Hecklers of the Underground

Whenever Lisa and I play the subway we meet so many people who are so nice to us. But every once in a while we meet a heckler. For instance, last week when I was singing "Long December", some one started singing along with this super exagerrated Adam Duritz voice. Then this scizophrenic guy started yelling. Sometimes I change the words of the songs to fit the mood. I took poetic liscence with the second verse of the song, and said, "The smell of hospitals in winter and the feeling that people are saying weird stuff wherever you go."

This other drunk guy last week started heckling me to the tune of Leonard Cohen's "Chelsea Hotel" (Lisa had me change the first verse to "feeding me bread on the unmade bed" to make it more subway friendly. We also change the Rolling Stone's "Sweet Virginia"'s chorus to "got to scrape the dirt right off your shoes," and we changed "Dead Flowers" 2nd verse to "I'll be in my basement room with some icecream and a spoon.") So this guy is saying something like "you think you own this subway station" and then slowly seguing into some psychotic stuff all to the cadence and melody of Chelsea hotel, which caused two women clad in fur coats and Nieman Marcus bags to scramble for the other side of the subway platform.

When we were packing up the other night this guy who reeked like a 5'10" bottle of open vodka asked us to play songs. He called Lisa over and she said that we were done for the night because we had to make the last train. He asked her if she needed any money to get a hotel room. He said he was blessed in having lots of money and believed in God and Jesus and wants to help those less fortunate than him. He said that whatever Lisa wanted he would give to her. He seemed really set on this hotel room. We told him he could buy a CD but we would not take his money with out playing.

He said, "You name it, I'll give it to you." Then he took out three dollars and handed it to Lisa.

"Will this help?" he asked. He kept pushing us to take the $3 reminding us how he had so much money and was so much more fortunate than us. But there seemed something about it that made it the sketchiest three dollars I've never taken. He reminded me of Robert DeNiro's character in Taxi Driver, so we decided not to take the $3, but thanked him just the same.

I've had other scary hecklers down there. Last year, a guy told me to give him all the money in my case. When I refused, he broke his vodka bottle and waved it at me threateningly and then threw it onto the tracks. Another guy last year around the time of the subway musicians battle, demanded me to stop playing. He said, "What do you think this is your f- ing living room!" He violently pulled the chord out of my amp and started waving his fist in my face. "What is it with you long haired faggots thinking you own the f- ing subway? Get the f- out of here!"

Every one on the platform looked really frightened. Then this really tiny Asian woman with a soft voice said, "I like their music and I want them to play." Her friend standing next to her was trying to talk her out of doing this. "You are a mean man," she said. "Leave them alone." Almost everyone on the platform tipped us, and one guy went to get the station police, who escorted the guy out of the station. I was playing my parody of "Wild Horses", "Wild Reindeer" for the Christmas season, and I'm thinking that maybe this song pushed this guy over the edge. But it is nice to know that for every heckler out there, there are lots of friendly, brave people who care about us and our music.