Time to Face the Music!

For as long as I can think, I’ve loved music. From merely listening to it in the beginning, this matured into a love of singing that led me to join first several school choirs before spending ten years at a choir in Germany, eventually branching out into solo work on stage musicals, even managing to squeeze in an operetta for good measure. In fact, some of my earliest blog posts over on my German blog chronicle some of my experiences with a production of Fiddler on the Roof. So I’ve got a pretty good appreciation for music from the 13th century to today, and I generally like hearing music particularly live music.

Given the current ongoing lockdown, one of the best and only places to hear any type of live performance is the city centre of Cork, which has always attracted buskers of all shapes and sizes. That in itself isn’t much of an issue. In general, street musicians have been a fact of life all over the world for probably as long as there have been streets and musical instruments, and there are some real gems out there. Just check out the likes of Allie Sherlock on YouTube. The issue is that in Cork, something else wafts through the street, something “off”, and no, I don’t mean the fragrances emanating from the Lee at low tide on some days. Hell, it's not even the pre-recorded Andean pan flute music that seems to be the bane of so many high streets in Europe. Seriously, how come those guys are seemingly everywhere? Is there some secret Peruvian/Ecuadorean/Bolivian Music Mafia somewhere?

Seriously, these guys are everywhere these days!

Anyway, let's take this again, from the top, because there’s really no way to put it mildly. Cork city centre is overrun by poor-quality buskers. Yep, you heard that right. Mind you, I don’t mean poor taste in genre or songs, I’m talking about musicians, to use that term very loosely, who are generally poor at their craft. As I mentioned before, I’ve got quite a bit of experience with performing on stage and in front of an audience, and some of the stuff I see when I’m in the city centre on weekends is simply atrocious. Leaving the Andean Music Mafia aside for a second, let’s look at some examples.

• Albino Elvis: This is a gentleman who seems to be in his late fifties or sixties with hair straddling the line between very light blond and white, hence the nickname. To his credit, he’s always well dressed, with polished shoes, clean and sharply pressed white trousers and a number of fetching shirts. I’m not being sarcastic here, I really appreciate performers who pay attention to their performance. Unfortunately, this positive impression collapses like a poorly made souffle once he starts singing, as he sings every song as if he were on stage in the Scala in Milan, but clearly without any amount of vocal training, warbling in some sort of Chernobyl-infused bel canto style, which he uses for absolutely EVERY song, from Frank Sinatra to Ed Sheeran.

• Wait, what Song are we doing again?: This is Albino Elvis’ second act. Every Saturday, he performs with this “band” outside the English Market to raise money for the homeless. I just hope that the Simon Community have other revenue streams because this bad is more of a fund-sinking than a fund-raising effort! The number of performers can vary from week to week, ranging from four or five to more than a dozen, however it is clear that they pretty much never practice together. Despite the sheer number of instruments they muster, they seldom seem to agree as to what song they’re actually supposed to be playing, let alone in which key. Their singing is more along the lines of a dive bar shortly before closing and this gang couldn’t find the beat with air support and a professional search party!

• Me vs. Puberty: This is less of a single performer or band and more of a category of performers. These are mainly boys around twelve or so singing along to an instrumental backing track fed directly from an iPad to a pound-shop amp, often battling to both remember the lyrics of whatever chart song they’re “performing” and to somehow carry the tune over their puberty-induced breaking voice. They’re clearly trying to exploit the “young Justin Bieber” factor.  Most of the time, there seems to be a parent or guardian hovering about, which makes me wonder just how voluntary these performances actually are. To give credit where credit is due though, last Sunday, one of the performers in this category really managed to stand out, a girl in her teens whose singing voice was somewhere between Stevie Nicks in her prime and the Corrs. Fittingly enough, Fleetwood Mac’s classic “Dreams” was part of her repertoire.

• Dude, where’s My Band?: There’s plenty of these dudes around, and yes, they are overwhelmingly male. These are solo instrumentalists jamming out whatever tune they feel like. This can range from drummers who set up their whole drum set and even somehow work the streetlight next to them into their beats to the inevitable black-clad “It’s not a phase, Mom!” metal guitarists, who for some reason have a background track running as well. To be fair, some of these artists are actually pretty good, such as the aforementioned drummer and a number of electric guitarists who give Mark Knopfler a run for his money, the big question is why they couldn’t find a b and to play with?

• Moaning Myrtle: Sorry, J.K. Rowling, but there’s no way to better describe the next performer. I’ve only seen her occasionally opposite the General Post Office on Oliver Plunkett Street, back when I was still working in Albert Quay and regularly went to the city for lunch. While she isn’t too bad from a technical standpoint and actually understands what a key is and what a guitar is for, her plaintive voice, somewhere between a banshee, a lovesick coyote and a whooping crane will bury straight into your brain.

Now, it may sound as if I’m being unnecessarily harsh on some of the artists above, and that is undoubtedly true to a certain degree. However, I expect any performer who decides to put themselves out into the public to put some actual effort into their performance, and to have a grasp on their craft. However, the only thing the acts above are seemingly putting any effort into is volume, with all of them using microphones plugged into pound-shop amplifiers. Now just imagine trying to have a meal in the newly umbrella-covered Princes Street while Albino Elvis belts out “Still haven’t found what I’m looking for” with a voice that sounds like Luciano Pavarotti choking on a dumpling, while a street corner down Oliver Plunkett Street, some tracksuit-wearing schoolkid is singing with all the elegance of an air-raid siren, while in the other direction, a thrift-store Marylin Manson clone is seemingly using his guitar to produce copious amounts of white noise: A veritable cacophony of crappiness! The High C of this craptastic crescendo however are the Debenhams Spoon Smackers!

The cream of the crap!

These guys are outside the former Roches Stores/Debenhams Department Stores, dressed up as stereotypical leprechauns in cheap costumes with Irish tricolour hats, sitting on small stools in front of some cliched Irish or Republican painting on a tarp while smacking some spoons together in rhythm to some cheesy Irish tunes playing through an absolutely monstrous amp and hawking some pre-printed cheap pictures of Michael Collins et al. For all of the criticism I’ve heaped on the first five performers, they at least tried to put in some effort. These last two guys however don’t seem to give a fuck about anything or anyone! And what’s worse, people actually fall for that kind of paddywhackery, giving these cheats money! Well, in a world where the likes of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson can get elected, this shouldn’t be surprising, but it is still sad to see.

Now, while it may be fun to pour out metric tons of sarcasm over all of these “performers”, this is very much a serious issue. Cork City Council is trying to make the city centre more attractive in the wake of the COVID pandemic, yet these efforts are undermined by the overwhelmingly loud caterwauling of these acts, driving people away, particularly now that indoor dining is off the table again. What’s worse though is that these type of sub-par performances also drown out the many talented buskers in Cork. When talented singers like Allie Sherlock abandon Cork in favour of Grafton Street in Dublin, that’s a pretty big red flag.

What’s needed here is swift and harsh action by Cork City Council. Other cities have implemented a registration and regulation system for buskers, with fixed spots, registration requirements and volume restrictions. As we’re facing into an outdoor-only summer for 2021, this need for action has become even more urgent. I know that this issue was raised with the city council in previous years, and it is high time that this is raised again. Street music in a city in Ireland, a country with an incredibly rich musical tradition, should be of a much higher standard than it is at the moment!