Spin Bob Spin

Never under estimate the truly clueless...
There I am sitting on the subway, heading back to Brooklyn after a very satisfying evening watching my Rangers beat Toronto. I am sitting there minding my own business when who should step onto the train but Bob Marley. OK it wasn't Bob Marley, hell it wasn't even Jacob Marley though a dead man would have been more talented. Two hundred dollar leather shoes, three hundred dollar (at least) 3/4 length P-Coat, Exquisitely manicured corn rows that fell gingerly down around his shoulders and a better than decent acoustic guitar with the appropriate hundred and fifty dollar gig bag. The man could not play a lick. Why is it that people who can't play or sing choose to defame Bob Marley. What did Bob ever do to them? "Redemption Song" becomes "Revulsion Song" and then he wants me to give him money for it. The guy's dressed better than me for Christ's sake. If the guy really feels the need to express himself (poorly) then why doesn't he sing a Madonna song or better yet, Mariah Carey. Bob certainly doesn't deserve this kind of treatment and I am sure he is spinning like a whirlpool dishwasher in his grave.

Speaking of Bob's, how many times do I have to hear "Knocking on Heaven's Door" butchered but by some rich white kid from Westchester who is spending the day slumming in his ghetto gear and pre-treated dread locks who couldn't carry a tune if it had a handle on it yet they think they are channeling Bob Dylan, who by the way isn't dead though based on his association with "Cold Mountain" and the subsequent video you might wish he was. (was that the longest run on sentence in history or what).

It reminds me of those High School parties where inevitably somebody would produce a guitar and every guy in the room would take a turn trying to get through bad renditions of "Horse with No Name", "Stairway to Heaven" and "Freebird". Everything is great, the girls hang around and sing the guys are feeling really cool until the guy who really knows how to play shows up and screws up everything. Then it's time for the hacks to go back into the kitchen and the backyard in order to find that one girl who is drunk enough to think that getting naked with them is a good idea but not so drunk that they throw up on the wanna be Neil Youngs/Gordon Lightfoots or accuse them of heinous things the next morning.

But Buskers in the subway are the worst. They always pick some song that they have no chance in hell of being able to preform well, yet, there they are. It's kind of like "Idol America" that way, with the edition of the pungent aroma of urine and subway grime. A joy for one and all to behold. Now isn't that kind of entertainment worth a quarter.