An older trumpet player, an improvisor, Herbie Spanier. Parachuted into some punk groups in the mid 80s. He was born in the 1920s. He was in his own world but an accomplished player, (Paul BLey!) exciting for everyone and sometimes weird, good weird. There was an older musician from time to time playing for change on the street, playing vibes or a kit, playing make-shift reproductions or toys, very capable improvisor with crazy white hair growing at symmetric 45˚ angles. I didn’t know his back story but I could tell there was a serious earlier jazz life in his technique. Another old guy, Jerry Lewis look-a-like, thick glasses and a strange indent in the side of his head, used to hang out at Hart House playing the upright both to amuse and make friends, that upright is long gone so is the lonely guy, aren’t they all. An even stranger one used to play the open mic at 300 Bloor street, called Lime, maybe because he was from England. His singing was incoherent, laughing to himself at the same time as trying to sing but enjoyable precisely because it was like listening to another language, pretty sure it was English. I think about those old guys differently being closer in age now. Wondering about questions I never posed, and information they might have enjoyed delivering if anyone cared to ask…but those weren’t the conditions. They were just being music people wherever a public shot presented itself because in addition to knowing your craft alone in a room, there is something else achieved by doing it in front of people.