Buskers and the Walking Ovation

Bakerloo Breeze! This is in the Jewish World Review, about how buskers are auditioning for subway managers. Can this policy ever be a good thing; might it block the kind of energy and inventiveness that only comes with illegitimacy? How much does a musician having to keep on their toes, their wits about them, being on the look out, inform their performance? Having always been a fan of irreverent busking, I was immensely fond of a busker I used to see regularly while I was studying in Sheffield - an old gent, who would stand next to an 80's style ghetto blaster, not even bothering to tap his foot to the jazzy tracks being played through the speakers, though his hacking cough would occasionally snap along with a string on the fret of a double bass, and his wheezing could be heard above the brush on a snare drum. How would his style of detached pleurisy-jazz go down on London Underground's casting couch, I wonder?

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1003/union_no_endorse.asp