Mar 1, 2011
Every once in a while you may find yourself walking down the street, strutting your stuff, and then you’ll hear a couple of chords badly put together, poorly strummed, and a voice howling to the wind like a lost puppy in the night. This is probably being done by one of many kids who have left home and decided that it’s become too much of a hassle to live in the confines of society, only to leave home, work, and studies to play their guitar on the side of the street for the one thing they said they despised from the beginning, money.
It’s not that necessarily that I am against the lifestyle of traveling through a town and playing your guitar for a few bucks. It’s just that I’m against poorly composed music being played on the street. It’s like a bad poet, no one wants to hear it, read it, or experience it. This is one of the reasons why fruit stands should be more prominent in cities like Asheville, New York, Santa Monica, and any local down town area. Tomato and all other squishy vegetable sales would sky rocket.
Basically the message is this. Clean up, get a job, and learn some music theory. If you are really good you might just need to get a job in order to pay for a better instrument and a few new threads to impress the ladies with. After all, we do it for the love of the crowd.
Not all street performers suck though, when they aren’t doped up and/or drunk some can actually sing a pretty melody. Next time you see a friendly homeless person who looks like they were just let out of the drunk tank, ask them to sing you a song. You might just discover that past the feces and urine smell of someone who hasn’t showered for weeks there lays the next Frank Sinatra, or Janis Joplin.
In all seriousness though, homelessness is a tough thing to live through, although even if they are in need it is still no excuse to make horrible music. Rise above and learn to play your instrument, after all what else do you do with your time.
An easy way to alleviate this would be to hire out of job musicians in order to teach the homeless population how to properly play. Parks will be filled with the crack-heads of yesteryear disemboweling you with beautiful picking from the likes of Mozart, Bach, My Chemical Romance, and Sublime.
Not only would we be giving musicians who are in danger of becoming homeless the jobs that they need to survive, but we’d be giving homeless people the hope to one day become musicians who will be teaching other homeless. Best part about the whole situation is the fact that such harsh living conditions will bring out pieces of the human soul not yet seen or heard, but now able to be explored by everyone willing to lend an ear.
This deep music will make the youth listen and pay attention, grabbing just enough of them to awaken to the harsh truths of the world. This will be a turning point in their life’s, some of them might one day even become homeless, or as we like to call them: Aspiring Musicians.