April 24th - Day 6

I was very clear.

"Will there be songs?" I asked my daughter, Daisy, who is three, on the way to her Friday morning toddler session.

"Yes," she said, "I need a wee."

We'd been there half an hour, but despite there still being a full ninety minutes to go, I was already getting itchy. The couple of times I'd been to these kind of events before, I'd rather dreaded the musical interlude, but today I was on the edge of my seat at any movement by Yvonne the helper towards any cupboards that may contain any tamberines, marraccas and triangles. About an hour in, I again asked Daisy if they sang songs.

"I want a chocolate biscuit," she said.

With half an hour remaining and hope fading fast I pumped Daisy for answers one last time.

"Do they have songs?"

"Yes."

"At the end?"

"Yes. I want to go home."

But we stayed to the bitter end. As the last of the mess was swept away I thanked Yvonne - although I wanted to say "Why didn't you sing any bloody songs?" She said goodbye to me and Daisy, then added, "It's nice that Daisy stayed to the end this week, because she doesn't usually".

So penance for Daisy for stringing me a web of lies was to get the train to London and scour the South Bank for a musician. I had to buy some cheese in Borough Market first and then, Daisy on my shoulders, we wandered along the hot, busy walkway alongside the river, past The Golden Hind, The Clink, The Anchor Pub...The Globe.

We were approaching The Tate Modern and The Millenium Bridge, and I was beginning to wonder whether Boris Johnson had banned buskers, when I heard a steel pan and saw this guy half way up the Millenium Bridge ramp. We watched him until Daisy asked to walk across the bridge. She put some money in his case and we left.

An original intention of mine was to interact in some way (talking I believe it is called) with the buskers I come across on my journey. I'm yet to be that courageous, though my cause isn't helped by the fact that these musicians tend to be occupied with playing music when I encounter them. I'd like to find out more about this guy. Maybe he'll be there another day.

(He was. Lots of other days. He's called Gavin and has been busking around here since 1985)

2011 update - I've seen Gavin in his usual spot over the past two years though haven't passed that way for a few months so not sure if he's definitely still there

May 1st - Day 13

It's a race against time this morning. I've got from ten till eleven thirty to find live music somewhere in the West End...can't be hard surely...

10.25 Hungerford footbridge (downstream)

May 2nd - Day 14

My girlfriend, Claire, and I saw this guy performing underneath the arches of Southwark Bridge. He was being watched by a young woman, maybe his girlfriend, sitting against the opposite wall and smoking a cigarette. He sang 4 Non Blondes' "What's Up" and a distinctive punk-yodel version of Eddie Cochran's "C'mon Everybody" that had more in common with the Sid Vicious version.

He was the first of four buskers that we saw along the South Bank that evening. Add to that the fleeting experience of singer Georgia Mancio when we wandered into the foyer of the wrong theatre, and live music accompanying the play "Dido, Queen of Carthage" (about which I should one day write a few words) when we were sitting in the seats of the right theatre, and, erm...well... a lot of music was had.

May 15th - Day 27

An out-of-focus photo of Adi (don't know if I've spelt that right) mellowing walkers with guitar and song as they pass under Blackfriars Bridge. And the first busker I've been brave enough to talk to - thank you Adi! I got so excited at this breakthru that, after chatting, I forgot to stay and listen. As I waited for a bus on the bridge overhead, I stretched out an ear to hear him and wonder how to describe his music. Bluesy feels like a rather lazy and overly broad term...bluesy with a dash of Africa perhaps. And a generous slug of drill provided by the adjacent building works, the competing presence of which, Adi told me, didn't help make for a great pitch. The name of a South African band called Juluka popped into my head. Then the bus came. And I forgot to ask Adi whether he was singing his own songs.

May 28th - Day 40

Two drummers, accordianist and trumpeteer busking under Hungerford Bridge. (I'm moving house at the moment and throughout next week, so blogs may be quite brief during this time - though they, and other unfinished ones, will be updated eventually. Frankly, if I successfully make it through to Day 50 on June 7th, the next 315 days will be a breeze).

June 5th - Day 48

I found a string duet under Southwark Bridge. They were playing Bach (I know this because there was a Bach music sheet on their music stand). They told me that the damp weather was effecting the strings and making it quite hard to play.

June 13th - Day 56

A quartet of ragtime-gypsy swing jazzmen (and fans) near the foot of Hungerford Bridge

July 4th - Day 77

Hugo Simmonds Jazz Band - Millenium Bridge Street Piano. Hurrah for streetpiano, but boo for boxes, because I still can't find my camera recharger and am still relying on my phone camera. I hadn't intended photographs to be a daily part of the blog, but now I'm temporarily camera-less, I'm very sad. And I can't work out how to make the blog photos bigger without the pixels enlarging horribly. They look fine when you click on them though.

I intentionally waited for someone to walk past in the central photo, but the woman just looks like she's in the way. She stopped to watch for a few moments, which would have made a better picture, but my phone was photo-memory-full and by the time I'd found photos to delete, she'd scarpered.

myspace.com/theteddysimmondsjazzband

July 10th - Day 83

My original intention was to catch the street piano at The Tate Modern, only there isn't a street piano at The Tate Modern - it's at The Tate Britain. So it was back through the walkways under the South Bank bridges for me. I found accordian and drum under Blackfriars Bridge. I haven't seen these two as accordian and drummer before, but I have the feeling that I may have seen them in another guise, perhaps playing something else with a couple of others. There seem to be a posse of these ragtime gypsy-swing jazzmen playing in some form or other under at least one bridge at any given time. And they're all bloody good. I must get to the bottom of this. The photo shows today's duo being cheered and "arriba-ed!" by schoolchildren. Well, the children cheered - their teacher led the "arribas!"

