April 23, 2003

Cyber-busking Update Thanks very much

Cyber-busking Update

Thanks very much to everyone who posted links to "democracy, whisky, sexy", and to everyone who bothered to stop and check it out. And especially to those generous souls who found it within themselves to toss some spare change into the imaginary open guitar case over to the left. (Or maybe I should phrase it as Andrew Sullivan might: thanks to everyone who decided to become a part of the new busking revolution...)

I've been meaning to get back to "normal" blogging, but I've been getting ready to head out to the east coast and I've been trying to keep up with the massive amounts of email and other types of response to that song. It's been a bit overwhelming, far more than I expected.

The sheer mass of a sudden early Insta-lanche buried the original server and may have even done some permanent damage to the internet itself, if not the structure of reality. (The song that killed the internet... well, maybe only a little.)

Michele took over for awhile till Lookout Records finally put it on their industrial strength server. A Blair-a-thon, a Michele-a-rama, a Treacher-wave, and many other powerful manifestations of blogospheric phenomena for which suffixes have not yet been coined followed, resulting in thousands of downloads, some nice tips, about a gazillion emails, media interest, etc.

So how does cyber-busking compare to the old fashioned kind, where you stand in a public place with a guitar playing Beatles songs, hoping you look pathetic enough that a few people will be shamed into throwing some change into your guitar case? Lots of puzzled on-lookers, a few hecklers, scattered tips, polite applause from some, indifference from others. Pretty much the same kind of thing.

But there's no old-busking equivalent of a server-crushing Insta-lanche. Unless maybe it would be the unlikely scenario of the city's biggest radio station broadcasting multiple messages saying "there's guy with a guitar playing over by the Embarcadero BART station-- get over there right now!" The busker would be knocked down by the crush of legions of folk-music crazed punters, his guitar smashed into several pieces. Everyone would be looking around saying "I don't see any guy with a guitar." Eventually, though, the guy would gather the pieces of the guitar, put them back together with duct tape and stickers, stand up and start singing "Ticket to Ride." That's pretty much what I did, in fact.

Of the comments, my second favorite so far came from a regular correspondent from Canada, who warned me that it might not be such a good idea to play that song in Toronto and that things could turn ugly. What would happen if a song about democracy were to start a riot in an Ontario nightclub? That'd be a hell of a story, wouldn't it?

My favorite, though, was of course from Tim Blair who said:

If people aren't screaming along to this in bars across the planet within six weeks, the earth deserves to be killed.

Earthlings, you have five weeks and five days.

Anyway, thanks to everyone for the links and the comments. I'm bringing my rickety old laptop along and I'm going to try to blog from the road if it ever decides to let itself be turned on at the precise moment when I happen to have some spare time. Watch this space.

Posted by Dr. Frank at April 23, 2003 05:09 PM | TrackBack