Music in the air

[BlueTrain]

I somehow doubt that anything like this ever happens these days for more than one reason, and if it did, people wouldn't stand for it.

When I was little, one of the neighbors would sometimes sit on his back porch (this was when houses had porches instead of decks) and play a guitar. It was a Hawaiian electric guitar and at least at our house, it could be heard very clearly. I will admit to not remembering the music at all, however, so I guess that whatever it was, memorable it was not. I've never heard anything else like that anywhere else that I've lived. Anyone else have neighbors who frequently play music outside like that?

Another neighbor and his wife were country and western entertainers and even had a half-hour television show broadcast live from the local TV station in the next town all of ten miles away. But they never practiced outside. Their son was in my first grade class in school.

One of my step-sisters, who lives back in the hills claims that there are still people with a guitar or a fiddle behind the door who will get it out and play a tune at the slightest encouragement but I've never been present when such things happened. I think I have missed something, too.

 

[MisterCairo]

No one near where I live, but certainly at the cottage there are guitar players outside, and when camping you can always hear strumming!

 

[LizzieMaine]

We have buskers here in the summer, some more talented than others. There's a kid who sits on the bench in front of the art museum playing the ukulele, and is actually quite talented at it.

There was a kid in the apartment house in the next block who used to practice his drumming on the garbage cans in the alley. I haven't heard him in a while, though, and I suspect something may have happened to him.

 

[MisterCairo]

I live in Stratford, Ontario, and we used to have to put up with this kid busking at the Avon Theatre on Downie Street:

 

[HoosierDaddy]

Don't know which is worse..that ear splitting JB..or the newer street thug JB.

 

[Stearmen]

Sadly, in the 60s and 70s, there were lots of garage bands that would practice on weekends in the summer, with the garage door open. I know, because I was in a couple.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I pick my guitar on the back porch all the time. If I had a front porch, I'd do it there. Which reminds me of The Front Porch Song, written by Lyle Lovett and Robert Earl Keen when they were students together at Texas A&M University. It's about all the guys who used to pick on the front porch of Keen's house, which was across the street from the Presbyterian church. Here's Keen telling it:

 

[Lean'n'mean]

If you don't know the words just hum......

 

[galopede]

Usually too cold or wet here in Britain to do much playing outdoors but I go to at least one pub trad music session at local pubs every week. I play squeezebox (see avatar for the exact one!) and we get guitars, fiddles, whistles etc, even occasional brass and woodwind players. We play most English traditional country dance music.

Gareth

 

[Stearmen]

Here you go, the ultimate front porch song!

 

[GHT]

No musical neighbours when I was growing up. Today, however, a phenomenon seems to be gaining popularity. It's called: "Flash Mob." A group of musicians gather, play a popular song, and just as quickly, disperse. It's the way they gather that causes amusement, as well as where they gather. Here's an example of a British Army Band in the centre of Birmingham.

 

[Stearmen]

That's too funny!

 

[BlueTrain]

Not a flash mob but one of the funniest musical things I've ever seen, not counting P.D.Q. Bach, was the beginning of the performance of the Edinburgh Tattoo when we were there a few years ago.

It seems that before the show was to start, the parade ground or esplanade or whatever they call it was littered with can, wheelbarrows and other things I don't recall, with a few workmen in coveralls loitering about. Then the first band of the evening, a Royal Marines band, marched out from the castle and formed up at the upper end. Then a few words were exchanged between the RM Music Master and the foreman (I guess) of the workman. They reluctantly began picking up their stuff and a van came round to carry it away. Well, there was a lot of banging around and noise making and before you knew it, they were making music, only I don't remember what it was, something percussive.

The second funniest musical thing (to use the technical Italian word) was the performance of a mounted Dutch army band, mounted on bicycles and wearing 1940 uniforms. They were pretty good, too, but one poor soul kept wobbling around and fell off his bike. A loud siren sounded and two men ran out with a stretcher. They took one look at the soldier/musician lying on the ground and at the bicycle--and then carried the bicycle away on the stretcher.