Posts Tagged ‘Honolulu Baby’
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No Problem
0May 1, 2015 by admin
I entered the park with some trepidation. There were 3 guitarists in Strawberry Fields, one playing, one on deck and one counting his money on the fringes of the throng. At the outcropping with the international plaque, the homeless guitarist made it 4 musicians operating in the Quiet Zone. I looked around for the Park Rangers, hardly noticing the white dangling bells of the Solomon Seal spreading beneath the trees, or the delicate violets emerging from heart-shaped leaves in the lawn.
At Bethesda Fountain, Rakeem was blowing up a storm on his saxophone. I asked Jim, the big bubble man, if he’d had trouble yesterday. “Yeah, they tried to chase me, but I made them call their sergeant and she said I was okay.”
Rakeem said, “I haven’t had any problem, and I just saw them walking by a few minutes ago. They rousted you? With that puny little uke?”
I set up on the path, looked around, started to play. Not long afterward, an energetic young man asked if I could play while he rapped. I asked him for a beat and he started huffing and bupping in syncopated time.
“Sorry, man, I’m pretty much a plink-a-plink kind of guy.” After playing around with a few more chord patterns, he found one he liked (Am, E7, Am, E7) and off he rapped about hanging in the park with the ukulele man. About 10 feet away, a cameraman and soundman captured the show.
His name was Ed Bassmaster, a YouTube star, and he was gathering material for his upcoming tv show on CMT (Country Music Television). Ed pulled $4 out of his own pocket, then a production assistant gave me another $20 after I signed a release. He took my card and said he’d let me know when the show was on.
An old man took my picture and gave me a dollar. Another man emptied his pocket of quarters; he was a Brit, judging by his “you’re welcome” when I thanked him. A Japanese man listened to “Honolulu Baby.” After 2 verses, when the 3rd chorus came around, he started singing quietly with me. We chatted for a while. “Haru wa kite,” I said.
“Yes, spring has arrived,” he said. He dug deeply into his backpack and pulled out a change purse. Turning his back to me, he seemed to be counting for a long time, then he put 17 pennies in my case.
A black man, bopping his head to the music, walked by with his girlfriend. As he got close, he let go of her hand, crumpled up a single and tossed it, like a foul shot, into my case.
A couple from Virginia came in view. “Have you got time for a hula today?”
“No, no, but I like your music,” said the man, giving me a dollar. “If we did have time, I’m sure my wife would love to hula.” A guitar player himself, he was interested in my instrument, how it was tuned. I handed it to him; once he got used to the missing 2 strings, he was playing beautifully. It wasn’t long after that I had a lei around his wife’s neck and off she went to the Hukilau. “Boy, that’s worth something,” he said, handing me a 10-spot.
Every few minutes, it seemed, someone was giving me money: a few teenagers, 2 German girls, a dog walker who swooped past, dropped a buck, and said, “That’s because you sound so happy.”
By the end of my set, I’d made $47.76, a very fine take for a day that started out with so much anxiety.
Leaving the park, I saw the song and dance man whom I warned last year to lose the amplifier. Waiting patiently for him to finish his number were 2 park rangers, not Officers Brown and Wheeler this time, rather Officers Thomas and Gonzales. They wanted him to turn off the amp, and to take down the self-promoting sign he’d rigged to the balustrade.
I recognized Officer Thomas from years past and, explaining what had happened yesterday, asked if the rules had changed. When I named Brown and Wheeler, a knowing look crossed her face. “Don’t worry,” she said. “If you aren’t amplified and are at least 50 feet from a monument, no problem.”
“Would you say it’s 50 feet from the fountain to dry ground?”
Officer Gonzales took a good look. “No problem,” she said.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Ed Bassmaster, Honolulu Baby, The Hukilau Song
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$110 of Aloha
0April 16, 2015 by admin
The day started out cool and windy, and ended warm and windy. Yet another guitarist serenaded the throngs at the Image Mosaic, this time with “Here Comes the Sun.”
The water in Central Park was turned on. The sparkling splash of Bethesda Fountain accompanied me throughout my set, and will so now until fall. On the masts flanking the lake were hung long green pennants that snapped in the wind, the metal halyards clanging noisily.
