Anyone seen the news article on this yet? Tomorrow in the city centre, former Smiths bassist Andy Rourke will set about trying to gather as many budding singers and songwriters as he possibly can in a bid to raise awareness of the forthcoming Versus Cancer all-stars charity gig that will happen in March and feature a slew of local luminaries old and new.

Says Andy: "Anybody can get involved - anyone who can just about play a guitar, or someone who wants to just come along and yodel. It can be rubbish, it can be pure comedy, even if it's just someone playing a triangle!"

If you want to take part tomorrow and also get a free t-shirt, send an email with your name, contact details and a bit of info on what your act will be, to this address:

busking@greatnorthernproductions.co.uk

The activities will occur around the city centre between 2pm and 4pm, and the climax will take place in Exchange Square at around 3.30pm with everybody making as big a racket as they possibly can (bring your earplugs and don't take any milky drinks into the area, otherwise they might become liquid cheese).

This sounds like a load of fun, and I might well be back from our latest folk train gig (which unfortunately clashes with much of it as it happens tomorrow between 11.30am and 3.35pm with the Chorlton Folk Club as guests) in time to catch this last half hour of mayhem. :)

:rock: :rock:

On the subject of busking, do any of you remember the one-man-band, who called himself The Little Big Band, belting out blues and rock tunes from the steps of the Royal Exchange, circa 1985? The guy was a genious, who used to draw massive crowds. I think he played drum, banjo and mouth organ (I can't spell harmonica at this time of night on a Friday). He also sang - pretty well. Does anyone know what happened to him? He probably got married, had 2 kids and became a chartered accountant!

We could actually use this thread just to recount our own stories of buskers past and present - that could be quite interesting! :)

The guy you mention I remember him vaguely, but around that time I was still not yet a full time resident in the Manchester area. There was a similar one man band busker who has always tended to perform on Market Street near the large HMV - he had a pedal drum/cymbal and guitar and mouth organ too, but recently there hasn't been that many sightings of him.

Everyone probably remembers that scary wild-haired nutter who always lurked at the bottom end of Market Street under the Voyagers food court right against Boots entrance. Didn't he get his final marching orders because he was intimidating people with his delivery, all that maniacal bashing of his guitar and sudden yelling certainly got the willies up a few passers by! :lol: He was a right character. Sadly, he's not there now, but we could do with more people like that. There's too many of them playing "safe" these days.

Bad time to do it because he just lost 76,000 people to the footy.

Blimey, yeah - that's a point - ManU vs Villa - again! Ha ha ha ha - bet you're chuffed!

I'm sure the event will still appeal to the blue halves though .... :lol:

City are playing at the same time and its only in Bolton. They'll only be afew in the ground and most so called City Fans won't even know they are even playing anyway.

Think I just heard on Terry Christians Radio Manchester prog that they got the record .

any pics anyone?

Sadly, no - :( I missed the whole bloody thing by about 4 minutes due to two main reasons:

1) they moved the final "venue" at the last minute didn't they? I mean, I knew it was going to be a bit of a mad scramble for me to get there what with having to dash from Piccadilly Station to Exchange Square after getting off the train back from Hathersage (on which we did our gig with the Chorlton Folk Club) when it arrived back in Manchester at 3.35pm, but when I got to Exchange square at about three minutes to four, half hoping that it was running late (as these things usually do), there was no sign of crowds or anything. Nobody told anyone that they decided to hold the big jam in nearby CATHEDRAL GARDENS by the Urbis!! :( And we didn't hear any noise coming from behind the Triangle anyway, otherwise it would have at least alerted us to the fact that it was taking place around there. (Perhaps because it was acoustic, one really wouldn't have heard much anyway?)

2) Due to hanging around the square wondering what was going on, I was obviously wasting valuable minutes and when I DID finally bump into some buskers (some people from a Manchester Samba band that I myself used to play in), they told me it was moved to Urbis, and as we made a dash in that direction we bumped into other Sambistas and buskers coming in the opposite direction and that was when we realised it had finished....the bloody thing had run dead on schedule and ended at 4pm ON THE DOT! Bloody typical eh? You're late for summat by a couple of minutes and you find everything runs bang on time, whilst on the other hand when you arrive at an event early and in plenty of time so as to not miss it, everything runs sodding late!

Anyway, I had a quick wander round and caught up with a few random punters to ask them how it went. They all said it went brilliantly - for the busking finale they were joined by Andy Rourke, Badly Drawn Boy and Bonehead from Oasis for a massed rendition of "Wonderwall" - which would have been interesting just to get an earful of. I then managed to catch Bammy's next door neighbour (the aforementioned Bonehead) and have a few words with him - he said it went really well and told us that the bash was continuing inside the Urbis terrace cafe (as opposed to the Hard Rock cafe, as stated in the MEN the night before) with Andy, Damon (Badly Drawn Boy) and a few others - but I think you needed participant passes / T-shirts to get in anyway - the usual sort of bobbins...

Still, it looked like an exciting afternoon, just a bloody shame it wasn't held today (Sunday) instead - I mean, look at the weather right now!! It would have been perfect for pictures wouldn't it? It's just a shame I missed much of it ..... bloody bummer always having things clashing innit?


Oh well, by way of minor consolation, I did see it feature on the local BBC NorthWest news that evening when I got home - a quick shot showing the massed singalong, a few brief words from Bonehead, Andy and Damon, shots of various buskers, and even our Samba band on there.... just to prove it really happened!!

Hey, this sounds fantastic! I hope it catches on in other places. :)

It more than likely will, I reckon - Liverpool of all places should have seized this initiative years ago - already long known as the busking capital of the north anyway! Remember that "Drums Across The Mersey" marathon event they used to have every year at the Pier Head whereby hundreds of drummers (amateur and professional) would take it in turns to perform the longest massed relay drum-a-thon? (Zak Starkey [Ringo's kid, Who, Oasis] and Chris Sharrock [Icicle Works, The La's, Robbie Williams] were two of the more famous drummers taking part) That was very popular and got lots of news coverage. :yes: