Vote Theo For Best Subway Musician

The voting for Subway Idol…er, NYC Sound Tracks on the MSG Channel wraps tonight at 8 p.m. We haven’t seen the show but we like the idea: Each week, a musician plying his/her trade in the New York City subways gets voted off, with the best guitarist/drummer/didgeridooer left standing at the end.

We say, let us all vote for Theo Eastwind. Why Theo Eastwind? Because we remember him busking away back in the early ’90s. He was a scraggly kid with a beat-up guitar, greasy blonde hair and an accent (Theoeastwind.com reveals he’s from Vienna; we like that the homepage features a moving subway at Times Square).

What always struck me about Theo as I waited for my daily connection between the 1/9 and the N/R at Times Square wasn’t that he was talented–but that he wasn’t.

Indeed, Theo Eastwind couldn’t really play, and couldn’t really sing–screeching through covers like the Chili Peppers’ “My Friends”–My friends are so distressed…–in a hoarse vioce that sounded a bit like you or me trying to cover Anthony Kiedis or Kurt Cobain. He was… relateable.

Well, jump ahead a decade and a half. I’m humping into Gotham on the White Mail Express each day, and Theo Eastwind is still banging away in the underground. And if the little reggae-by-way-of-Vampire-Weekend clip of him playing on the Sound Tracks site is any indication, the kid has gotten pretty good.

So give young Theo a vote, which means click on the $1 under his name, as in, how much Theo deserved to make busking in the subways for his performance. His Website offers a Hollywood story in need of an ending: Kid from Vienna with a flair for making pastries comes to the States with a baker job lined up. Job falls through and the kid must make do with the guitar strapped on his back.

Let’s make Theo a winner.