Sunday on Broad Street some men dressed as American Indians were busking their hearts out to sell CDs of traditional music (I guess that's what it was supposed to be). These were some of the best faux-performers I've seen out there -- they went whole-hog, dressed in buckskins and feathers with one doing a dance and the other pretending to play some type of wood-flute. Note the woven basket at the dancer's feet -- they were collecting tips, too.
What they and others like them do is set up the instruments and even microphones and pretend to play the music that is blasting over the speakers -- music that is actually emanating from one of the CDs they are selling. I've seen groups do this with steel drums too, and as I came up I really thought they were playing at first.
The most pathetic attempt at this "faux performance" busking I've seen was a guy standing there singing along with Elton John songs. You could clearly hear him over the microphone, merging his non-show-stopping voice with Sir Elton's. I'm not sure he was even selling CDs, he may have just been collecting tips. Not many, though.
