Citizen Cope Discovers Exciting New Underground-Marketing Scheme

Brian Raftery | November 10, 2006 3:19 am
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From a New York City tipster, a tale of a musical publicity stunt gone awry:

I’m sitting on a Brooklyn-bound F train when two subway musicians enter the car and start to set up for busking. One was an old guy with long dreads and a few missing teeth carrying a guitar and amp; the other a young white guy with a manicured beard and a cello hooked up to an amp. It was kind of an odd duo, and the amps made it seem unusually semi-professional for subway busking. I then noticed the young guy’s bag said “Citizen Cope” on it and that this young guy was indeed, Citizen Cope. Having never actually heard any music [Ed. note: In fact, no one has ever actually heard Citizen Cope’s music] by this dude but having seen tons of promotional posters around town, I was interested to hear what he sounded like. I would never get that chance.

Before Mr. Cope could lay down the first cello lick, another subway busker — this one an old hispanic guy holding his hat out for change while carrying a boombox playing loud mariachi music — walks by. Old guy with dreads does not like this intrusion and yells at the guy to turn off his boombox so they could play their music. Well, marachi guy starts turning up his music, making old guy with dreads very angry. They proceed to yell and curse at one another. Meanwhile, citizen cope — silent, head down — looks like he wishes he could pull the emergency break on the train and jump out. After much yelling, the citizen cope duo head toward the other side of the train to wait until the next subway stop to change cars. although marachi guy and dreads guy are on opposite ends of the train, they STILL CONTINUE TO YELL AT EACH OTHER, making the whole car noticeably uncomfortable. Finally, the train reaches the next stop and all the passengers bolt for other cars, leaving only Mr. Marachi and his loud boombox.

My question for idolator (and its readers) is: Was this subway promotional stunt more exciting than citizen cope’s actual music?

And our question for New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority: Is our security really so lax that you’re going to let someone get on a train with an electric cello? That’s technically worse than waterboarding.