He was the leasder of the state Liberals.
The State Liberals turfed him out and obtained a new leader. His busking was not sufficiently meritorious.
Sigh,
And the Libs are supposed to be about freedom, opportunity and choice. Most of all, choice. Idiot.
Government certified buskers, what an horrendous thought.
Let em play, let em all play. The good ones will earn a bob and we will all be entertained and the bad ones will get sick of doing it for nothing.
I’is a self resolving problem.
Since when it is OK to allow public space to be commandeered for private gain like this? Busking is nothing but privatisation of the footpath. What next? Drink stalls and deck chairs on Australian beaches?
BBB
I forget where I read this but some American city wants buskers to prove that they have over one hour of material so they don’t just play the same thing over and over again. There’s an old Cambodian guy in Bourke St who stands on stilts in an eight foot rainbow skirt and hoola-hoops for hours on end, just smiling and waving at people. I don’t know where I’m going with this. Oh yeah, I’d like to see the mayor personally come and tell him to fak off home, or something.
Over an hours worth of material – codswallop.
The best busker I ever saw was in Kings Cross, Friday night, midnight, played for an hour for the drunks and skinned them alive.
He was about 70 and had a real repertoire of one song, Wooden Heart, which he played and sang second to none. He had a number of other songs whose sole purpose was solely to drive off the current audience, he performed them terribly and they were meant to be terrible.
As soon as the audience was 4 metres away, with their backs to him, he started Wooden Heart again, and stopped the next audience of 20 or 30 souls.
I’d suggest he made a weeks wages in that hour a week – he was absolutely brilliant. He loved doing what he did, which included the fleecing of the punters. It showed that he loved it and it made him all the better.
And the drunks loved him, they only wanted one song anyway. Kept the crowds flowing down the street as well.
“The whole notion of busking is that anyone can get out and do it and (dare I say it) free market principles apply”.
Absolutely agree with that, Steve.
terangeree, that’s an interesting point. Who is the person that decides who is a good busker and a good busker? The person in Brisbane who is doing it obviously is more like Marcia than Kyle.
True, Joe2. All I can say is that I don’t live in that area. Doyle was incompetent as the Liberal leader.
Paul, not sure when the video was filmed. Early 1980s perhaps. He just has something about him that goes straight to the soul (and I mean that in a non-religious sense).
Doyle as the Lord, Helen? Now I’m absolutely non-religious.
Thanks Deborah, I’d never heard K D’s version.
Feral, one can endure the bad buskers (because that’s the free market and all) for the truly good ones. How interesting about Ms Swales. She’s probably up at Woodford at this time of year.
The Sonic Manipulator makes me run a mile but the kids seem to love him.
“At the end of the day truly great art is only made if you let people fail spectacularly as well. It cannot be legislated into or out of existence.”
So true….
I suspect he will, Ambigulous. Given his comments about the “crazy” folk and bogans, he evidently has a problem with certain kinds of people.
Oh yeah, the old guy in the skirt. Well, he’s colourful. I think I’ve only seen him once (which is odd because one sees the same buskers and homeless folk in Swanston Street all the time).
A brilliant busker is a joy to behold, Glenn. And that busker in Sydney was doing a community service by moving people along after a short time. I can’t imagine that that woman with the long grey hair and toothless mouth will fit into Doyle’s vision but she played so beautifully.
Does he sell Big Issue as well? I’ve never seen him do that. There’s pain that we all have to endure on a daily basis (e.g. young girls on mobile phones on the tram and obnoxious men who think they own all of the tram seat) so listening to a young boy singing badly for half a second isn’t the worst thing in the world.
Sorry about the delay in retrieving your comment out of the moderation bin. I’ve been off-line for a bit.
Many years ago I used to read poetry outside of Woolworths in Kings Cross. And would write love-poems on demand for $2-5. Didn’t do it a lot and only on Friday/Saturday nights when I did, usually when I was short of cash. I’d make about $40 a night for about two hours work. Then it was off to party.
Beware Melbourne – it’s that slippery slope toward the bland polished footpaths of Sydney’s dreaming.
The Cambridge Buskers were guest performers brought especially to Brisbane to help celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the Queen St Mall. They were great performers. But it never was mentioned that if they had been broke in Brisbane and just started performing – to raise their fares to get back home – they would have been hounded by the Mall’s private security enforcers, and arrested for performing without a permit, etc
This had been their personal situation: they were broke in New York and teamed as buskers, on the streets, only later becoming hired performers, recording celebs – most likely with a manager and PR team, etc.
To be guest performers in Brisbane’s Queen Street Mall is a juicy irony of cornstork proportions.
