Sunday, January 11, 2004
Underground Buskers
Lost in Translation (which was bloody sold out when I met my friend at the Curzon, so we had to see American Splendor instead, which was excellent anyway and very, very funny). I was reading in the carriage and a couple of buskers got on board. Crikey, that's all I needed as I was trying to concentrate.
But "imagine my surprise" when about 15 seconds into their loud song I realised they were enthusiastically and madly playing The Jam's "Going Underground", the song my site is named after.
Luckily my camera has a little microphone on it, so if you click here, you'll be able to download their rendition complete with train background noises and the giggling gaggle of girls in the carriage further along, who gave them a large round of applause at the end.
It was quite hard to take the picture above as they kept moving backwards and forwards to meet each other in the middle. However, I'm pleased I caught their can of Kroenenburg on the floor by their guitar case.
UPDATE
Just returning to American Splendor for a moment, I was struck by how much like blogging, Harvey Pekar's cult cartoons were and obviously I'm not the only person to have thought this:
Before bloggers made it ho-hum to share their daily grievances with all mankind, Harvey Pekar was chronicling his annoyance with co-workers, old Jewish ladies in grocery lines, and women who wouldn't date him in his underground comic American Splendor. From Slate
Harvey couldn't actually draw the cartoons himself, so his stories were told in story board form with stick men, and he got cartoonists to do the illustrations for him. Much like my blog where my digital camera and scanner does the "illustrations" for me.
Incidentally, Harvey Pekar even has his own weblog - although being famous again means it's not been updated since October 2003 (maybe that's when the film came out).
Pekar is a big jazz fan and I was delighted to find out that he's soon going to be guest DJ on my evening & weekend radio station of choice - Jazz FM (24th Jan). There's also a mini interview with Pekar & review of the film in this month's WORD magazine - which incidentally is what I was reading when the Going Underground buskers came on board.
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