Raffi Foocking Soock of Singing About “Oopples and Ba-noo-noos”
San Francisco, CA – Internationally acclaimed children’s singer Raffi shocked the crowd at a concert today when he became enraged and repeatedly yelled that he was “foocking soock of singing about oopples and boo-noo-noos”. Immediately after yelling, he smashed his guitar, made an obscene hand gesture toward the crowd, and stormed off stage.
The rant, which shocked adults and left children crying, was based on the song “Apples and Bananas”, in which Raffi proclaims, “I love to eat, eat, eat, apples and bananas”. In each subsequent verse of the song, he replaces the “A” sound of the fruits and the “E’ sound in “eat” with the long sounds from vowels E, I, O, and U to create a wonderful song that kids love.
The concert began just like every other concert of his almost thirty five year career. He opened with “Baby Beluga”, went into “Shake my Sillies Out”, and sang a wonderful version of “Down by the Bay” that brought the crowd to its feet. Typically, after that song he would go into “Apples and Bananas”, but when he stopped briefly to tune his guitar, the yells from the crowd for him to play that particular song apparently became too much for him to handle.
“It was like something inside of him just snapped.” said Joyce Peterson, who had brought her five year old daughter to the show. “Something in his eyes just changed, and he became enraged. It was then that he grabbed the microphone and screamed multiple times that he was ‘foocking soock of singing about oopples and boo-noo-noos’. We were all went silent because none of us knew what to do. Then, without warning, he grabbed his guitar, smashed it on the stage, and slowly walked away while giving the crowd the middle finger.”
Other audience members now recall the sixty year old singer looked a little haggard as he came on stage, but they initially thought nothing of it. “I just figured he was a little stressed from playing so many shows,” said Phyllis Carter, “I know he keeps a busy schedule so that he can put smiles on as many children’s faces as possible.”
Raffi’s record company immediately went into spin mode about the incident saying that the crowd had misunderstood him, and that he had incorrectly mixed some medication that he was taking, and that he was exhausted from his tour, and that his dog [named apples] had just been hit by a car, and that he was having a bad day, and that his guitar wasn’t tuning properly so he smashed it.
Calls to Raffi himself were not returned.