It seems to me the licencing of performers/buskers is all part of the increasing marshalling of public spaces and allows private security personnel to usurp public policing – without which habeaus corpus has little breath still in its’ lungs.
Habitual German thoroughness appears to have broken down in the Cohen clip.
Choir members peeping around pillars like members of the Volkssturm in the dying days of FestungBerlin would never get the Doyly Carte Blanche.
Katz: “Doyly-Carte Blanche”. Heh heh, nice one.
Generally I support buskers/ing, but presumably as an issue this is a simple matter of common sense w/r/t scale. *How many* buskers are in an area, how loud, how intrusive on the public space (acrobats for instance generally intrude more than say folksingers), and most importantly how many complaints are being logged? Personally I’d want the ceiling of tolerance to be fairly high (urban flavor and what-not) but that great political thinker Brendan Behan established an important truth when he said, “I am a reasonable man, but there’s limits.”
Check out Jacques Brel singing “Amsterdam” on YouTube in his trademark my-head-is-about-to-explode style. (JB was France’s Bob Mould.). It’s sort of brilliant, but if you were managing say an ice cream parlor, would you want a guy doing that right outside your store say 20 times a day? It’s all just a question of being reasonable. Maybe that’s why Leonard Cohen would make a better busker than Brel.
Darlene – Does he sell Big Issue as well?
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Not for a while. I’ve only seen him do it two or three times. He’s not a happy camper doing it.
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There’s pain that we all have to endure on a daily basis (e.g. young girls on mobile phones on the tram and obnoxious men who think they own all of the tram seat) so listening to a young boy singing badly for half a second isn’t the worst thing in the world.
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Mmmph yes. He’s got a recorder now he plays that, badly as well.
What a bumbling tosser Lord Robert Doyle is! He also wants to put cars back in Swanston street and have more parking in the city. So much for reducing city smog & bottlenecks. Probably thinks of public transport as a last resort for the lower class plebs and swines who can’t be bothered walking.
(Did the last sentence make any sense? Probably not, but i”m on holidays and don’t really care!)
Given the support he got for his Mayoral candidacy from the old fogeys at 3AW he’s probably a climate change denier as well.
On the question of busking, i find it’s the amplification of the buskers’ music in Bourke street that is hard to bear. Even more so when it’s miked-up Christian ranting. I think anyone should be allowed to busk acoustically. It’s only when the music is electronically aided (and in Bourke street it invariably is) that it feels like it’s invading my personal space. The city is noisy enough.
What do others think?
Doyly Carte Blanche !!
polished footpaths of Sydney’s dreaming? Never!! Sydney had the bloke writing ‘Eternity’ in chalk, for years.
Now THAT was class. IMO, can’t be topped.
Actually, having some straight-up D’Oyly-Carte buskers would be a bit of a pip, esp. for a city’s image. What about a G-and-S “theme” day for buskers in town, where they all agree to do different stylistic covers from say Pinafore or Penzance? That’d be a hoot, tho’ I guess you’d have all the hip-hop types feuding over who gets to do ‘Modern Major General’.
Oh FFS, the Liberals are so tiresomely petit bourgeois. People with true class have their driver drop them off at the door of where they want to go, then the driver can nick off and hobnob with all your friends’ drivers until it’s time to come and pick you up again.
Like the idiot who, stuck in a traffic jam on Milton Rd and heading to the appalling ersatz-bourgeois Rieu concert, sitting in his in his white C-class who wound down his window and asked my driver, “know anywhere good to park around here?”! We directed him to notice the very large controlled parking zone signs. My driver and I did have a good guffaw over that one.
I’m with Matilda. Busking – even really bad busking – is fine so long as its not amplified. The simple rule should be acoustic only, as it is in many cities.
Then, Ambiguous at #35, you haven’t seen the villages of Sydney Clover-given, polished, swept clean of anything resembling spontaneity… Eternity is permitted only in areas so designated by Council by-law 5764AF5. Disruption to commercial activities will not be permitted.
Sadly, Bernice, I have not. Is it as lily-livered as you describe? Do the citizens not bask in clover? Melbourne tried to clean up its streets for the Commonwealth Games (junior, later version of your Syd-enn-ee Olympics). Luckily, it more or less failed.
Back to Doyley: he’s behaving like an harrumphing headmaster. Was he ever a school teacher?
If his Busking Authorisation and Selection Bylaws Amendment [BASBA] ever gets through Council, I look forward to the gentlest, funniest civil disobedience in Melbourne: YES to Doyley Cart Day; YES to 100 unauthorized buskers in Bourke Street; YES to spontaneous singing – individuals or small groups, for no donations; YES to silent mime busking in prominent places. BASBA – all the fun of the fair!
