A Guide To Busking According To Adi Cox

12th April 2015_____________________________________________________________________

Adi Cox at Leeds Trinity Shopping Centre, England.

There is a great sense of freedom to be able to go busking in so many cities and towns at any time that you like. There is no interview and no licence needed to work the streets. There are many problems encountered though. Here in England we have alot of cold and windy days and rain fall. Just to clarify:

England is a part of Britain. Britain is the island that is divided into England, Scotland and Wales. Great Britain is Britain plus Northern Island which is part of the Island next to the island that is Britain and all these places are part of Europe. So I am English, British and European all at the same time, but I digress.

So if we are lucky enough to be going out busking on a nice weather day then we may encounter other buskers plying for a pitch to play. The best place to set your pitch is in a medium sized town with a padestrian precinct commonly known as a pedestrian zone in other countries. This is as opposed to those shopping centres/shopping malls that are privately owned and have security. These shopping centres are usually indoors and have music playing anyway through their own sound system, but sometimes these private shopping areas are outdoors and so not part of the public domain and the right to busk is for the owners of the site to decide. The security guard usually tells you to move on because you need written permission to play here. In some cases it may only be a step away before you are on public domain and so different laws then apply.

The police are in charge of the public domain and they only move you on if there are complaints about you and your playing. Some buskers use amplification and can be quite loud. I tend not to amplify myself when I am busking. It is frustrating when other buskers are so loud that you can hear them five blocks away because they take up all that space and so you become limited to where you can play. Bagpipes are loud they even trump the trumpet for volume but some of these guitarists with amplifiers are the loudest.

Parking is always an issue. It costs alot of money to park your car. I tend to park away from the town/city centre to where it is free to park and then walk in to the city centre. There is also a charge for going to the toilet in some places. The local public library is usually free to use their toilet facilities.

A letter I received from a local neighbourhood watch:

Even if you manage to get a good pitch on a good weather day and there are many pedestrians walking past you as you play, in my experience there is not much money to be made. Now that my be because I do not posess the X factor. I do posess the Y factor and the Z factor though because people wonder why I bother and then I send them to sleep with boredom. No, I am joking, I am quite good at my craft really! : )

At the time of writing this the places that I have busked in are:

Barking, Greater London.New Street, Birmingham.Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester.Altrincham, Greater Manchester.Sale, Greater Manchester.

Pilrig Park, Edinburgh.Fargate, Sheffield.The Moor, Sheffield.Leeds.Wakefield.Long Row, Nottingham.Clumber Street, Nottingham.Arnold, Nottingham.Beeston, Nottingham.Derby.Hull.Macclesfield.High Street, Lincoln.Mansfield.Doncaster.Rotherham.Barnsley.Scunthorpe.Retford.Worksop.Ilkeston.

The equipment that I use for busking:

Martin Smith Acoustic guitar Model 401E-N

(I usually only use the guitar above and sing without a mic, but sometimes I use the PA amp below to amplify my singing)

Sub Zero PA81 portable PA system for ipod (I do not have an I pod)

Some of the songs that I play are:

House Of The Rising SunWonderwallGolden BrownPrincess Of The StreetNo More HeroesHanging AroundShould I Stay Or Should I go?London CallingGuns Of BrixtonEnglish Civil WarHersham BoysHurry Up HarryRat TrapLike ClockworkKnocking On Heavens DoorNights In White SatinEver Fallen In Love?Smells Like Teen SpiritDown In A Tube Sation At MidnightBoulavard Of Broken DreamsForever

People Are StrangeThe One I LoveKeep On Rocking In The Free WorldWhite WeddingSound Of The SuburbsMonsterClass War (own original song)The Miners'Song (own original song)

The Higher Ground

written by Adi Cox

12th April 2015_____________________________________________________________________

It is a shame to see people who are full of themselves for all the wrong reasons. People generally like people who are happy. We like people to be happy and celebrate their happiness with them when we can. To be proud, jovial and boastfull are some great qualities to live by if we can share these feelings and give others some satisfaction, encouragement to be who and how they want to be.There are some lowly people who have positions of power. With their positions of power they have become corrupt. Their behaviour is justified by the tolerance and moderate behaviour by those around them:

Quality people who conscienciously keep themselves in check can open the way for a weak and bullying boss to be tolerated. The problem is when these weak and bullying bosses are oblivious to their faults. We all make mistakes and when we do we usually regret our mistakes and hopefully correct ourselves. The corruption occures when twisted ideas take hold. Those traits that make a strong boss does not always make a strong person. Personally people should come first before intolerance, greed and selfishness. Any society that reveres those traits that subjugate people is twisted and morally bankrupt.

Milkmen used to deliver milk to peoples houses early in the morning. People would wake up to pints of milk on their doorstep. The Milkman would come round on a Saturday to collect the money that was owed.

