Last week I recorded some music and a few small video clips of two Romanian musicians playing on the streets of Paris. Their routine was to set up in the street or on the sidewalk in front of a cafe, say "bonjour, bon appetit" and launch into 3 or 4 tunes. Then the saxaphonist would take his coin purse and pass through the cafe while the accordianist went on playing another tune or two. Then on to another cafe. After 5 or 6 cafes, they would disappear back into the subway.
It's how they earn a living and it's about as basic and honest as music gets. They get paid if people like the music.
Here's a 10MB video clip. It will take about as long to download as MC does.
http://www.jriver.com/~jriver/pavel/MOV00899.MPG(I had to fiddle with Internet Explorer settings under "advanced" to keep IE from playing the video.)
Anyone else interested in street music? It would be nice to collect a few clips.
BTW, they spoke no English and almost no French, so we did a lot of talking without understanding too much. I tried to tell them I wanted to buy some music for exactly this purpose. I think they understood the 40 Euros ($45) I gave them and the beer I bought.
Here are some smaller music clips of the same musicians:
http://www.jriver.com/~jriver/pavel/030708007.WAVhttp://www.jriver.com/~jriver/pavel/030708009.WAVIn the second one, you can hear a guy playing along by striking the bell on his bike as he rode by (around 1:15 into the track).