Before I could ask a group of middle-schoolers if they had time for a hula, they were pawing through my leis. We danced a single verse of “The Hukilau,” while the adult leader of the group waited impatiently nearby. As they ran off, a few kids dropped singles into my case; one girl, with purple highlights in her hair, ran back from the Arcade in order to make a belated contribution.
The day was extraordinarily beautiful. Two moms with their toddlers listened from the bench. One of the kids, about 2 years old, bounced to the music, approached cautiously, then ran back to familiar arms. A woman walked by and thanked me with a buck. The toddler approached again, ran back. Finally, holding mom’s hand, the toddler made it all the way and dropped a Susan B. “And the other one?” asked mom. It is a well-known phenomenon: children tend to pocket money meant for me.
A man my age walked up with a big smile on his face. “You keep the real songs alive. I love the low poetry of the lyrics. I can’t stand what passes for music today.”
I agreed. “Nobody rhymes ‘daily’ with ‘ukulele’ anymore, or my personal favorite, ‘hula’ and ‘Honolula,’ although Dylan did rhyme ‘Honolula’ with ‘Ashtabula’ in the ‘70s.”
“Don’t you get discouraged that so many people just ignore you?”
I opened my arms to take in the magnificent day. He smiled with understanding and put $2 in my case. “You’ve got the right attitude.”
People do indeed ignore me, although I figure for every $1 put in my case I bring $5 worth of aloha.
A Hispanic family gathered around. “Have you got time for a hula today?”
“How much?”
“Nothing, it’s free.” So the 4 children, ranging in age from 6 to 16, donned leis and hula-ed away, laughing and jostling each other while dad shot video. When they finished and moved on to other delights, a middle child ran back with a dollar.
It was a big day for Brits, where they love the uke. “My favorite movie is ‘Sons of the Desert,’” one man told me, so together we sang out a few bars of “Honolulu Baby.” It was a $10 performance, boosting me to $22 for the day.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Here Comes the Sun, Honolulu Baby, The Hukilau Song
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Back to Center Stage
0October 9, 2014 by admin
I took up my uke at center stage, under a wind-swept October sky. Clouds, some dark with rain, passed in front of the sun, then moved off to the southeast. The crowds were sparse today, only a few people on the stone benches, reading, eating, enjoying an illegal smoke. An elderly woman started me off with a buck and a smile.
A family of four stopped nearby. Dad gave his young son some money. As he approached to give it to me, I watched the kid unfold two singles and put one in his pocket. I got the other.
A quartet of young Brazilians danced by. “How about a hula today?”
One woman looked interested, but she needed encouragement. “Don’t let it rain. A hula will chase away the clouds and bring out the sun. Do it for your friends, do it for yourself.” She danced, and damn if the sun didn’t emerge .
A 50-something couple strolled down the path toward me. When they got to the benches they sat down and listened to my rendition of “Honolulu Baby.” They were Brits. “Do you know that song?” I asked the man when he made his $2 donation.
“No,” he said, “but you sure sold it. You’ve got charm.”
One of the reasons I prefer center stage to my spot on the path under the maple is that people get a chance to hear more than a snippet as they walk by. Another couple of a certain age had been listening for a while before thanking me with a dollar. Two young women took a seat and, between bites of their sandwiches, struck silly poses for each other. It was inevitable that one of them would answer the call of the uke.
“I don’t know how to hula,” the mocha-skinned California girl told me.
“Just do what’s comfortable for you,” I said. “No rules.”
She must have seen people hula, however, because she had all the moves, including the double-time hip action of the natives. Her friend filmed most of “The Hukilau Song,” promising to put it up on Facebook.
While singing “Ukulele Lady” for the second time, a man in flip-flops and long white hair sat down by the fountain to listen. He introduced himself as Mr. Melody TM, told me he was an international music distributor and asked me if I had any of my own material. When I told him I only played the old songs, he asked me to listen to his latest release; maybe I would cover it. It was called “Riding in the Park,” about horse-drawn carriages. The chorus begins: “Don’t take away our horses, please.”
My time was up. With $10.12 in my pocket, I considered it a fine day.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Honolulu Baby, The Hukilau Song, Ukulele Lady
