January/February in the Mix

Great news about this blog - the lovely people at local magazine "Culture Hub" have given me a full page in their monthly publication.  It's a free guide to everything culture-wise going on in the North and you'll be able to pick up a copy from various bars and cafes.

January and February have been interesting months for the busking scene.  Post-Christmas blues and biting cold air meant a lot of the seasonal buskers chose to put their instruments down for a while, but there has been a resurgence in the last few weeks of street performers doing their thing.  This is in part to the Belfast Telegraph's busking competition.

I've got to say it's an interesting coverage of some of Belfast's best buskers, but I was a little bit miffed - I felt as if my idea had been stolen.  Whilst I'm not the first person to film buskers and in fact, there's a few excellent series of busker videos - (the buskers of Belfast, Wonder walk etc. are all worth a view if you're a busking enthusiast) however, part of me wondered had the popularity of either my youtube channel, or this blog inspired them to run the competition.  It would seem unlikely but they've removed two attempts at promoting this blog in their comment section, which is a little bit frustrating.  I don't want to have too big a dig at them, who knows when they're looking a journalist with my particular set of skills or expertise, though I'm not really sure if they'll get that desperate any time soon!

So which act did I enjoy the most over the last few months?  These new guys were definitely front runners.

These fellas were friendly and chatty.

Corn Market saw a few group acts taking centre stage - southern pop/rock/indy band Key West jammed away in part to promote their upcoming Mandela Hall gig, on the 6th March.  Here's them perform their last song on that particularly cold Saturday afternoon

Guitarist Glover explained how the band came to be, their influences and their hopes for the future.

One of the Telgraph's favourites also appeared on the streets, the day after their competition began.  Young Buddy Holly look a-like Hugo Boitel-Gill whipped out some neat guitar work.

We also saw some old favourites.

That's all for now!

Christmas Recap Part 2

Well the weather outside was frightful, but the jazzy music made it a little bit more brightful (this is why I still haven't got a job working for the Sun, my puns aren't up to standard)

Over the course of the Christmas period, I often came into contact with buskers who busked for other reasons.  Some may not have been the most gifted of musicians or that their circumstance prevented them from performing them at the highest level, but their presence was none the less appreciated, just like Liam's.

Others like Nathan Miller showed us incredible talent, playing three instruments in harmony at once.

He took time out to tell us of his influences

Christmas Recap part 1

If you've followed this blog so far, you may have been under the impression, just as I was that my ineptitude with computers plus festive merriment caused me a great inconvenience and videos recorded in the festive season had been destroyed.  Thankfully I didn't so much lose the files but merely misplaced them.  As luck would have it, just as I accidentally misplaced them, I accidentally found them.  As there were so many of them, I'm going to spread them over two installments. So check back here in a week

If you were around Belfast city centre at Christmas time you would have found it incredibly difficult not to notice the talented Romanian traveller bands, belting out carols and Christmas tunes on Royal Avenue.  Here's one of them:

Perhaps you also heard young acoustic guitar playing singers like Declan Hayes, giving renditions of Elvis or Johnny Cash classics.

He offered up some of his time to tell us about his experiences.

Lastly, you might have also seen one of Belfast's talented music men, Chris Mercer playing two instruments at the same time, or singing and playing.

Just like Declan, he was happy to fill us in on his busking life.