Doyley is shaping up as the kind of clown a city needs, to help sharpen up ideas for a future that citizens prefer. If he could come up with one of these zingers every week until Dec 2009….. it could stimulate the polity something wondrous.
“Was he ever a school teacher?”
Yep, at Scotch College and doesn’t it show? They train ‘em well to bully there.
Come come, anyone who formerly taught at Scotch College can’t be all bad. What exactly did he teach then? Peat Studies? Cask Theory?
I like the Ambigulean theorem of civil disobedience in this instance. Frankly the buskers should surreptitiously lobby to pass the anti-busking statutes just so they can then have a ball with the protests. Think of it: for once the giant silly puppet-heads will really be used for actual puppetry.
Call me when it’s over: I don’t think I’d actually want to sit through the Days of Busking Rage, but I bet it’ll look awesome on YouTube.
“bad busker”? Is that not tautology?
Look, this is probably too breezy a thread to discuss how the heck Lord Doyle got to be Mayor but dammit, I want to know! Heard one post-election radio discussion that claimed it was on the back of Labor preferences. They opted for him over the Greens candidate, Adam Brandt. Labor are now serial offenders in cynical preference dealing (family first & dirty tricks in the last State election)which gets a solidly right wing candidate over the line instead of a lightweight left, Greens contender.
Are there any pollster pundits who can confirm this? Would i be able to figure it out for myself if i studied the results for City of Melbourne on the VEC website? You can probably tell that on this bright sunny Sunday i can’t really be stuffed going to that much trouble!
I can’t confirm that Matilda, though overheard much the same that night (from horses’ mouths) – will try to find out some more.
I guess he’s effectively been on the payroll since state Labor appointed him Chair of Melbourne Health, but that could be here nor there.
“I’d make about $40 a night for about two hours work. Then it was off to party.”
Not bad money, Paul.
“Beware Melbourne – it’s that slippery slope toward the bland polished footpaths of Sydney’s dreaming.”
Yuck, or perhaps Melbourne as a blue-ribbon seat Liberal party evening function.
I guess no music should intrusive. The drum guy is really really loud and I don’t think he’s amplified.
Doyle’s prudish idiocy reminds me of Melb City Coincil’s decision to place Banksy’s Little Diver behind a sheet of perspex.
Memo to Rob/the Laboral Party: you regulate it, you devastate it.
It’s only when the music is electronically aided (and in Bourke street it invariably is) that it feels like it’s invading my personal space.
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It’s a fair point. I reckon that the Bourke St mall is controlled considering the people whom play there. The Japanese Blues dude is my favourite. I like how he sounds totally Bayou when he sings but has a quite Japrish accent when he talks.
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A lot of the amplified musos are good. Some, like a sax player I know, use recorded backing. Sometimes bands play and it’s good stuff. But I really wouldn’t want someone awful amplified – no.
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Funnily I made a new friend yesterday. She’s been busking since she was fourteen.
Matilda, you’re almost, but not quite, right. Doyle was elected on the preferences of Peter McMullin, the semi-official Labor candidate. However, it wasn’t over Adam Bandt but Catherine Ng, a councilor on the old council.
Bandt was second in primaries, but largely shut out of the preferences and ended up 4th. However, in some ways this demonstrates even more how much Doyle is now Labor’s man. Labor is terrified of the Greens in the inner city, so it makes sense they would screw them over by going to Doyle first. But why also put Doyle ahead of Ng? I doubt she would have been a good mayor, but its very unlikely she would have been pushing these sort of reactionary policies.
Labor knew what they were getting with Doyle and they chose to put him ahead of all the other non-Labor candidates. This stuff is as much about Brumby as Doyle.
Darlene,
It was writing the love-poems that made most of the money. Love is in the air … especially on a Friday & Saturday night up the Cross.
Jacques Brel, you are verrry welcome to come busking in the little veellage we call “Melbourne” of an English Lord, m’sieur; and then one day it could be named instead Brelville, oui? What are you calling an elephant that ‘as flute with his trunk? A Tusker Busker.
Robert Doyle is not Boris Johnson.
Although he wishes he was.
Have you met the guy? I have. And I bet he won’t last long as Lord Mayor. He’s got the worst people skills of any professional pollie I’ve met. He can only talk up or down, never at the same level.
On the other hand though, he may do the math and bubble up in the role. Like Irvin Rockman. (A very sardonic Melbournian in-joke there)
“Incidentally, one of the most wonderful buskers recently witnessed in Melbourne was an old woman with long grey hair ”
Errh, I think I know the person you mean, and IMHO she can’t play a note, and single note pinging in an “atmospheric” fashion is not music.
