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 Title: New busking novel - Busker's Holiday
PostPosted: Oct 20, 2015 
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Neo Busker

Joined: Oct 20, 2015
Posts: 1
Greetings, friends. Apologies in advance for the fact that this, my very first post and thread, will contain news of what some might call a commercial nature.

I have just published a novel entitled Busker's Holiday. It tells, in fictional form (and with considerable invention), the story of my own entrance into the busking life back in the 1980s. It's available at Amazon in print and e-book format. Here's a link to my website, where you can read about it:

http://www.modernbluesharmonica.com/buskers-holiday.html

I realize that some here may bridle at the title and say "Busking is NOT a holiday!" I completely agree. Busking is a way of life. I was a full-time busker between 1985 and 1986, at which point I started playing part-time on the streets of Harlem with Sterling "Mr. Satan" Magee. We did that for five years. (In 1987, U2 came by and filmed us; a 39-second cameo in which my partner was singing "Freedom For My People" was included in RATTLE AND HUM.) In 1990 we played the International BuskerFest in Halifax. In 1991 we played busking festivals in Ferrara and Neuchatel and got picked up by a big-time manager. I still play street festivals in Mississippi, where I've lived for the past 13 years. I realized early on that the full-time busking life wasn't right for me, but I also realized, early on, that busking is the noblest, most exciting, and rawest form of musical performance, and it will always be a part of who I am and what I do.

Here's a description of Busker's Holiday from the Amazon page:

"From award-winning blues scholar and musician Adam Gussow, a taut, sexy first novel about the summer busking scene in Europe and a pair of wild-hearted young men who make a pitch for fame and glory, finding a girl or two along the way.

"Busker's Holiday is the story of McKay Chernoff, a Columbia University grad student with a harmonica in his pocket and a blues band in his background. Desolate and despairing after a disastrous romantic breakup, McKay decides to fly off to Paris and reinvent himself as a street performer.

"What follows is an epic summer voyage into the busking life, propelled by the mad exploits of Billy Lee Grant, a fearless young guitar shredder whose Memphis-to-Mississippi pedigree and Dylanesque surrealism make him, when he explodes into view, precisely the partner McKay has been yearning for.

"Burning like a latter-day Dean Moriarty, Bill goads McKay into a sun-drenched, all-night bender, stoked by wine, women, mushrooms, and trains, that careens down out of Avignon and across the French Riviera. What happens next--in Florence, Solingen, Amsterdam, Paris--is a story of purgatory, redemption, and love regained. Hope, in a word, as a modern troubadour returns from his wanderings, reborn."

Busking is life!


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