Busk Like Woah - Playing at an Anime Convention
Busk Like Woah - Playing at An Anime Convention
April 17th, 2011, Tora-Con @ RIT
Last year I brought my guitar, Greta, to Tora-con with me. So, this year I made the rash decision, the Friday before, to bring her again this year. By the end of school that day, I had told everyone I knew that I was going to, and Email the Con staff for permission, so I wouldn't chicken out. (Good thing, since I was a mess the night before.) I had a week of prepairation, to try and re-build caluses and the endurance to play for a long span of time.
By the time Sunday (the second day of the convention, with the lowest chance of percipitation, when I had planned to play) rolled around, I had been playing for a week, and had a binder with maybe 20 songs/parts of songs and I had 3 1/2 songs memorized. Oh, and I was a mess. I was exausted before I even got there, carrying my backpack, binder, a folding music stand and Greta, but I set up anyway. My friends were nice enough to put some of their own money in, as a way to sort of 'seed' my case, so others were more apt to drop me some coins, and I was ready for business. Unlike last year, I ended up insde of the SAU, taking up a couch and in one spot the whole time.
Set-up
I found myself sitting on a couch, with my case and stand in front of me, and my three friends (Tiff, Melis & Alex) joining me on the couch. The only reason I made what I did, was the sign that I put in my guitar case. Pop Culture references are key to making a lot at anime conventions (or I would think when playing in general.) It gave me another way to talk to people (Other than them asking me for Freebird), and I ended up making half a dozen different stories up, about how Rebecca Black stole my cereal bowl, and why it was such an expensive bowl in the first place.
I do almost regret sitting for the whole thing, since I couldn't really move around, and next time, I don't want to be restrained by a binder & stand. AKA- I need to get everything memorized. Also, next time I busk, I need to be playing non-stop for more than a week before hand. After 3 1/2-4 hours of playing, the fingers on my left hand were killing me, and a day later still have impressions from the strings.
Crazies & Pains in the Arse
The first year I busked, I found myself lucky, my only issue was one annoying boy that kept tossing ripped up sheets of paper in my case (and wouldn't leave until I turned "Never Gonna Give You Up" into a song about kicking him in the nads.) This year, I found myself lucky enough to have 3 crazy people turn their attention toward me. Oh, and a bunch of girls on the balcony above.
The first was a man who spoke for 15 minutes, topics ranging from people irritating him because he's a smoker, his inability to feel pain or sleep, how he feels about religion, and a movie about a girl product of serial rap -who he thought should have been aborted (since "crazy is genetic".) He was creepy, and the whole time, my three friends and I, just kept looking at each other, trying to figure out how to tell him he freaked us out, without him taking his quarter back, and without asking him what was wrong with his parents.
The second was a woman that seemed to like lurking around us, saying odd things and sitting to close for my liking. She liked to interject on our conversation, and it totally freaked me out half of the time. While, she did make one good song suggestion, I would have like it more if she had not sat on our couch.
The last was another woman. She must have spent five minutes trying to help me figure out how to get my cereal bowl back, and even offered to beat up the "rebecca" mentioned on my sign... I didn't have the heart to tell her it was a joke.
There was a balcony above me, where a bunch of teenage girls were. Last year I learned not to set up on walls short enough to climb, this year I learned that balconies are a bad idea... unless you like have people toss cookie chunks & pistacios at you, and constantly yelling "I LOST THE GAME" and interupting your playing.
All In All
I had a great time. I was given pocky from the ninja of such, really hot guy shared chocolate covered expresso beans and wanted to make sure I would come back and rick roll everyone next year. (I told him I would if possible.) I made almost my whole admission fee for the weekend back, and Singing Friday with a bunch of girls dressed as countries from "Hetalia" was much more fun than I thought it would be... Oh, and singing the Pokemon theme song to people dressed as Digimon and Yu Gui Oh characters.
