Tonight in the Union Square subway station: 1) a bucket drummer wailing away near the 4 / 5 / 6 trains

2) a bagpiper wandering in the passageway

3) two more bucket drummers pounding in unison on the downtown Q / N / R / W platform

4) a mediocre flutist playing off sheet music, also on the downtown Q / N / R / W platform

The flutist and bucket drummers should have coordinated.

Cacophony aside, I have noticed a sharp increase in subway buskers lately. I guess the economic downturn has caused a lot of folks to cancel their music lessons and slow down session work and composition commissions.

Unrelated: I deleted all the music from my iPod so I can start anew.

I grew up in Wyoming. The whistling and howling of the wind through cracks in my bedroom window was a formative (and often terrifying) childhood experience.  Now, I sometimes crack my windows to create a similiar sound. Now, the shrieking of the wind is comforting.

I have been listening to lots of different things over the past month, but I have not been writing about the songs, the artists, the circumstances, the technology. It's not for lack of things to say. I guess I've just been more into thinking about it rather than writing about it. Which may signal an onslaught of upcoming blog posts, when the levee breaks. This week I heard two songs in situations that struck me as incongruous:

First, on a street corner near Madison Square Park, a busker playing Bon Jovi's Wanted Dead Or Alive on solo alto saxophone. Surprisingly angsty!

Second, on the street in front of my apartment building, a large, sleek black car with tinted windows and shiny hubcabs playing Roy Orbison's Only The Lonely, loudly. Why did this surprise me?