{"id":1934,"date":"2016-07-29T07:00:39","date_gmt":"2016-07-29T11:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=1934"},"modified":"2024-10-10T18:03:20","modified_gmt":"2024-10-10T22:03:20","slug":"the-boxer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/the-boxer\/","title":{"rendered":"The Boxer (pleasures of busking)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9EOXfpan0K0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Public performance is always a reciprocal process&#8211; the performer does something, the audience reacts, the performer reacts, and so on, in a comodius vicus of recirculation. So when every so often someone says, &#8220;Play your favorite song,&#8221; my reaction &#8212; though I sometimes try to be polite and not express it &#8212; is to think the request is ridiculous.<\/p>\n<p>What they mean is, &#8220;Play what you love to play for your own pleasure.&#8221; But what I love to play for my own pleasure &#8212; in the sense of what I&#8217;d play if I were by myself, with no pressure to please someone else &#8212; is usually something I&#8217;m working on or trying to learn, not something I want to play with other people around.<\/p>\n<p>By contrast, my pleasure when I&#8217;m playing for other people is to find something that pleases them and me both, which may be a song I would not have the slightest interest in singing if they were not there. Which, in numerous instances, was &#8220;The Boxer.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I hadn&#8217;t heard that song (or at least hadn&#8217;t noticed it) before getting to Europe in the late 1970s. I inevitably knew some of Simon <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-1937 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/simon-and-garfunkel.jpg?resize=220%2C225&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"simon and garfunkel\" width=\"220\" height=\"225\" \/>and Garfunkel&#8217;s music, could play &#8220;Sounds of Silence,&#8221; had heard &#8220;Bridge Over Troubled Waters,&#8221; &#8220;America,&#8221; &#8220;Mrs. Robinson,&#8221; &#8220;Me and Julio,&#8221; and some other stuff, and we even had the <em>Bookends <\/em>album at home. But &#8220;The Boxer&#8221; was part of my European experience, along with &#8220;Heart of Gold&#8221; (which I hope I never hear again) &#8212; and in both cases, that experience was hearing buskers and infinite amateur guitarists singing those songs in their various voices, with their various skills.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m guessing I learned &#8220;The Boxer&#8221; from Doug, who played bass with Vince and me on the Paris subway trains, because it was his stock in trade &#8212; some people actually called him &#8220;The Boxer,&#8221; because for a while he made his living by getting on a train, singing this song, passing the hat, going to the next car, singing it again, passing the hat, and so on. (I similarly knew a guy who made his living in the London tube singing &#8220;Mr. Tambourine Man.&#8221;) The logic was simple: it was no fun playing on the trains, so you might as well maximize the economic returns, and this was the song that got the most money.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-1956 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/busking-in-antwerp.jpg?resize=197%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"busking in antwerp\" width=\"197\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/busking-in-antwerp.jpg?resize=197%2C300&amp;ssl=1 197w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/busking-in-antwerp.jpg?w=230&amp;ssl=1 230w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 197px) 100vw, 197px\" \/>As I explain in the video, &#8220;The Boxer&#8221; was particularly popular in Europe because everyone knew it and the chorus just went &#8220;Li, li, li,&#8221; so they could sing along without knowing any English. And it was a well-written song, with some interesting lines, so I picked it up.<\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t play it all that much, because I generally found I did better by singing and playing old pop tunes, thus distinguishing myself from the hordes of people singing Dylan, Beatles, and Simon &amp; Garfunkel. But, especially when I went around the bars late in the evening, someone might request this, and I&#8217;d do it, and everyone would sing along, and it was fun &#8212; at those moments it was one of my favorite songs, because it&#8217;s a nice feeling to get a whole room of people exuberantly singing together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Public performance is always a reciprocal process&#8211; the performer does something, the audience reacts, the performer reacts, and so on, in a comodius vicus of recirculation. So when every so often someone says, &#8220;Play your favorite song,&#8221; my reaction &#8212; though I sometimes try to be polite and not express it &#8212; is to think &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/the-boxer\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Boxer (pleasures of busking)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - 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Myer, the team responsible for \"Let the Mermaids Flirt with Me,\" this song has a wonderful lyric backed by one of my favorite guitar arrangements. Myer was from Richlands, Virginia, and apparently had mixed views of the town's female population --\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Lucy-Brown-John-Hurt-246x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3971,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/one-meatball\/","url_meta":{"origin":1934,"position":3},"title":"One Meatball (Josh White)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"September 8, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I got this from Josh White, of course. It was his big hit, and a terrific performance. I've written about Josh in a previous post, and before that I wrote a whole book about him. It was my first book, and a true labor of love -- it took five\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/joshcovf-197x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1107,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/where-were-you-baby\/","url_meta":{"origin":1934,"position":4},"title":"Where Were You, Baby? (Josh White)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"May 16, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Josh White was one of my first musical heroes, and when I began to try to play blues, his songs figured prominently in that effort. That was one of the things that endeared me to Dave Van Ronk, who was heavily influenced by Josh's work -- though if memory serves,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Josh White Song Book","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Josh-White-Song-Book.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3746,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/hey-now-baby\/","url_meta":{"origin":1934,"position":5},"title":"Hey Now, Baby (Professor Longhair)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"June 2, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I first heard Professor Longhair on a terrific album of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival -- also the first place I heard Allen Toussaint and Earl King -- and it was love at first listen. So I began acquiring his albums, and the more I heard, the more\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/jazzfest-lp.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1934"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5409,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1934\/revisions\/5409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}