Maybes some of you have seen it before, just wanted to share with those who haven't. Mini documentary on real life blues buskers in Montreal metro & subways featuring Bad News Brown (before he made it big time and later died in 2011).
Check it out, real life, street level & unpolished. Like we say in South Africa, 'The Real Makoya'.
I don't think I've seen the documentary before. I'll check it out later. I liked how he used the harp in a different genre. It was a shame when he was killed.
Wow. Just watched the first couple of minutes (I'll have to watch the rest later on, after work), and man was that cool! Thank you for posting. I've been a big fan of BnB, but had not seen this vid before. What a talent he was! ----------
Okay. I couldn't resist. I shut the door to my office, put down the stack of papers I was grading, blew it up to fullscreen on my laptop, and hit play. Wow. I've got 6 things to say.
1) If you can watch that and still deny the connection between Blues and Hip Hop, then I don't know of anything else that will convince you. Can you think of a modern harmonica player that lived the Blues-life harder than Bad News Brown did? I can't. That's the serious stuff of the Blues right there. Poverty. Violence. Money. Hustlin. That's the stuff.
2) Trumpet and Harmonica! Man, I had never even thought to put those two things together, but what BnB and his homeboy threw down there in the Metro was amazing stuff. So cool. Damn.
3) This film really makes it clear how talented BnB was, and how hard he had to work to get where he got to before he was killed. He had his demons, but he was slaying them (unfortunately, one seems to have gotten him before he could get it). That man was something special.
4) I think I finally realize why I love his music so much. Listening to him play as a busker, that's the closest thing I've heard to the music that I want to be playing, and that I do play when I busk myself. For me, and my own vision of how to move the harmonica forward, this is it. This is the way!
5) Isn't the Film Board of Canada just great? I miss seeing random short docs like this one... I used to catch stuff like this all the time when I lived up in TO. We don't do stuff like this down here in the states... We need to do more...
6) Don't the Metros of Montreal seem awesome? Seriously. When was the last time you saw so much harmonica in one place! That seems like Mecca for street musicians!
