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Dude got busted in Harrisburg PA a few years ago for pretending to be homeless outside of Harrisburg area community College. Was pulling down a 6 figure income panhandling and not paying his taxes
More interesting than seeing/hearing a "real" violinist on the street, IMO.
Last time I was in Las Vegas I saw a guy just standing there. He happened to look like Tupac. So he stood there, looking like Tupac (born that way I guess) and getting money from people. Street performers come in all styles.
I would suspect that buskers who play at a high level receive better/more tips than buskers who are obviously less skilled on their instruments. I would also suspect that many of the people who tip the high level buskers do so as an acknowledgment of the busker's perceived talent. If a busker is miming to a track he or she actually performed that is one thing; if the busker is miming along to someone else's track that is another.
Major acts get away with lip-syncing/miming partly (perhaps largely) because enough of the people attending such concerts are there more for the event and to be in the presence of an admired personality than because they are dying to hear live music. These audience members can also (in almost all cases) be sure that the act in question is at least partly responsible for the creation of the music that they (presumably) like and are there to hear. It wasn't the lip-syncing on stage that killed Milli Vanilli's career - it was the fact that Rob and Fab hadn't even sung on the records. It's worth keeping in mind, too, that the acceptability of blatant miming in a concert/performance setting is limited to a fairly narrow part of the music performance spectrum. Go to a jazz concert where a soloist is found to be miming and you can be sure that the audience reaction will be very different from that of fans at a Britney Spears concert. But maybe that's just a part of Jazz elitism...
I call these folks the Felonious Monks.
One year we took a vacation with the kids to Washington D.C. We hit all the museums on the Mall. When we exited the taxi I saw a man wheeling a shopping cart filled with large wall compound buckets. As we walked along he stopped on the side of the road and started positioning the buckets on the cart and by the time we got to nim he was drumming on them with a couple of fat sticks.
We stopped to watch and this guy was fantastic and put on an incredible show with complex rhythms that were astounding. We watched for a while and before moving on I gave the boys each a fiver to put in his hat.
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The joke in saxophone circles is that a saxophonist is someone who will take a $5000 horn in a $500 car to a $50 gig.These people are genius.! I'll spend 20hrs practicing during the week, drive 260 miles round trip paying California gas prices ($4.60 gal)in a old car that gets maybe 16mpg, with $10,000 worth of instruments and gear, then play for 4hrs and get paid $100. I give them credit for being smarter than me.
Yup, saw/heard the first a year, maybe a year and a half ago - our first covid summer. He was in a grocery store parking lot here in northwest Washington state. Young guy, maybe 20, playing an electric fiddle through some kind of portable amp/speaker unit, with an older woman who appeared to be his mom nearby, stepping up to car windows as drivers drove by in the lot while he kept sawing away. I saw him there twice over a couple of weeks, "playing" some kinda faux-jazz tune with a syrupy backing track.
It irritated me, because at the time I knew several professional musicians who were out of work and suffering because of covid. Any beginning string player could watch this guy for a couple of minutes and see that someone else's bow was playing the violin. Because of where he and his cashier stood, it was difficult for people to walk up and talk with either of them, if anyone had wanted to.
But at the time, I did nothing. Times were hard, folks were doing anything to get by.
That changed this past summer, when I saw another pair in the same spot, same parking lot. Different people, same M.O. Another electric violin, more syrupy reverb-ridden tunage. An older guy, maybe early 30s, and a much younger woman sitting nearby, this time with a sign I could barely read because of the amount of writing crammed onto it in various colors. Something about school and medical bills, but she ignored me when I made my way over to them and tried to talk with her. The guy never stopped playing, his system was pretty loud, and she clearly didn't want to chat. He was an even worse faker than the other guy. While I watched and listened, at least two cars stopped and gave her money as he "played." The whole picture and soundtrack just struck me as Wrong.
This time I couldn't keep my mouth shut. Too many honest musicians, including real buskers, hurt bad by the pandemic. I went into the grocery and spoke with a man at the customer service counter, asking nicely if they were aware their customers were being deceived in the parking lot. He said the lot was under the shopping center's authority, not the store's, and seemed somewhat uncomfortable with the question.
I let it go at that, and haven't seen them since in town.
It irritated me, because at the time I knew several professional musicians who were out of work and suffering because of covid. Any beginning string player could watch this guy for a couple of minutes and see that someone else's bow was playing the violin. Because of where he and his cashier stood, it was difficult for people to walk up and talk with either of them, if anyone had wanted to.
But at the time, I did nothing. Times were hard, folks were doing anything to get by.
That changed this past summer, when I saw another pair in the same spot, same parking lot. Different people, same M.O. Another electric violin, more syrupy reverb-ridden tunage. An older guy, maybe early 30s, and a much younger woman sitting nearby, this time with a sign I could barely read because of the amount of writing crammed onto it in various colors. Something about school and medical bills, but she ignored me when I made my way over to them and tried to talk with her. The guy never stopped playing, his system was pretty loud, and she clearly didn't want to chat. He was an even worse faker than the other guy. While I watched and listened, at least two cars stopped and gave her money as he "played." The whole picture and soundtrack just struck me as Wrong.
