Jacob A. Rubin ’03 raps as MC Absurd in the Witness Protection Program (WPP), a hip-hop band that has opened for Blackalicious and Jurassic 5. Over the past four years, he has written pieces for FM including “Absurdity in Annenberg,” the story of a day spent in the freshman dining hall. This week Rubin brings his FM reporter’s eye to the story of life as a rapper. WPP recently played two shows in New York City. The first, at Arlene’s Grocery (10/4), broke the club’s attendance record. The second, at the legendary CBGB’s (10/17) is chronicled below.
2:15 p.m.: Leave Cambridge with band friend Andrew G. Fink ’02-’03 in the driver seat. I sit shotgun. Ludacris in the tape deck. Throughout the trip we refer to Ludacris strictly as “Luda!”
3:31 p.m.: Note that Ludacris’ words are extraordinarily tame compared to Foxy Brown’s verse on “What’s Your Fantasy (Remix),” where she demands “li-li-li-lick me from my ass to my clit.” We agree that either of us attempting a sexual union with Foxy Brown would end up dead or, at least, blinded from the eyebrows down.
4:40 p.m.: Establish that “This is total bullshit” is the mathematical complement to the phrase “Shit is so real right now.” Both are equally viable and equally true. Having obsessively used the latter for some weeks, we decide to make a paradigm shift to the former. Realize that the traffic, the crisp fall weather, the car and us are all total bullshit.
5:15 p.m.: Ranting to Fink, recall a Discovery Channel special on an African jewelry maker who suffered from an uncontrollable “death stare” that worked only against his will and was the cause of some of his closest friends’ deaths. Scare Fink with my own personal death stare.
6:22 p.m.: Drummer Peter S.R. Kennedy ’03, a.k.a PK-1, calls my cell phone from the second car* to hum me a song he’s been working on that sounds like the yell a mute person makes the moment before death. “That’s pretty tight,” I say and put the phone by Fink’s ear. “That’s pretty tight,” he concurs.
6:24 p.m.: PK-1 calls again: “Dude, I’m telling these freaks about that Japanimation porn with the Rhino and Sopantu the Greenbot.” I laugh in fear and then establish that they left at 5:30 p.m., a problem since we have to load in at CBGB’s in downtown Manhattan by 10 p.m. and they were supposed to leave at 4 p.m.
6:26 p.m.: Call our manager, Dan Levine, to check in with the first car. “ We’re at Nick’s, having cocktails with his parents.” “Do you know that those guys didn’t leave until 5:30?” “What?! I spoke to Alan and he said they left at 4:40!” “You sure about that? Because I just spoke to PK-1 and he’s talking 5:30.” In response to my nervous questions about promotion, Levine assures me that CBGB’s will have many “hos in the basement.”
6:29 p.m.: Call back PK-1 and try to figure out what time the second car left. “Nah, we left at 5:30, bro,” PK-1 assures me. After asking Alan, he recants. “Actually bro, we left at 4:40. I be idiot!”
6:37 p.m.: PK-1 calls my cell. I don’t pick up.
6:42 p.m.: Approaching Manhattan. California native Fink ends up driving us over the Triborough Bridge twice, paying the toll twice. Fink: “Let’s not tell anybody about this.” Me: “True.”
7:16 p.m.: Arrive home, go upstairs to find my mother in bathrobe and curlers. She expresses anxiety about the fact that going to see the show involves observing life (let alone drinking beer) after 10:30 p.m. She goes upstairs to take a pre-show nap. I pass out on a chair for 45 minutes and have a strange dream in which an unknown man asks me if I’m enjoying the “fierce.” “Fierce as noun?” I ask him, confused. He looks surprised at my ignorance: “Fear + fare = a fierce.”
8:45–9 p.m.: Go over to Nick’s apartment to meet up with Car One and drive downtown to CBGB’s. In attendance: Nick; his parents, Andrea C. Britell and Peter S. Britell ’63; Cameron Kirby; and Levine.
9:01 p.m.: Andrea Britell compliments my hair. “You look so great with it short. Your mother must love it! You look so handsome,” she says. Self-esteem skyrockets.
9:36 p.m.: Levine receives a cell phone call from N. Kennedy Thorwarth ’05, the Witness Protection Program’s self-proclaimed number-one groupie. She informs Dan that Columbia and NYU’s radio stations will be at the show. We all agree that the news is simultaneously “totally fair,” “next level,” “extremely real” and “total horseshit.”
9:48 p.m.: Get vaguely lost on our way to CBGB’s.
10:11 p.m.: Arrive at CBGB’s. Load in equipment and anxiously prepare for performance. Suck down two Red Stripes and the sad realization that the bands don’t drink for free.
