As I noted last time, there are a lot of videos for Busk Break that never made online in a timely manner. In most cases, the recordings were ruined by wind noise, shaky cameras or sirens and street noise. Sometimes, however, they were simply placed on the back burner and then forgotten about as new recordings came in. It’s high time some of these performances were brought to light.
Hershey was one of the first people I recorded for the project that would become Busk Break, so I was excited to run into him again in 2011. Unfortunately, although he was in a good mood when I approached him about recording a new video, he also didn’t seem to be entirely sober. I always feel a little weird recording people who in that context, and even though Hershey was excited to play and came up with a nice little improv, I put the video on the back burner and soon forgot about it. Looking at it again today, there’s actually a lot to like, and what I read at the time as Hershey being inebriated may actually have been something closer to exhaustion.
There are two very big reasons that this Ryan Comer video wasn’t released shortly after it was recorded, and both are completely the fault of the guy holding the camera. (Me, of course.) The first is the wind noise, which isn’t awful, but certainly isn’t a selling point. The second is that I accidentally recorded what looks like me giving the “thumbs up” to Comer. I have no idea why I would have done that, but it’s embarrassing enough that I put this in the archive and totally forgot about it until today. The song is actually not too shabby.
In watching this video of Firecracker Jazz Band member Henry Westmoreland doing his thing, it might seem strange that this didn’t go up immediately. It’s fun, creative and original. So, what was the problem? Well, I actually recorded two songs, and I really liked the first one. But that recording didn’t turn out very good, and I’d actually forgotten that there was a second tune. It was only in the process of going through the 2011 archives that I realized there was a salvageable section of the video. And it’s also a lot of fun.
Bonus!
Strictly speaking, this isn’t a Busk Break. It’s more of a flawed slice-of-life-in-Asheville video that I could never find a good place to post. Last year, the North Carolina Stage Company produced their version of the musical “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.” As a pre-show promotion stunt, the cast decided to hand out fliers at the Friday drum circle in downtown Asheville. While it was a good idea in theory, the cast actually didn’t stand out as much as you might expect in the swarm of attention-grabbing costumes and activities the drum circle tends to attract. Still, there are some interesting moments.
Part of the reason I never did anything with this video during the NCSC run of “Hedwig” was that the video was extremely shaky, and most of the sound drowned was completely drowned out by the drumming. Still, as a document of the drum circle in 2011, it’s moderately amusing. I hope you enjoy it.
Asheville and the Crazy Mile.