This time I couldn't keep my mouth shut. Too many honest musicians, including real buskers, hurt bad by the pandemic. I went into the grocery and spoke with a man at the customer service counter, asking nicely if they were aware their customers were being deceived in the parking lot. He said the lot was under the shopping center's authority, not the store's, and seemed somewhat uncomfortable with the question.
I let it go at that, and haven't seen them since in town.
perfect!
and then there's this: how many of us log into TB every day pretending to be musicians or bass players?
Ouch!!
I saw a guy doing this with a violin at my local store. I could tell he wasn't playing the instrument but all I cared about was why it had to be so damn loud.
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Joshua Bell made $52.17 busking in a Wash. D.C. Metro station. $20 of it came from the one person who recognized him. I'm guessing that the fake dude made more than that.
Where I live, it's an accordion player, and it's pretty loud and terrible. The part I don't like is that it's been reported that the folks (male player+female person+child, collect the set) are dropped off and picked up by someone else in a van, and you know that person is taking a percentage. I've seen these same folks in different shopping centers in cities 15 miles apart. I haven't donated, but I haven't called the police on them either. [In My Fair City, one needs a permit to play amplified music. One has to get this permit 2 weeks in advance from the police dept, pay a fee, and notify anybody within a certain distance of the event. The permit has to have a time limit on it, and the police will come and shut you down at that time. I have had to do this, and it's annoying that scammers are not having to do it. If they are getting the permits, etc., then it's not just some poor folks trying to raise a few bucks.]
Where I live, it's an accordion player, and it's pretty loud and terrible. The part I don't like is that it's been reported that the folks (male player+female person+child, collect the set) are dropped off and picked up by someone else in a van, and you know that person is taking a percentage. I've seen these same folks in different shopping centers in cities 15 miles apart. I haven't donated, but I haven't called the police on them either. [In My Fair City, one needs a permit to play amplified music. One has to get this permit 2 weeks in advance from the police dept, pay a fee, and notify anybody within a certain distance of the event. The permit has to have a time limit on it, and the police will come and shut you down at that time. I have had to do this, and it's annoying that scammers are not having to do it. If they are getting the permits, etc., then it's not just some poor folks trying to raise a few bucks.]
I saw a few of these electric violin guys on the Santa Monica Pier recently. It didn't register to me as fake at the moment, but I do remember thinking that they were all shockingly good and what were the odds that more than one dude would be into the electric violin in a concentrated area like that. I think I wrote it off as being a group of guys who operated together in some way, and perhaps it was.
As for being fake, that's too bad. I suppose entertainment is as entertainment does though. If the show is worth a few bucks to you, it's worth doing for them.
As for being fake, that's too bad. I suppose entertainment is as entertainment does though. If the show is worth a few bucks to you, it's worth doing for them.
This thread reminds me.. a couple weeks ago I was in Oak Glen, CA having lunch on my way home from a gig. There was a bluegrass band playing in the grass that played one of my favorite tunes really well. I walked up put a $20 in the tip jar. When I got home I discovered half a $20 in my pocket. It ripped on the way out of my pocket so I gave them half a $20...oops. If your that bass player with the nice old Kay I am sorry!!! Hopefully I see you again.
How about people who just have a sign that says "Need Help." I have sat and talked with several chronic homeless people, and the first thing they always told me is how their scam worked. They are usually somewhat proud of it...and not all of them are actually homeless. Many are just running a quick scam to get beer money, and if you offer to buy them food they may get mad. Some of them actually make a surprising amount of money.
One guy I talked to in 1988 had been injured in the Vietnam war. He was missing several fingers on his hand. He would hold his wrist and arm to make the injury super obvious and more gruesome than it actually was. He handed people an American flag on a tooth pick as they walked into the K-Mart he worked.
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The way he held and displayed his hand and arm always reminded me of a scene from Total Recall:
He said many people would empty their pockets of change on the way out...and the secret is to give them something to make them feel indebted. On a bad day he might get $40, on a good day $250 or more. He usually worked anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours. It depended on how generous people were and how much money he wanted. He had a house a few blocks away.
I also met a couple of guys in Haight Ashbury who straight up asked for quarters to buy beer. So not really a scam. They also had houses in the vicinity.
Ha, I witnessed this happening several months back here in Gainesville, FL a few times by I believe the same person.
It was always dark and I never was right by the guy so I couldn’t tell he was air bowing that violin but this is what he was doing. I saw the police stop the guy from busking at least once too.
What’s wild is how LOUD the guy was with his portable rig in busy parking lots. He never was in normal foot traffic/busking areas.
It was always dark and I never was right by the guy so I couldn’t tell he was air bowing that violin but this is what he was doing. I saw the police stop the guy from busking at least once too.
What’s wild is how LOUD the guy was with his portable rig in busy parking lots. He never was in normal foot traffic/busking areas.
There used to be a guy who stood on Sacramento, CA off-ramps with a sign that said "WHY LIE? I NEED A BEER."
