Motivation:

Weather was beautiful, so I decided to drag the suitcase-kit out for some street-drumming.

On the way:

Dragging the suitcase up to subway platform, I heard this woman blasting “Green Onions” on her phone. I dug it, and we started chatting.
She eye-balled the suitcase, and I told her it was a ‘traveling drum kit.’
Pointing to the clear circular window of the kick drum head, she laughed;
“well I was gonna guess ‘washing machine,’ but you do you.”

While chatting on the platform, I was harassed by a man (who seemed to be a “menacing” variety of mentally ill), but this nice woman was interjected to protect and calm me. We continued on the train, trading stories about job-changes. She told me about spending most of her life as a research biologist, then getting to retire. I told her of my switches between production, academia, teaching, and more production.

“Boy, you’re too young to have career changes, plural. You spend a lot of time getting fired?”

More laughter along the subway ride. She asked where I’d be playing.

“I have to find a spot, but if I don’t get the door of Reading on 12th, I’ll try the Subway stairs at 8th.”

“You just keep playing and I’ll see if I find you”.

Got the Spot

The most-trafficked door/corner of Reading Terminal market, the absolute best place to maximize happy/hungry/money-handed PEOPLE-PER-MINUTE is the southwest corner, at 12th and Filbert.
Usually, that corner is claimed by a regular street-musician who plays a single conga while singing along through a cart-ported PA system.
In the past, I’ve taken leaner-doors down 12th or even the terrible reverb of the Filbert Tunnel.
Today the prime spot was empty.
Today the prime spot was MINE.

I tried to film another time-lapse of me building the kit at the fastest frame-rate (1 pic / 1 sec), but it missed the first third. I’ll try again soon.

Playing

When I’ve busked before, I’ve just run the GoPro and sifted through footage back home. But that’s starting to feel wasteful, so now I start/stop camera from kit.

I wished I had just be running, then I would have caught Ms. Opera.
A nice, very-buff-for-her-50s Eurasian woman began belting operettas as me in an an alto voice that would have been impressive even if she HAD warmed up (and/or not JUST eaten). When I offered her choice of songs to jam on, she sassed me

“…my prince I’m a QUEEN, this is MY VOICE, I sing MY MUSIC because I’m a PROFESSIONAL… now I’m just trying to get home on my day off but you got me all singing full-voice for free in front of all creation.”

Later, sure enough, Ms. “Green Onions” found me at Reading Terminal. So I pulled up “Green Onions” and played along. Didn’t managed to catch her dancing on the brick, but I did turn on the camera and catch us enjoying Bill Wither’s “Use Me”… before some jamming, kit maintenance, and two successive renditions of dance-jam “The Business,” by Tiesto