Musical Abuse on Hoxton Square

Dear Group with Guitar on Hoxton Square,

The wet weather is getting everyone down, it’s ruining people’s weekends and I would be as unhappy as the rest of London were it not for the sheer delight in knowing that you won’t be sitting outside in the morning. Yes, Hoxton Square is a public space and you have all the right to be there but your attempts on the guitar and seven-part harmonies are just criminal. Not in a good way, not old-skool criminal, actually illegal.

Recently your musical efforts have woken me around 7.30am – possibly a reasonable time to awake on a weekday (and I am being generous here, most of the arty-farty creative types around here don’t spring into action until the am hits double figures) but on a weekend, this is definitely unnecessary. It’s not the noise, the square gets really busy all the time and I actually love a good guitar sing-a-long, but ‘good’ is the operative word here. Your early morning, weekend karaoke sessions make me weep. Acid tears.

Not only is the hour you choose to play crap but hmm… how to put this nicely – YOU are crap. I hate to break it to you guys but no record producer is going to throw open the windows in elation to have just discovered folk’s answer to One Direction. You are extraordinarily bad and worse. You’re not even murdering your own songs, you are abusing other artists’ work. They invented the tune and wrote the lyrics. It worked for Bob Dylan so hey, when singing Blowing in the Wind, how about you try and stick to the chords?

Saying that, sticking to the chords of any song would be a great start. Just singing the lyrics of a song over the only set of chords that you have struggled to teach yourself does not make it the tune! Let it Be does not sound like Robbie Williams’ Angels. Which reminds me, that Stones classic that you all ripped to pieces is not called Angel but Angie – GOOGLE IT. If you are intent on murdering an absolute classic, at least have the decency to give it a good send off!

Your love for piano led pieces also astounds me as you quite obviously don’t have one! Since this is the case, how about we agree that attempting Bohemian Rhapsody at 7.55am on a Sunday is the worst idea in the world. You cannot play that song on the guitar unless you’re bloody Brian May. I am no musician or major music buff but I do know that whatever it is you are doing, it is not making sweet music, it is making nothing but enemies who will one day snap and unleash a world of pain on you. The time is nigh for you squawking weekend Hoxton Square singers. The time is nigh.

So thank God for the rain that keeps you away because if you are just dying to get out there again there is absolutely fook all I can do to stop you. I just hope that you are utilising your time indoors practicing because I swear I won’t survive another violated Gaynor classic.

Image by Johnny_boy_A courtesy of Flickr