July 17th - Day 90

Gio - my first underground busker - who was great, and who gave me the honour of helping him with his sound check. More to come

July 27th - Day 100

This guy performing at Bond Street underground station in the tunnel that takes travellers away from the Central line is called Jean Claude Madhero, native of Martinique, dweller of Paris and resident of London for fifteen years. On his website he is described as "one example of a number of artists who chose perform freely and independently outside the normal protocol of commercial institutions. Outside of any organised environment, whether a theatre or place of workshop" and then, "His music is based on Latin American, Afro-Cuba no and French influences...Jean Claude Madhero seeks to champion this unique sound, Creole music, using it as inspiration to create new and original cabaret style performances." Later on I remembered that Dixie from the Royal George Ukulele Jam (Day 74) had recommended to me a musician who performs regularly between the Central and Jubilee lines at Bond Street and I think maybe it was Jean Claude.

jeanclaudemadhero.com

August 13th - Day 117

This shockingly blurry photo is of Chris the Bagpiper, piping the evening rush hour many metres underneath Victoria Station. I was on my way to see "funk-influenced blues band" Bluesmix at The Ain't Nothin But Blues Bar, due on at six according to The Guide, but due on at 9.45 according to the man behind the bar and I guess he knew best. So I'm glad I stopped to listen to Chris.

September 16th - Day 151

This guy was in the tunnels of Green Park underground station, playing Abba tunes on his sax. When I looked at the photo on my camera, after taking it, I thought I'd got a nifty shot of the passers-by out of focus, but him in focus. I can see now that it's all slightly out of focus - hey-ho.

(Photographing musicians note No. 1 - it's easy taking unobtrusive photos of saxophonists, because their eyes are closed)

September 22nd - Day 157

Like me, you must have often wondered whether The Druids' Ceremony of The Autumn Equinox features music. Today I headed off to the Ceremony on top of Primrose Hill to find out. I have seen many London panoramas from the hills of South London, but few from the north, so the first thing I noticed about the view was that it was back-to-front. After I had got over the shock of seeing The Post Office Tower on the right and Canary Wharf on the left, I looked down the hill and spotted about forty druids, male and female, young and old, clad in white gowns ready to start their prossession uphill. A bevy of photographers tracked them as they ascended. It was some time ago that I begun to see the same buskers more than once on my quest - today for the first time I recognised a photographer from another day (can't remember which one). The Ceremony begun in complete silence, apart from the continous clicking of cameras. I myself was clicking merrily away when ten minutes in I realised that there'd been no music. Then a chap was handed a large horn that looked like a hunting horn to me and blew it four times, once to each corner of the compass. The Ceremony continued. The sun came out as a sword was presented to the sky. Fruit was scattered. Wise words were spoken about being positive, being responsible for ones choices and restoring ones integrity. After about half an hour the assembled crowd was thanked for coming along and invited to chat with the Druids on Druidy matters once they'd disrobed (the Druids, not the crowd). And off they descended back to the tree under which lay their possessions. Some late-comers wondered aloud if they were Druids. A passing woman said to them, "No, I saw them a few months ago - I think they're German".

And so to address the question, "Do Autumn Equinox Ceremonies feature music?" the answer, as much as I would like to count four blasts of a long horn as a live music experience, has to be "no". Not today anyway. So I ventured under the ground and found Egon finger-picking laid-back guitar under London Bridge Station. I watched him play a bit of Dave Brubeck and a couple of other things for ten minutes. It wasn't very busy. He told me it usually gets busy around four, which today happened to be the same time he was clocking off.

October 2nd- Day 167

Grand Live Music Crawl Day. 33 performances of one kind or another I think was the final count. Heavy on buskers because, well, there's a lot of them about, but also because two scheduled performances didn't happen and it hadn't occured to me how big the queues would be to get into free live music venues in Shoreditch late on Friday night. Here's a few photos from the day.

Miss Hypnotique - theremin lady of the plinth!

Billy Childish & Musicians of The British Empire

Man Band

October 14th - Day 179

Due to children commitments and dentistry, I only had a couple of hours in the morning to catch my music for today. I knew it was the last day of "One and Other" on the Fourth Plinth, so checked the net to see if any musicians were up there before noon. What I hadn't realised was that 100 days ago, when "One and Other" began, it wasn't at midnight, but at nine in the morning. And that was the time that the last plinther was due to be scooped back down to earth by the yellow cherry-picker - the same time I'd be dropping the kids off at school. I decided to go to Trafalgar Square anyway, in case there was a post-plinth party in full swing.

It turned out to be a quite subdued affair. A couple of small film crews were conducting interviews, one of them with Anthony Gormley. Thirty or forty former plinthers were standing about chatting, sharing plinth experiences, none of which involved reprising a musical turn. Behind them all stood the newly vacated plinth looking strangely naked.