11:19 p.m.–12:18 a.m.: Play our set to a large and enthusiastic crowd (later tallied at 172 people). Spot Rolling Stone contributing editor Touré in the audience. Using the death stare, get him to bop his head. Conduct call-and-response with audience, where we say “This is all,” and they say, “Total bullshit.” Generate an air of liberating stupidity. A moment of noticeable group anxiety going into our lewdest song, “[Bitch, don’t trip, I just wanna] Dip the Tip,” given the presence of the Wilkis, Britell and Rubin parents. End with a cover of “Like a Rolling Stone.”
12:21 a.m.: Post-show in(s)anity. Kirby’s 30-year-old cousin Dustin offers to buy me a shot, though he insists, “I’m not a groupie.” I later find out he’s an accountant.
12:26 a.m.: Peter Britell approaches me, Corona in hand. He whispers in my ear, “Best show ever.” General congratulations are shared between and among the parents.
12:28 a.m.: Girl approaches me to clarify some of the lyrics to “101.” “How does that song go with the ‘ha ha has’? she asks. I clarify the chorus: “I can’t help but laugh sayin’ ha-ha-ha/these motherfuckers be cryin’ for they ma-ma-ma/I chill with cheerleaders say rah-rah-rah/and when times get tough I puff la-la-la.” She considers it. “That’s some profound shit,” she says.
12:30 a.m.: The parents leave in quasi-drunken haze. Total bullshit ends; total bullshit commences.
12:42 a.m.: Notice Luke White in the corner explaining our band motto to a girl: “We put the “Id” back in “Idiot.”
12:59 a.m.: PK-1 gives a seminal description of his game: “I basically spit straight goon. Most people just regurgitate conventions and think they’re using words to communicate, so I come in with straight goon and girls don’t know what to do. These guys try to be smooth. I just come to New York and drop goon. And it works, bro.” We coin various expressions for PK-1’s courting: “Tossin’ goon…coughin’ goon…flingin’ goon.”
1:02 a.m.: Hesitate in ordering my usual vodka gimlet and get a Long Island iced tea instead. Nick approves: “Good call.” I solemnly correct him: “Important call.”
1:06 a.m.: PK-1 lists his four talents in life: funneling beer, playing drums, spitting goon and throwing a Frisbee 98 yards. “The other day, I was at this pasture and I was like ‘Go long, bro,’ and the thing flew past him like 20 yards.”
1:09 a.m.: A high school friend in attendance asks me if Benny Blanco is strange. “No more than necessary,” I tell him. “Because he gave me this,” he says, showing me a business card advertising Benny’s services as a therapeutic healer. I answer, “Shit’s pretty complicated right now.”
1:51 a.m.: Pointing to my second Long Island iced tea, a girl warns me, “Those can be dangerous.” I smile suavely, assuring her, “Danger is my little name.”
2:42 a.m.: Awake from a dignified on-bar catnap to find things have become inexplicably dark. The circuit breaker has been turned off and people are carrying flashlights. We start to load out the equipment in the surreal black. I carry one turntable and it’s the heaviest object I’ve ever carried. I move it into the car and take a nap on CBGB’s upstairs couch.
2:56 a.m.: Wake up to PK-1 telling me he’s going to either “beast my existence,” or “motherfuck my entire world,” and I have to pick one of the two. Nick notes how falling asleep is central to my game: “It’s great. You pass out, mouth open, drooling on your elbow and people think you’re out for the count, but then you wake up and you’re back in the game.” I wonder when this game started, who’s playing it and what its ultimate goal is.
3:14 a.m.: Go back to my parents’ apartment and fall asleep.
11:11 a.m.: Wake up and leave the same message on three people’s cell phones: “I just woke up, and I can’t feel my legs.”
The Witness Protection Program is performing at New York’s Tobacco Road, 574 Ninth Ave at 41st Street at 11 p.m. on Nov. 13 and around campus at various times before that. Rock witnessprotection.net for more information, though it’s mostly total bullshit.
* Our convoy system: Pete’s riding with Northeastern senior Ben Peterson a.k.a. Benny Blanco from the ’Burbs (MC), Berklee College of Music junior Dave Sherman a.k.a. Lethal D (bass) and Luke W. M. White ’03 a.k.a. Fat Luke (percussion). In the other car are Nicholas J. Britell ’03 a.k.a. Dr. ATM (keyboards), Cameron D.E. Kirby ’03 a.k.a. Covex (turntables), Daniel Z. Levine ’03 (manager) and Alan J. Wilkis ’03 a.k.a. Black Orpheus (guitar [he’s Caucasian]).
