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The Piano Man

alejandrodelloco

19:01 / 16.05.05

This is one of those neat/creepy things that is always fun to speculate about...

SPECULATE LIKE SPECULUMS, MY FREINDS!

■

19:31 / 16.05.05

Art or drama student on his final year doing some kind of situationist stunt as his finals project. The piano was too well badly drawn to be done by an amateur. I'd guess Edinburgh College of Art, Central St Martins or Royal Holloway.

Ganesh

21:37 / 16.05.05

I have a really great pianist.

(Well, the secure psychiatric unit in Dartford does, anyway.)

astrojax69

21:46 / 16.05.05

billy joel, obviously.

■

21:56 / 16.05.05

OK, we know HE didn't start the fire. What else?

Chiropteran

22:51 / 16.05.05

It's that damn Rach' 3, it gets them every time...

Meanwhile, I'm glad that they verified his music as "genuine" - there's been more than enough fake music around as it is.

That is true.

Cube, is it sad when we can no longer trust anything not to be a situationist prank, or is that really just proof that the world is a better place?

Olulabelle

00:57 / 17.05.05

Cube, there are two fairly fundemental flaws in your theory:

A/ Someone drawing a good picture of a piano does not a Central Saint Martin's Art student make, since there are hundreds of little old ladies who appear on Watercolour challenge regularly, who can draw far better than that,

and

B/I imagine it takes a long time to study to the level of Virtuoso pianist and seems like a fairly ardous undertaking just for an (admittedly wicked) art school prank, a la:

Lecturer: Is your final piece ready yet?
Student: Can you give me another 20 years or so, I'm just practicing the Rachmaninov a few more times...

Sax

06:24 / 17.05.05

He's obviously fallen off a cruise ship. There's some fortysomething woman in a spangly dress singing a very off-key My Heart Will Go On right about now, wondering where the hell the pianist has gone.

Sax

06:26 / 17.05.05

Either that or he's an asylum seeker. They'll do absolutely anything to get the dole, you know.

■

07:07 / 17.05.05

there are hundreds of little old ladies who appear on Watercolour challenge regularly, who can draw far better than that

That's what I mean. Most people could draw a piano that didn't have those supposedly raggedy lines. Looks to me like he knows exactly how to draw a piano, and also how to make it look like he didn't know how. Perhaps I shouldn't have used situationist as a term, and should have said overblown and wanky prank, instead. Call me a cynic, if you must, but we had a large section of a newsroom being similarly cynical yesterday. I'm sticking with very committed postgrad art/stage school project.

Ganesh, any kind of clinical perspective that backs up the Hollywood amnesia theory that everyone is touting?

Grey Area

08:56 / 17.05.05

I think he looks bit like Ralph Fiennes.

Liger Null

09:37 / 17.05.05

B/I imagine it takes a long time to study to the level of Virtuoso pianist and seems like a fairly ardous undertaking just for an (admittedly wicked) art school prank

Who says virtuoso pianists can't also be art pranksters?

Looks to me like he knows exactly how to draw a piano, and also how to make it look like he didn't know how

Apparently not, since Cube was able to bust him.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:13 / 17.05.05

Does anyone remember the woman who was picked up a couple of years ago with amnesia and a bag of Barry Manilow records (and no, I'm not making this up). She wouldn't respond to anything except the name Barry Manilow, and I remember thinking something REALLY REALLY AWFUL must have hapened to her. Possibly involving Barry Manilow. She was in the papers for a couple of days, then I heard no more.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:14 / 17.05.05

Ah, here she is.

Sax

08:03 / 18.05.05

It's not really likely that if the Piano Man was a student prankster that someone wouldn't have been seduced by the tabloid shilling by now, unless he's non UK. It's okay doing a situationist prank but if he is from a Brit college he'll have friends and family who aren't in on the prank, and that's a lot of people to keep quiet.

Olulabelle

08:12 / 18.05.05

Oooh. It seems he might have been identified.

I hope this is him, I want to know what happened to him and why he ended up with no labels in his clothes.

Grey Area

08:25 / 18.05.05

I wonder why the BBC has replaced the old photo of him in the suit with the one of him in pyjamas sucking his thumb. The old photo seemed a lot more dignified. This new one makes him look like an imbecile.

Benny the Ball

08:45 / 18.05.05

Because he's French and his best mates a mime artist, so no longer deserving of dignity

Olulabelle

09:40 / 18.05.05

They did that yesterday. I think it's supposed to show that he's obviously (fingerquotes) not well.

Bed Head

10:03 / 18.05.05

Um, I think the link’s just gone back to showing the old, ‘dignified’ photo. Right on cue - someone at the beeb must have agreed with you there, Grey. Could you get your friends to commission a new series of Moviedrome now? I’d like to see Alex Cox looking his old, respectable self again, too.

Grey Area

11:06 / 18.05.05

So they have. Hmm. This is a most unexpected power. Any other requests?

unheimlich manoeuvre

16:37 / 06.06.05

He is still unidentified.

Missing, presumed forgotten
The London Times June 03, 2005

Mourne Kransky

18:13 / 06.06.05

Does make you start to count the people who might hunt you down if you were similarly amnesic. Would be about a month before my mother and Scottish friends would start thinking, "Little bastard has forgotten us." Ganesh would notice my absence when he ran out of clean shirts for work. Only the cats would be instantly aware that I had vanished from their lives but they wouldn't be able to phone the helplines, not having opposable thumbs. And they would really only care so long as nobody else was feeding them and changing the cat litter.

And I don't play the piano, so no international press exposure.

Billuccho!

02:49 / 07.06.05

"Mysterious Pianist" is a great phrase.

Mistoffelees

13:56 / 22.08.05

The mystery has been lifted.

The man is a 20 years old Bavarian. He never had lost his memory. And he never was able to play a piano. The doctors now think about sueing him for all their expenses. He got flown back to Germany on saturday.

I have no english links,sorry. Here are two in german:
link
link

However, newspaper reports now suggest he was only able to play one note continuously.

Loosest definition of 'playing' I've ever heard. I can play ten notes just by sitting on them.

Mistoffelees

14:30 / 22.08.05

Strange, the article in your link says nothing about what the man said. I found out now, that german news mainly quoted the daily mirror.

Found an english link:

Times Online

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

14:51 / 22.08.05

his four-hour performance was described by Michael Camp, his social worker, as "really amazing".

This Michael Camp guy... does he moonlight as a staff writer at The Wire, by any chance?

We're The Great Old Ones Now

15:49 / 22.08.05

It's Sir Ian Blair's pseudonym. You can tell by the pithy and accurate narrative style.

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:50 / 22.08.05

Mark Whitby, 47, said, "It was nothing special. He hit some keys. Maybe 3 keys, definitely on a piano."

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