I went for a coffee in Pret and wondered what to do. I saw Clive Anderson. It didn't help. Back in the square I watched two Harris hawks go about their daily pigeon-scaring duties. Here's a photo (no photos of Clive Anderson having a coffee I'm afraid):

So, with only an hour to play with, I resigned myself to another trip underground along the tube subways, though since I had to get the tube to the dentist anyway it wasn't a difficult decision to make.
This is...oh, I didn't get his name, but he was playing gentle African lilts on his guitar and singing to match. I listened, gave him a couple of quid (for which he asked God to bless me), took a photo, listened some more, wondered if anyone passing wondered why I'd arranged to meet someone in the tube subways under Waterloo Station and went to the dentist.

December 7th - Day 233

Thanks to writing my seven day diary for the South London Press (at a newsagents near you on Friday...if you live in south London) I've recently been spoilt with south of the river music. This isn't a dig at the musical quality north of the river, but...well, living as I do in the foothills south of Peckham that we call Nunhead, it's been good to have the excuse to travel nearer afield. Consequently I found tonight's trip to an open-mic night at The Earl of Camden, in Camden, a bit of an effort. I watched the opening act who was singer-guitarist Treana (I think she also ran the evening). As she played I thought how she, like so many unheralded musicians I've seen over the past eight months, would not be out of place on a summer festival stage. This turned out to be a prescient thought because of another musical encounter a short while later. I left as a young guy was playing his bluesy first song - his face is lit up on the right of the above photo (click for closer view).

The tube to London Bridge stopped at Euston. As the train waited for the green signal I could hear haunting, breathy pipe music swirling around the platform outside (this despite having The Fall on my MP3 player - though not very loudly, I'm sociable like that). In one of those sliding doors moments I got off the tube as the doors slide behind me. At the bottom of the escalator was a guy called Alamin playing an Indian bamboo flute called a bansuri (I have to admit I didn't know it was called that - Alamin told me). He was backed by the percussive pre-recorded sound of, I'm guessing, a tabla. Slightly bizzarely someone else had also heard Alamin's enchanting music and got off the train, though in his case it was because he recognised the sound and the tune and knowing Alamin he wondered if it might be he. I might be wrong, but I think they knew each other from out of London. I chatted with the other guy who'd interrupted his journey, Paul, as we waited for our next tube. He told me something he'd read, about a violinist busker in Central Station, New York who'd been ignored by most people flashing past and received a dollar here and there from a very few others. The violinist was one of the top violinists in the world and he was playing some of the most difficult pieces. So the question Paul asked, and I echo and paraphrase slightly, is, "Do we appreciate music for what it is, or judge it by where it's performed?" Significantly, children passing the violinist busker, hearing only the music, often wanted to stop only to be pulled onwards by their parent.

I've done a bit of research and this article - link below - if not the one that Paul read (it doesn't mention the children, though other related pieces on the net do), tells the tale. The violinist was Joshua Bell. The station was actually in Washington, but what the hey, that's not the point.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/tomserviceblog/2007/apr/18/joshuabellnoordinarybusker

Alamin and his bansuri

December 9th - Day 235

This afternoon the school had an Infants' Music Assembly, for which Daisy and her nursery colleagues were invited to sing and hit things. At half past twelve, however, came the news that Daisy had pulled out of the show, citing as her reasons tiredness and a desire to go to the soft-play centre. So I was left with the dilemma of whether or not to attend a school concert that neither of my children were participating in. I decided against and headed up town not quite sure what I was going to see and with an hour once I was up there in which to find it.

I found Mr Fogg. He was in The Fogg Shop, a Brigadoon-esque establishment that exists only for four days (it disappears after Saturday). This is what Time Out said, "Second day in the four-day life of this highly particular, pop-up shop, which sees Oxford's intelligent, indie-pop electronicist Mr Fogg run through his live paces until the last punter/customer leaves". He was joined by a trombonist and a harpist.

Inside The Fogg Shop...

And outside The Fogg Shop...

And here's some more musicians I encountered during a highly productive hour...top photo is a very good banjo-player I've passed before, underneath Waterloo Station. Haven't yet discovered his name. At the bottom are two enthusiastic charity workers tirelessly singing "We wish you a merry Christmas...from the bottom of our hearts!" outside Leicester Square tube. They're a bit blurry in the photo and there's a bin in the way, but I like the guy smiling.

More about Mr Fogg (and videos from inside The Fogg Shop) at mrfogg.co.uk

January 5th - Day 262

I was on the way to a Choral Eucharist in St John Smiths Square, but got waylaid by this distant saxophonist playing in the walkway that leads from Westminster tube station. Before the Christmas break I'd have carried on to my original destination.

January 16th - Day 273

Jazz at Merton Abbey Mills Market was rained off, so Claire and I went underground and, very excitingly, discovered a busking harpist.

February 18th - Day 306

February 24th - Day 312

Above, a few seconds before the mass brawl that broke out when people couldn't get into the free City Of London Festival concert at St Barts Hospital because priority seats were given to staff and patients.

And below the busker I subsequently encountered at St Pauls tube doing a pretty good John Lennon.