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Chapter two-The Perks of Busking!
In chapter one of “ The Perks of Busking” we left you in the beautiful city of Prague, in the recording studio of one of the Cities leading musicians. We were pondering the outcome of one of my fans desire to get her hands on some of my music and how to promote George from Prague’s music around the rest of the world.
My time in that studio turned out to be one of the most fortuitous sessions of my performance career – it amped my confidence, confirmed my calling and encouraged me to push through some ‘roadblocks’ that were holding me back… and all this happened because I was busking. Six songs later, I waved goodbye, smiling from ear to ear, cassette tapes in hand, knowing that everyone – was very happy with the results.
Those tapes wore thin as I played them constantly on my travels, both my recordings and Georges. Then tragedy struck when I was robbed in Amsterdam and all but one of George’s songs disappeared from my collection. His music was gone, along with all his contact details. Miraculously, one song stayed with me through thick and thin. It survived years of travels and address changes before a recording engineer friend put George’s remaining song onto CD, then DAT and finally onto hard drive. 15 years later… the song is still with me and even though it sounds a little rough – scratchy, like an old vinyl recording, it does have a unique rustic charm that seems to match the story.
The weird thing is… who would have thought, 15 years later – when working on a video for my charity – www.TreeLovers.org.au which encourages people all over the world to adopt an Aussie tree to help environmental education, reforestation and global cooling, I realised that the missing ingredient was a powerful and emotive piece of music to back the visual story. George’s song came to mind. At last I had found a way to promote his music in the west!
So who would have thought that my busk on the Charles Bridge would have led to free studio time and a 6 track recording which gave me a product to sell on the street and scored me many gigs – even an interview and live performance on Irish TV. And who would have thought that my busking and tree planting endeavours would help me accomplish George’s lifelong dream. And who would’ve thought that I would fulfil his request a decade or so later and find myself trying to track down Prague’s very own Nick Cave ( at least in attitude and appearance) – to show him that his dream for international recognition was coming true.
Surely in this era of instant global connections and videos that go viral, somebody out there will help me reunite with this incredible musician. I’m putting our TreeLovers video – with music by George from Prague – out into cyberspace in the hope that it will ‘get around’ quickly and someone will recognise the song and lead me back to George. And if many trees get adopted in the process, then I’ll be one very happy chappy! If you click on the Treelovers link below it should take you straight to the Treelovers website and the video with Georges wonderful music behind it.
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