The milk that we used to get was whole milk and the cream would rise to the top of the bottle. It would be a treat to open a new bottle of milk and put the cream of the milk in a coffee. Sometimes we would shake up the milk so that the cream was evenly distributed amongst the milk for everyone. "The cream will always rise to the top." is a phrase often cited to justify the status quo. This is an attempt to reassure people in a patronizing way that if you have a talent or a quality then you will naturally find your just place in society. Well that all depends on the society that you live in. The milk that I drink now is semi skimmed so some of the fat has been taken out, as we are told that too much fat in your diet is bad for you. This is what cream is. It is decades since I have poured the cream of the top of the milk in my coffee and there are no milkman now. Milk is bought from the shop with all the other food items. So the conclusion is that the cream does not always rise to the top and in turn this means that not all societies allow the best, brightest, most talented and most deserving to rise to the top positions in that society. In some cases it is only the scum that will rise to the top positions and I believe in Britain today that we really need to keep this in check.

People and power is an oxymoronic combination because power by its nature is corrupt and creates struggles within society, whereas people are by nature usually a force for the good of others. My last point can easily be overlooked in a society where its media hypes and sensationalizes everything that it can in order to sell and to make money. The depths to which the press will go to is astounding. It is easy to lose faith in people when the media circus that surrounds us is constantly bombarding us with the worst of human nature. The world is full of great people and to base your life on any other assumption will constrict your life.

What It Is To Be A Northerner?_____________________________________________________________________

Written by Adi Cox

6th April 2015

What it is to be a northerner? I am a midlander. I was born in Lincoln and I now live in Nottinghamshire near mansfield, but my sensibilities are as a northerner. I live in an old pit town called Ollerton near sherwood forest. The heart of Ollerton was ripped out in the miners dispute. A community spirit has been changed forever. It is like we are excluded from the political table. I feel unrepresented in a Britain that is dominated by a london centric south.

At one time the north had a proud working tradition with the trawlermen, miners, steel workers, engineering and ship builders. The new north has lost its industrious identity, which in turn has given way to baseless less solid foundation of business and entrepreneurship. The new culture is led by the financial south east which is a very dubious culture of quantitative easing (printing money) and many more corrupt practices which lay at the heart of westminster and the politicians of our day who think it is okay to be bought and payed for by big business in the form of lobbying and who on a daily basis refuse to use any political will to address such blatant and obvious malpractices that our corrupt system has incorporated.

The upshot is that we have a financial system that is based on a very insecure foundation of debt. The political climate has moved from a traditional leftist working agenda championed by the north, through a capitalist system based on the foundations of wealth and then finally where we are now: A very sick nation that is based on debt. Like a drug addict who will not get their self clean, we are not dealing with the problem. Whilst we have corrupt self serving politicians that are usually above the law and a press that has been censored by a wealthy elite this sick nation will just carry on this unhealthy path. The only way it can change is if there is a major catastrophic event to revolutionize and get our once proud nation back on track.

Adi Cox 6th April 2015

Self Promotion.

written by Adi Cox 30th January 2015.

I have tried to promote myself in many different ways over the years. First was to play guitar in a punk band. I would have been a young teen still at school. My friends and I formed a punk band. We were given little support at the time although Punk Rock was the music of the time. This would have been the late 1970's.

In my early twenties I became a DJ. There was a distinct lack of opportunities to play my guitar and so I took a chance of becoming a DJ with a mobile disco. Again it was self promotion. I became a self employed DJ. There was a market for Dj's because there were many pubs, clubs and social events that could use the services of a mobile DJ. I got to know many other DJ's and became part of the DJ culture in the city of Lincoln, England. This lasted for fifteen years between 1986 and 2001.

Thirdly I decided to promote myself to do mathematics. This was daunting at first, to be in a maths class, but over the years and with the support of the Open University I managed to pay for a degree in mathematics. I finished my degree in 2008 and soon after the course fees went up five fold and so this avenue of self promotion in education became a closed door to me.

I am fifty years old this year (2015) and my new venture is to go busking. I have spent about seven years improvising on my guitar, singing and uploading videos on the internet, mainly You Tube. for the last year I have been getting a set together of about fifty songs to sing along to and play on my acoustic guitar. It is January now and very cold outside, but still I go out and play my guitar. All that remains for me to do is to hand my notice in, so that I can go out to promote myself by busking. I have saved some money over the years on my minimum wage, care work job. So now I am ready to go out to try my luck busking in the city centres of the north and east midlands of England. Let's see what this self promotion will bring me?

I have never wanted any promotion in my capacity as an employee but, if you feel that you are not getting anywhere, my advice is to not wait for those in charge to give you promotion, but to be more pro- active and imaginative. My successes are minimal, but they are my own and not by the appointment of someone else.