Crazy Musicians and the D Train

Yesterday, on my commute home, a bum boarded the train at 59th street. This is a prime stop for the subway acts hoping to get some pity money, since the D is an express and it travels all the way from 59th to 125th without one stop. So that's about five minutes of unfettered access to anyone willing to pay attention. This key because, on normal routes, there are stops every minute, so a trio of acrobatic teens from Southside Queens can't get through a full breakdance routine or a group of sombrero'd Mexicans will get their rendition of Guantanamera cut short, right around the time that the shortest one starts a solo he'd inevitably flub.

Anyways, this makes the rush-hour D a prime train for entertainment. Sometimes the entertainers are actually talented. Often, they are just nutcases looking to score a few pennies for their next hit, pint of Wild Irish Rose, pack of smokes…or double-cheeseburger, if they're responsible.

Monday evening, as I was listening to the new will.i.am on my pod, I noticed the people I was facing were sort of cracking smirks. I turned around and there was this 6-5 crazy-dude, on all fours, playing a Casio keyboard and blowing the clarinet.

Let me say that this was a fascinating performance. I'm still a new New Yorker, but even I have grown tired of most of these performances, specifically on the train ride home. But, at my core, I'm a sucker for loose-screw bread-baskets getting' it in.

Forget for a moment that Manfred (that's what my Pops calls all anonymous people when he's referring to them in derogatory terms) was the same height as Ray Allen and kneeling in the aisle playing a Casio keyboard. Focus on the fact that he had programmed it to play a house-techno-club backbeat, something sounds similar to "My Humps".

Also focus on the fact that throughout his number, he'd pose existential questions to an imaginary woman name Miranda, which was some computerized women that lived in his Casio. Miranda would always answer "Yeeessss", in a breathy, porn voice.

Forget that he was playing a clarinet to add texture to this diddy. Pay attention that homeboy was straight incredible with it, blowin Trane-like solos over a beat that sounds like he kopped it off Jamiroquai's last album.

He'd also randomly hit us with maxims. My favorite being:

I do not steal
I do not rob
But I wish like hell that I had your job.
Your job, your job, your job, your job.

He did this in a "My Humps" cadence, while pointing at each passenger with one hand and droppin ill, mood-setting synthesizer chords with the other.

Forget that his voice was eerily similar to Gil Scott Heron and focus on the fact that he looked Gill Scott Heron as well.

This brings me to a point that I've spent a lot of time thinking about over the years: I bet that 30-40% of the crazies in this world are former musicians. Not singers or writers or producers -- musicians and songwriters. People that play instruments. To think of some of the stuff they consistently speak through their instruments -- well, I think you gotta handle that stuff in an altered mindstate. Miles was high off blow throughout the 70s. George Clinton was an acid addict. Jimmy popped mo' pills than a little bit. Who knows what Prince was on from 1982-1989. This is why Stevie Wonder is such a marvel.

Anyways…those drugs will wear a brain down and, next thing you know, you're Manfred, kneeling on the D, blowin clarinet.

Manfred, for what it's worth, did not even receive a dirty nickel from the D Train passengers.