Day 19: More blindness

I played again today for about 2 hours. I still have no glasses, so I again was reduced to squinting at my list of songs, which is in 10-point font and barely readable. I had a good time - I only missed a few notes, and made quite a bit of money. Nothing particularly interesting happened, however, so there's not much for me to write about. I did get a $20 bill from a girl who said my cover of Avenged Sevenfold's "Gunslinger" made her day. This is the third time that's happened with that song - there's something about the way I play it, or perhaps just the fact that I'm a street musician playing an acoustic arrangement of a country-rock song by a metal band, that gets people's attention. Or maybe its just the fact that it's an amazing song.

Day 10: Make Music Harvard Square!

Today, me and my brother Andy (as the band Mimic the French, myspace.com/mimicthefrench) played in Harvard Square in the street festival Make Music Harvard Square. The festival is modeled on the Fete de la Musique which originated in France, and this is the third year it has been organized here (though the last two years were under a different name, Make Music Cambridge), and the third year we have participated. Our music was far louder and more raucous than my busking typically is, and Andy was using our homemade, buckets and pans drumset, which got some stares. We were given about $20 by passers by, $5 from a woman who insisted on paying us for the demo CDs we were giving out free.

We had a great time, and I think we got some people to listen to music they might not normally gravitate towards - the middle age women who stopped to listen probably are not huge fans of My Chemical Romance or Avenged Sevenfold.

Day 4: Strange People and Dead Batteries

I performed directly after school ended today, and I didn't get very long before my brand new batteries just up and died. A very nice man watched my stuff while I bought new ones from the store across the street. Despite the 10 dollar purchase, I still made money, as some girl gave me $20 for playing "Gunslinger" by Avenged Sevenfold. Some crazy, drunk, homeless guy decided to have a shouting match with an invisible friend directly in front of me. I spent the entire five minutes of his ranting trying hard not to laugh while singing. Some other guy came over and sang (rather badly) along to "Chasing Cars," by Snow Patrol. There were lots of little kids today, which I might attribute to the fact that it was 2:30 - 5:15 on a weekday.

Overall, despite the setback of the dead batteries, I made about $30, so about $20 if you subtract the cost of the batteries. Not great, but not terrible, either.