August 18th - Day 122

                                                                                                         Seven o'clock in the evening. Here's Courtney jamming with his sax on Hungerford footbridge, earning the fourteen pounds he needed to attend a rehearsal/audition in Camden. He'd had a look at some pdfs of music he'd been sent, but didn't know much about it apart from that.                  

August 26th - Day 130

Another trip along the South Bank shoe-horned into the school holiday day. I've allowed myself until the end of the school holidays to continue snatching buskers along this well trodden path when necessary, but thereafter I intend to be more pro-active in encountering less accessible and less obvious live music - to be bold and step out of me comfort zone a bit.

August 29th - Day 133

...and back in London. This Polish trio drew an appreciative audience on Hungerford Bridge. They were performing Carlos Gardel's "Por una cabeza" when I saw them - apparently used for the tango scene in the film "Scent of a Woman" (they told me all of this). I'd seen them from the train coming into Charing Cross and I was intrigued, so I postponed my planned visit to Molly Moggs.

September 2nd - Day 137

Oliver and I went to the Tower Bridge Exhibition today. Afterwards we walked along the North Bank alongside the Tower and then weaved our way through the City streets to the base of The Gherkin, because Oliver wanted to have a close-up look. After remarking that it was small and wouldn't it be funny if it turned out to be a real gherkin, he followed me to Bishopsgate and over London Bridge. I was kind of hoping we might encounter some music somewhere on our journey, but wasn't surprised that we didn't and so, for maybe the last time for a while, the South Bank came to my rescue. We walked down Nancy's steps at the side of the bridge, past Southwark Cathedral, The Golden Hinde, The Clink Museum, The Anchor pub and as we approached where the path turns and dips under Southwark Bridge, we heard beautiful operatic music. We got under the bridge just as two women stopped singing and bowed to fifteen applauding watchers. They started another piece (which I recognised, but am unable identify) and hadn't got far when two uniformed South Bank Rangers interrupted them. Some cloth-eared, mouse-pushing Philistines from one of the local offices had complained about the music and these two had to tell the women, Elizabeth and Alison, to stop. But they loved the music and were loathe to tell them. Watching the scene unfold without being able to hear the words, the Rangers (Charles and David) looked like fans gushing praise after a concert. I got closer and, bearing in mind the multitude of musicians I've seen busking undisturbed along here over the past few months, asked whether it was regular policy to move people on. Apparently it is, though maybe, I think, only when a complaint is received. I didn't get around to taking a photo until after the performance and ended up only with the shaky image above. Still, at least the complaint wasn't lodged five minutes earlier or I would have missed Elizabeth and Alison altogether.

September 27th - Day 162

This guy, bagpiping on Westminster Bridge, was making a mint from tourists posing next to him and wearing his spare hat. His notice politley requested a donation of a pound for each photograph.

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 3rd - Day 168

There was a Beer Festival next to Borough Market today, which claimed to feature live music, but only featured a children's entertainer and beer when I was there. I was a little bit tired after the exertions of yesterday which ended at four in the morning, despite the fact that live music ceased to be a feature of the day at about ten in the evening. As I hauled my way once more along the South Bank it was something of a comfort to know that I only had to see one performer today. It was a blustery day and the wind gave me notice of this bagpiper, pacing Millenium Footbridge like he was the appointed guardian of it, five minutes before I saw him.

March 2nd - Day 318

Lunchtime recitals at nowhere new and only a couple of hours to play with, but a beautiful early spring day in London. I thought I'd just have a wander uptown. The train into Charing Cross station often stops on Hungerford Bridge and sits above the Thames awaiting a platform. The rail bridge now has footbridges running along both sides of it and from them one can often hear music drifting up to the stationary carriage. Today was not an exception and once the train had arrived at the station I doubled back and watched the guy below. He was playing Kid Creole and The Coconuts' "Stool Pigeon" when I reached him.

He looked kind of familiar. This is because, looking back at a previous photo, I'm pretty sure he's the same guy I came across on May 1st. Same instrument. Same place on the bridge. Same face. All fairly conclusive. See what you think...

I didn't properly twig until later on, but fortunately I'd decided to stop and listen to someone else.

This chap was setting up as I passed him on the way back to the north shore. He gave his guitar a few strums to check it was in tune and began. He sang too, but was very quiet and was somewhat drowned out by the saxophonist fifty yards further south. And by the trains. I like this photo, but like many on the blog wish I could make it larger, although if you click on it, it gets very big indeed. If you go really, really big you'll see that the man driving the speed boat about to go under the bridge is in fact Roger Moore and he's singing, "Da na-na-na-nah na na na, Da na-na-na-nah na na na. Dah-Nah!" It's amazing the little details one can miss if one doesn't look closely.

Ten minutes later, just because it was a sunny day, I stood in the front porch of St Martin-in-the-Fields with ten other people who'd missed the start of today's free lunchtime concert and listened to trumpeter James Woods-Davison performing Torelli's Sonata in D, G1. When the piece finished, the ten were allowed in for the remainder of the show and I went for a coffee and a salmon and egg sandwich.

I was looking at my diary on the way home and realised that, with the possible exception of Friday, fatherly duties mean I'm not able to see any evening music until Thursday week. Time to get creative.