Pink Floyd on the D Train

Musical entertainments of all sorts are very common on the subway, as well as on the platform as anyone who regularly rides the rails in NYC knows. My personal favorite is the Mariachi band, about which I will post more extensively another time. The break dancers make me nervous. I'm always scared both for them (that one of them will crack his skull at some point) and for me (that I'll get kicked in the head). The break dancers, however, are pretty common on the D train, which I ride pretty often through the South Bronx to and from work. The Mariachi band occasionally frequents the D train, too, but I last saw them on the N. However, a few weeks ago, a friend and I were riding the D train together, and this guy gets on with his guitar. Imagine our surprise when he starts singing one of my favorite Pink Floyd songs. Naturally, since I started doing this blog, I decided to start filming.* Apologies in advance for the generally poor quality of this video - it was taken with my iPhone on a moving train:

I regret that the sound isn't better - he actually sounded sort of nice (unlike a lot of subway singers), but my phone seems to have picked up a lot of miscellaneous train noises. What I mostly love about this performance, though, is that he just doesn't care that this isn't really an audience for that song. He's just singing his song and not worrying about it, though he's determined to finish, even when the train is bumpy and when people are getting on and off. I can't blame him - Wish You Were Here is such a great song. Hearing it on the D Train was a completely unexpected, somewhat surreal moment. But that's one of the kind of wonderful things about the train, and indeed about NYC in general; you never know when someone is going to start singing a Pink Floyd song in the South Bronx, or some other completely random and amazing thing. In this case, the unexpected made for a pretty fun ride.

*Since most of these performers ask for a donation afterwards, if I film I always make sure to give them something. If I'm getting something out of it, it's only fair.