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Amplified buskers

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  • Registered Users Posts: 15,808 ✭✭✭✭whisky_galore


    Other cities you have to apply for a permit and describe your act. If you dont meet a certain standard, no permit.

    Here just turn up with any old spiel and as long as you dont actually kill anyone its grand.


  • Registered Users Posts: 8,636 ✭✭✭corks finest


    Whatever about the likes of me getting annoyed walking around town, workers in town must be driven demented by the noise.
    Shows how subjective it is, too. While I've never enjoyed that busker, she's never particularly annoyed me, either, yet she's brought others to tears.
    You can't legislate for taste but you can for volume, very simply.

    Agreed, if I had to work in town and listen to amplifiers constantly I’d go gaga -noise is noise if you have to use an amplifier you’ve lost


  • Registered Users Posts: 4,924 ✭✭✭Hangdogroad


    Thankfully the leprechauns have taken a break (for now). Folk ballad crowd now seem to have downsized to just one guy who's at the usual spot outside Debenhams every time I pass. Big fella with a guitar, it seems that he's largely responsible for their "sound" which involves playing one repetitive note on the guitar over and over to an equally repetitive drum machine beat, all amplified to near deafening levels.



  • Registered Users Posts: 16,784 ✭✭✭✭the beer revolu


    And it's the same drum loop for every song, it seems.



  • Registered Users Posts: 16,784 ✭✭✭✭the beer revolu


    There's a group who play on Prince's Street near the entrance of the English Market.

    The volume they play it isn't remarkable, nor is their questionable ability. What is truly remarkable is that the same person has been shaking a tambourine with them for at least 2 years, now, yet she is completely unable to play the tambourine.

    Really, who can anyone not be able to play a tambourine? She, literally cannot or will not keep any sense of a beat, at all.



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  • Registered Users Posts: 1,643 ✭✭✭notAMember


    Plenty of people can't hold a beat, or don't have rhythm, it's not natural for everyone. Similar to being tone-deaf or people who can't match or recognise a note. Probably helping out some friends.

    If I'm cynical about it, being on a street for years, rather than getting a few gigs probably indicates the standard.



  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]


    I never give money to amplified buskers.



  • Registered Users Posts: 16,784 ✭✭✭✭the beer revolu


    I suppose your right but one would have thought that if you have absolutely no sense of rhythm, perhaps you might consider not playing the tambourine professionally!



  • Registered Users Posts: 1,643 ✭✭✭notAMember


    "Professionally" is stretching it, no? :)

    Someone banging a tamborine while begging for scraps on a street corner isn't actually a profession, more of a hobby.



  • Registered Users Posts: 16,784 ✭✭✭✭the beer revolu


    I'd call playing in public for monetary reward, the very definition of professional!



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  • Registered Users Posts: 5,362 ✭✭✭ofcork


    Problem is there are too many around these days.



  • Registered Users Posts: 1,643 ✭✭✭notAMember


    Yes, far too many in town yesterday, heaps in Patrick street, and they were so loud walking past them actually hurt our ears. It was just noise pollution.

    We were buying a couple of donuts on Oliver plunkett street, the guy in the shop couldn’t hear us, we couldn’t hear him. With masks you can’t lip read. The busker stopped and the shop guy said Oh thank god that’s over, that has been going for hours.


    Between the visual noise of signage and dilapidation, the physical noise of sandwich boards, that lighting with the huge pavement footprint, robot trees , street furniture , the audible noise from the buskers, plus the smell of the place, it’s quite a wallop on the senses in there. I find it annoying to navigate town at the moment and I’m an able bodied person.



  • Registered Users Posts: 4,924 ✭✭✭Hangdogroad


    Noisy, drum machine backed rebel ballad crowd in Debenhams doorway are back to the full line up and louder than ever.



  • Registered Users Posts: 5,362 ✭✭✭ofcork


    Whats the story with the flowers etc on the ground near bt door where buskers used to play.



  • Registered Users Posts: 235 ✭✭LapsypaCork




  • Registered Users Posts: 1,643 ✭✭✭notAMember


    Was in a European city over the last few days… very few buskers , I saw one guy with a guitar on a corner, who moved after a few mins. I asked a colleague what the story was with buskers there. They have a rule, 15 minutes of public performance is allowed. Any more than that and there’s a fine of 5000 euro. So because electrical gear takes so long to set up, it’s usually just a singer or a guitar and they move along quickly.



  • Registered Users Posts: 5,362 ✭✭✭ofcork


    Ballad group moved across the road outside old savoy now,they are loud.



  • Registered Users Posts: 4,924 ✭✭✭Hangdogroad


    There's an old lad who wears a cowboy hat and "plays" the guitar around town. He can neither sing nor play to save his life. He's regularly on the same bus as me, always jumps to the top of the queue and all through Covid/lockdown never once did I see him wearing a mask on the bus. Feel like hopping the fecking guitar off him whenever I see him.



  • Registered Users Posts: 5,362 ✭✭✭ofcork




  • Registered Users Posts: 4,924 ✭✭✭Hangdogroad


    Not sure if he's blond, but yes usually wears sunglasses. Always wears a hat, maybe a fedora rather than cowboy hat but one of those wide brimmed hats.



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  • Registered Users Posts: 4,924 ✭✭✭Hangdogroad


    Spotted him again over the weekend, no this fella isn't blond. Grey, thinning hair. He's probably late 60s early 70s.



  • Registered Users Posts: 648 ✭✭✭POBox19


    IF they were any good, they wouldn't need amplification. Best I ever saw was a girl singing opera, a great voice no speakers.



  • Registered Users Posts: 326 ✭✭Level 42


    new wan across from the brog wailing out zombie amplified could hear her all down the street dreadful stuff especially on a monday -that irish trad group outside debenhams get rid of them noise pollution awful makes people uncomfortable



  • Registered Users Posts: 15,808 ✭✭✭✭whisky_galore


    She sounds like an old hand, the howler monkey with the guitar and the cds no-one buys?



  • Registered Users Posts: 439 ✭✭Ozvaldo


    New one young enough down by bodhran where the opera singer guy usually is .fairly bad



  • Registered Users Posts: 5,362 ✭✭✭ofcork


    The leprechauns were back today in their usual spot!!



  • Registered Users Posts: 836 ✭✭✭Addmagnet


    Gotta catch the Easter weekend crowd!

    Quick edit: I loathe and despise amplified buskers with every fibre of my being, whether they're good or bad.



  • Registered Users Posts: 1,380 ✭✭✭Gamb!t




  • Registered Users Posts: 16,784 ✭✭✭✭the beer revolu


    The crazy loud balladeers with the drum machine have relocated from Debenham's to by the robot trees in front of Murray's. They seem even louder, now!

    Seen some more karaoke singers, too. People used to pay to do karaoke, now they hope people will pay them for doing it!

    X factor and its ilk have a lot to answer for.



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  • Registered Users Posts: 5,362 ✭✭✭ofcork


    Their spot outside debenhams has been taken by supposedly homeless roma!!



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