Wednesday 26 August 2009

Zombie music

There's live music, with real live musicians playing their instruments right there and then.

There's dead or suspended-animation music, captured, preserved, and reanimated from something plastic, a boon to humanity.

And then there's Zombie music.

Buskers do this in the London Tube network. They play an instrument, or sing, but they bring with them a backing track, which is all the rest of the music except their own instrument, and loudspeakers. They play along with that, slaves to the machine, and if we're lucky they more or less keep time. It's an abomination, but you can keep moving.

When I was on my holidays I was briefly menaced by the Undead Clarinettist of St. Wendel, a man with a suitcase-sized loudspeaker on wheels, who wandered about playing Undead Clarinet and Ghost Piano to luckless diners at restaurants in the square.

Make music, if you are inspired to do so. Make it badly, if you want; it would be nice if people didn't hire you (I'm dreaming). Make it live with other musicians, or on your own; or make it direct-to-dead.

But Zombie Music is just wrong.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

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ghost said...

I quite like the idea of "Ghost Piano" just sadly not in this context...

Haunting music to dance tango to in the early hours.

Why didn't you leave / come back later? (I vividly remember one tango teacher calling an abrubt ending to proceedings when it became clear that mutiny was immminent if we had to put up with any more!)

msHedgehog said...

Hi Ghost! On both the occasions I'm thinking of, I was pretty much stuck. In the first case my face was only half-filled with a rather tedious schnitzel-like thing and there were all the chips still to go, in the second the layout and situation made it more or less impossible, so I diverted myself with giving my neighbour the giggles.

ghost said...

Good to know the evenings weren't a complete waste then ;o)