Kid Carpet (an anagram of his real name if you can work it out*), in preparation for his new album decided to traipse around London busking and doing secret gigs to promote said album.

Kid used to be in some normal bands until he decided that children's toys were better than proper guitars (he's right) and that old keyboards were better than over-priced super-synths (right again). So he decided to stock up on them both and go it alone.

After we found out about this totally, totally epic (pretty cool) album release plan we decided we had to take the day off work and follow him around checking out how it went. What with the state of the music industry these days, 99 percent of the people involved will be busking/begging for a living before long. It's good to see people getting proactive about it. We met up with him outside Pret before heading down to jolly Oxford st tube for the beginning of what was sure to be an amazing day of guerilla street gigging.

Keeping it underground like Fritzl

The original plan was to play Tottenham Court Road station. The gig had to be moved to Oxford Street probably due to 'engineering works/signal failure' or something. Oxford Street was pretty crowded at that time of day and after filling out all the relevant paperwork we were set up and rocking the tubes. For some reason Kid didn't put out the obligitory buskers hat and therefore didn't earn himself any money whatsoever. According to the internets buskers in London can earn up to £150 an hour! He tells us he's not doing this for gold and is in it for the love and to promote the album. We think he should have put the hat down.

Soho was another good set. Kid got through all of his planned songs and the assembled crowd of gawkers, industry types and confused onlookers loved it so much they demanded an encore. Just before Kid was able to oblige however a G3-mag clutching, big issue seller's dog decided he was displeased with the performance ending so soon. Becoming visibly very agitated and barking for an encore, the beast was only placated by another song, a song about babies. This, however turned out to be a genius ploy to distract all present allowing said dog to make off with all our posh biscuits. We enjoyed Kid's rendition of You Can't Take a Baby Back to the Shops before heading for the pub while Kid set up for the roof gig.

When this whole world starts gettin' me down...