For several hours today live music repeatedly slipped from my grasp, disappearing around one corner as I rounded the previous one, leaving tantilising tracks. There were the gospel voices above Lady Meg's African Restaurant next to Peckham Rye station. The Romanian jazz musicians, loud and unseen as the train rolled over Hungerford Bridge into Charing Cross station. The accordianist at the far end of Villiers Street. The musicians packing up their instruments as the last of the Sport Relief mile runners approached along the Embankment. The person singing into a mic at the Sport Relief entertainment area that had been replaced by boys street dancing to Michael Jackson by the time I got there. The Soho pub where the jazz wasn't free, as I'd thought, but was eight pounds. The audience clapping an unseen attraction as my bus drove over Camden Lock. The piano lit up by the sun in the empty Fiddlers Elbow bar on Piano Jam afternoon. The chap packing away his guitar back where I'd seen the clapping audience next to the lock. The array of musical instruments leaning up against the wall behind him.
I waited to see what would happen to these instruments. A man sat down next to them and ate celery. In front of them another man sat on a stool whilst a friend massaged his shoulders. Some people greeted each other and one by one they picked up instruments. The guy being massaged also. The band was called Cocos Lovers and they come from Deal in Kent. They were headlining up the road at The Enterprise pub in the evening (whilst they busked they promoted the gig and sold CDs). This sunny Sunday late afternoon alongside the lock, I think however, was ideally suited to their shiny Fleet Foxes-esque set.
(man eating celery on right)
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