It's No Easy Street
Boulevard Troubadour
Marches to Own Beat

by Al Martinez, Times Staff Writer

  The noise of the street is a quick burst of siren, tires squealing, a tangle of passing converstaions, a shout, the bell of a false burglar alarm, a laugh.
   In full orchestration, when the offices are emptying and the commuter traffic is moving, it becomes a rich and compelling melody played fortissimo, full of brass and percussion.
   There hardly seems a place in the grand symphony of city sounds for the street corner guitar of Van Orbitson.

'Magic Coins'

  Yet there he stands, guitar case open at his feet with a few "magic coins" in them to get things started, flat pickin'at his pawnshop-bought Gibson Gospel.
   The crowds swirl around him like autumn leaves, some listening, some not, enribboned by music for nickels and dimes, destination-bent, a song trailing after them.
  He sings. "A young child dances while the working man stares..."
   He sings, "A street-corner song from midnight 'til dawn..."
   He sings, "I've got the rat race blues..."

  Van Orbitson at 29 considers himself a boulevard troubadour on a mystical trip.
   He writes his own music and for about the past four years has wandered the streets of Los Angeles with a tune and an easy smile for the world.
   On this particular afternoon he's in Beverly Hills, plaid shirt, old jeans and steel toed boots a contradiction among the silk and cashmere.
   "Hey, it's all right," he says, "I don't mind, you know! They come by, throw in a little change, maybe say hello..."
   There is an appealing quality to his attitude, even when he is told to move along by an unsmiling young man from Cartier Jewelers.
   "You're disturbing the customers," the man says icily, a uniformed security guard behind him, standing feet apart, arms folded, in the doorway of an almost empty store.
   "OK," the troubadour says mildly, "no problem, it's a big street."

He Shrugs It Off

  He can shrug and smile when a carload of rich kids cruises Rodeo Drive and shouts derisively and one of them throws a single penny with force and arrogance.   "They just don't know any better," says Orbitson, picking up the penny.
   He sings: "Now some folks passing by think it's a joke, I do too when I go home broke..."
  He has chosen beverly Hills because, he says with a quick laugh: "That's where the money is. And also it's where the LAPD ain't.
   "Sometimes he takes his guitar to Westwood or maybe out in front of Cantor's Delicatessen on Fairfax Avenue or to the Century Plaza.
   But the problem at those places is that the police are always telling him to move on, and in Beverly Hills they don't bother him.
   "Hey, look!" he says suddenly, pointing at a passing Cadillac, "Richard Burton! He looked at me! Can you believe it, Richard Burton looking at me."
   He throws his head back and sings, "I'm so happy, yes indeed..."
   A man walks by, smile, touches Orbitson's shoulder, throws in coins and moves on. If he works hard enough, singing and playing maybe 50 tunes a night, he takes home $20 or $30
.
Moments To Savor


   "Neil Diamond threw money in once," he says, still savoring the moment Richard Burton looked at him.   "And Shelly Winters! Now's there's a great lady. She put in some coins and said maybe we can go on TV together!"
   He laughs at this, a good joke on the transitory nature of passing promises. That's part of the street too.   Orbitson, like so many others, is waiting to be discovered. He's thinking that maybe someday a music producer or the head of A&M Records will come by and point and say, "Hey, man, you got it!"
   "Seems," the troubadour says, "I've been waitin' and jammin' forever. I've played some indoor gigs, usually for nothing, and I'd like to play some more, but I'll never give up the street."
   He makes a sweeping gesture to the crowds bustling through the late afternoon. "just look at the size of my audience!"
   Santa Monica-born, a self-taught musician, Orbitson comes of his love of music naturally. His father once had his own band but would have preferred his son to go into another kind of business, as he eventually did: real esate.
   Orbitson tried. He studied illustrating for a while but was kicked out of school because he played music half the night and fell asleep in class.
   "One teacher said to me,'Go sit on a hill for a year and figure out what you wanna do.' You know, I just about did that."
   He used to listen to an old man playing for coins in MacArthur Park and a singer out by Cantor's. "I remember one day I saw an organ grinder with a monkey on the street and I said, 'Yeah, that's for me. All I need is a monkey!" He is standing in front of Nate'n Al Delicatessen on Beverly Drive. An amateur photographer takes his picture and leaves without putting in a dime.
  A street character in brown suit and white sneakers tries to talk to him about sex and life, but Orbitson is busy singing.
   "Oh I've got dirty jeans, been a-workin on machines ..." "People keep asking who I'm tryin' to sound like. Bob Dylan? Pete Seeger? The Kingston Trio? I just say I'm me...an' sometimes that's a hard place to be."
  Dusk comes to the city and a soft breeze scatters leaves that have fallen on the streets of gold.
   He sings, "And the wind goes oh, a woe, a-woe-ohhh ..."
   "Sometimes," he says watching the lights blink on, "I make up little songs while I'm standing here, you know?   "Like if a I see a lady with a purple hat, I sing a purple hat song."
   He strums at the guitar idly, not singing, then says,"I showed my lyrics to somebody once, hopin' to get 'em published and she said, "oh come on, they rhyme, get yourself a writer!"

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