It was quite the scene outside the 9:30 Club for last night's sold out performance by Clarence Greenwood, a.k.a. Citizen Cope. I rolled up shortly after nine o'clock to a very crowded sidewalk scene outside the club. It seems no one had hard tickets for the show because they were all in line for will call. The club didn't help things by switching the will call window with the one they usually use for guestlists, so people were waiting in excess of 20 minutes only to find out they were in the wrong line.

Once inside, the crowd was eager to see local boy done good Cope, and once he took the stage, he wasted no time giving the throngs exactly what they wanted by starting his set with his hit "Bullet and A Target." Starting your set with your biggest hit is a bold move that not many performers would dare do because there's nowhere to go but down, which is exactly what happened to Cope last night. To be fair, Cope has an abundance of engaging songs, perfect for head bobbing and singing along. Where he fails is his delivery.

When he was playing music, even on some of his slower tunes, he was mesmerizing. However, he constantly took too much time in between songs to tune and prepare for the next song, which created obvious lapses in momentum during the show. His pacing was also suspect, spending the night continually following one upbeat song with a grinding, slower one. "Hurricane Waters" and "Brother Lee" both stood out in the set, but the slow songs that inevitably followed, coupled with his minimal stage presence and lack of interaction with the audience put a definite drag on the evening's festivities. Would it kill him to chat to the audience while he tunes up? Cope is the polar opposite of Scott Stapp, although he does like to get his daub on.

As Cope wasn't much to look at on stage, I found myself watching the audience more than the actual show and I was struck by the cross-section of people in attendance. It's a testament to Cope's appeal that his audience can consist of B-boys bobbing their heads, teenage MySpace addicts and the usual Friday crowd at Whitlow's on Wilson and each of them have an equal amount of fun. There was a definite party atmosphere in the club last night, which makes the stop and go performance all the more frustrating.

Photo by Kyle Gustafson.