by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

Over the last year metro riders might have noticed their stroll to the platforms have lacked a live soundtrack. That's because, one-by-one, the management of the Montreal Transit Corporation has answered noise complaints by removing designated areas where musicians are allowed to play.

"What's happened is that a lot of very good musicians, especially keyboard players, have been using amplifiers and they crank the volume up," says Greg Dunlevy, president of l'Association des musiciens indépendants du métro, which he founded in 1983. "These musicians say that if their music isn't loud they won't get any money. It's a pile of crap. They play so loud passengers cover their ears when passing."

Over the last few months such brash buskers have led MTC brass to scale back on the 60-odd designated music-friendly zones by eliminating spots at Guy-Concordia (St-Mathieu exit), Berri-UQÀM (Angrignon platform and Place Dupuis exit), Jarry and Beaubien metros. As well as being a longtime metro flutist, Dunlevy is known to many Montrealers as the guy who played saxophone while dancing on downtown sidewalks on stilts, something he does less after suffering a serious fall last year.

Yet he sympathizes with the metro travellers, shopkeepers and ticket-booth attendants who complain about the too-loud music. "You're stuck in your booth for six hours with some musician pumping up the volume, you've got mad rushes, dissatisfied passengers screaming at you and then the same tunes played for two or three hours at a time," he says. "It would drive you crazy."

So far Dunlevy's attempts to persuade the problematic musicians to pump down the volume haven't worked. He points to a small clique among the approximately 150 metro buskers who are causing the loss of musical metro habitat. "They're classically trained and technically incredible on their instruments and so they feel they're so good that nobody can tell them what to do."

Last week Dunlevy requested that MTC brass create a roundtable of concerned individuals in the aim of establishing a permit system for metro buskers. To get a permit to play tunes in metros, one would have to pass an audition, judged by a panel of music professionals.

In Toronto, authorities have long had such a practice in force. To busk on most city streets in Montreal, musicians need a $120 permit from the city, although no audition is required. At the Old Port, where auditions are required, nine $350 permits are sold annually to buskers. Right now, the metro operates on a first-come first-serve basis.

The metro brass is mulling over Dunlevy's proposed reforms. "We're going to look at the feasibility of it," says MTC communications advisor Serge Savard.

Dunlevy says the new system would weed out problem musicians, including those who can't actually play music. The threat to yank a permit might also encourage others to behave, says Dunlevy, such as the two downtown flutists who make obscene comments to passing women.

And the downtown drunk oboist would also have to clean up his act, says Dunlevy. "He was extremely good but had some traumas," Dunlevy says. "He lost everything and now stinks. He's always drunk and he smokes in the metro."