I knew it was too good to be true.
In the last several weeks, while pushing my kids' stroller around downtown, I'd been noticing these stickers all over the the Bowery, Soho and the Lower East Side, featuring the letters "C.S.C." in a jagged font. Could it be? Could these cryptic stickers mean the improbable return of my favorite New York City band of all time? Could this mean the return of the mighty COP $HOOT COP?
Of course not. I knew for a fact that my friend and former C$C mouthpiece/bass-scraper, Tod [A] was deeply ensconced over in the wilds of Israel, recording music for the next album by his band, Firewater. I'd also recently learned that former C$C drummer, Phil Puleo had recently hooked up with former C$C sampler, Jim "Phylr" Coleman for a new project dubbed The Children. I'd seen "low-end" bassist, Jack Natz around town, although not too recently. I knew he'd been briefly playing with Lubricated Goat, before forming a new band called Crime Wave who later changed their name to Crux (and this is already about three years ago), but he'd since seemingly fallen off the grid. The last time I remember seeing him -- in my local deli -- he was sporting a mustache that made him look like Dick Dastardly.
The notion of a Cop Shoot Cop reunion is an unlikely one -- but hey, in this age when everyone from the Stooges, the Police, Rage Against the Machine and Van Halen through Men Without Hats and Right Said Fred are re-forming, anything is possible. I gather the ice has thawed a bit between the former members of C$C -- there was even fleeting talk of re-releasing some of the band's material at some point, but I've no idea whatever became of that idea. It'd be nice to see those records back in print -- and even nicer to hear some archival stuff that was never released the first time around, but perhaps that's just a pipe dream at this point.
But I was still curious about those stickers. Were they plastered around town by some equally nostalgic dingbat as myself, paying tribute to those halcyon days when the Bowery was still a squalid skid row and bands like Cop $hoot Cop still roamed the desolate streets? Sadly, this was not the case. Turns out the C.S.C. stickers in question are promoting the Chinatown Soccer Club. I told Tod this over an instant message, recently, and he laughed. "That was our first name, actually."
So, for that elite smattering of you out there who still regard Cop $hoot Cop with reverence, I'm sorry to report that this wasn't the triumphant return I was hoping it would be. To make amends, however, I offer you this MP3 of a track by the band that never made it onto compact disc. From the Piece Man e.p., herewith -- appropriately enough -- "Triumphal Theme."
For more on Cop Shoot Cop, you can read some more of my rapturous praise for them here, go right to the source by clicking here, and you can even check out a couple of their videos here and here and here.
Enjoy
C.$.C. R.I.P.
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