That said however, have a look at how London does it. High traffic sites are identified and buskers audition and are licenced. This seems to be what Doyle is talking about.
The sites are allocated in 1 hour blocks (every Tuesday I think). An acquaintance of mine (who is a professional musician) does this. He works the Tottenham Court tube for a few hours most Saturdays and does quite well. About 200 GBP an hour he reckons.
I believe there is also some sort of fee for use of each time block, but I’m not sure about that.
Errh, I think I know the person you mean, and IMHO she can’t play a note, and single note pinging in an “atmospheric” fashion is not music.
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If this is the elderly woman who plays the piano she plays beautifully. I haven’t seen any other buskers who fit that description.
I agree with Adrien on this one (don’t make a habit of it
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Frankly, it’s hard to trust that Doyle appreciates the varied tastes of Melburnians.
Frankly, it’s hard to trust that Doyle appreciates the varied tastes of Melburnians.
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That’s not true:
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Doyle’s Law For Buskers:
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1. Play some Barnsey
2. And some Creedence
3. And some Barnsey
4. And maybe a little Classical for the fruity critics and da proove we’ve got sum kulcha
5. And Jazz but not that stuff with all the notes just the stuff they play in elevators
6. And no people with funny clothes whaddoo they know about music
7. And get Gazza, Spazza, Davo and Rob from Triple D: Radio Smooth and Bland to make some other rules so we can make buskin’ professional.
8. Play some Barnsey.
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My rule for players of Corporate Rock is this and also no “Wonderwall”.
The older lady with the long grey hair used to play in the DJs foyer about 13-15 years ago; the piano accompaniment certainly added a genteel element to the DJs shopping experience! Not that i ever bought much! I recognised her last week in the Bourke street mall, she has quite a distinctive appearance and there aren’t many elderly female buskers, even fewer with long grey hair. So i’m sure she’s an accomplished pianist – not that i’m in a position to judge musical talent.
Her stint at DJs got her coverage on the telly at the time, she is clearly someone with an interesting life story.
Adrien, I wouldn’t dispute that some of the amplified acts in the Mall are talented musicians. I will keep a look out for the Japanese blues dude. But it can also be a question of musical taste or preference, and you don’t really have a chance to opt out of listening when it’s so in your face, due to the loudness. So by allowing good acts to mike-up, isn’t it creating a precedent that allows all cashed-up buskers to amplify their music?
Those South American folk singers in traditional garb play great music i’m sure. But with all their speaker boxes it really takes over, would prefer to listen to their Andean ballads (if that’s the right description) in comfort at home. They’ve been there for years, they must have made a packet by now, seems like instead of hiring a concert venue, they’ve got an almost cost-free venue. And they would probably get the Lord Doyle seal of approval over some lone guy with a guitar who’s just starting out.
I was in town early on a summer Friday night a few years ago when there was an astounding number of Bible preachers spruiking their wares, all with microphones. Being both loud and hyperbolic in its hell fire and damnation message, the hubris of it was offensive. So i just think, be done with the mikes and that puts everyone on a more level playing field.
Thankyou feral sparrowhawk for your explanation of MCC preference shenanigans. Why would they want Doyle over Ng, i wonder? Guess it’s the Boys Club, they understand each other, these Spring street types – and Brumby & co. are desperate to keep the big end of town on side(Like Labor everywhere over the last decade or so).
Government: BAWWWWWW people are making a buck we can’t control, let us force our greasy mits into the pie! We’re the GOVERNMENT!
Busking should be totally unregulated save for acceptable performance hours. Stuff London’s approach.
I am a busker and I think “Doyle ” should do a bit of busking himself. It’s not an easy job . I play keyboard and sing , and smiles are priceless. But it’s hard work and somone singing there own music on the street , I agree with my brother , when he says “Theres nothing worse than hoaring your own music on the street ” He’s right , but personally I like to see people’s facess light up with a smile and for once forget about thier problems , temporarily.
I had a woman who was watching me , and I kept playing not knowing that she was crying , until about fifteen mins later , I stopped playing , and asked her if I’d done anything to offend her …I was really worried , and she threw some money in , completly sobbing saying ” No , Thank you , you touched my heart…Thank you ” Gee that stunned me , and there a buisness mean that drop in a note with tears in there eyes , saying thank you.
I write the words from my heart , but sometimes it’s tough , it’s hard work and very tiring.
Robert Doyle should do busking for 24 hours and see what it’s like .
How about it Doyle ?
Cheers everyone
Don’t encourage him, Kathy. He’s such a media tart, he just might do it. And if his performance as mayor is anything to go by it might be a cruel experience for everyone. Keep the good work up, buskers help make the place human.