The way Magic Cyclops tells it, he only ended up appearing on Fox’s American Idol because he thought he was getting in an enormous line outside Invesco Field to purchase Broncos tickets. Remarkably, the truth behind his appearance as a booted contestant on a soon-to-air episode is even more ridiculous: Producers from the show got in touch with owners of 3 Kings Tavern who, on a lark, referred them to Magic Cyclops, Fort Collins’ veteran of confrontational comedy rock. They apparently skipped checking out his recently released discography, The Magic Collection 2000—2010, and just contacted him, and gave him a pass to skip the lines and get in front of judges. His magical rendition of Neil Diamond’s “Cracklin’ Rosie” was enough to earn him a spot in front of the celebrity tribunal who sent him packing, just as expected. While you’ll have to tune in to get specifics about his time in the spotlight, he spoke with The A.V. Club about the hard-knock life of a novelty musician.
The A.V. Club: How did the audition process take to the Magic Cyclops experience? You can be polarizing.
Magic Cyclops: The first audition I did, they group you and a whole bunch of people. Everyone in that group was looking at me like, “Yeah, there’s no way this guy’s going to make it.” As it turns out, I was the only one in my group that even made it. I think that had a lot to do with my Neil Diamond routine and the fact that I made the judges laugh.
AVC: You’ve always been in the vein of Andy Kaufman, where the joke’s primarily on the audience if they don’t figure it out.
MC: That is one of my heroes. It’s really funny to me that the reason that I’ve had to do what I’ve had to do is because the Denver comedy scene, for whatever reason, is very standoffish towards me. They haven’t accepted me into their tight-knit little group. I’ve been forced to play music clubs instead of comedy clubs.
AVC: Isn’t that more fun than playing comedy clubs?
MC: I have no clue, because I’ve never been able to play a comedy club. I’ve only been turned down. It turns out, the world of comedy is a lot more cutthroat than the world of music, and if you’re not part of their little clique, then they seem to turn their back towards you. I’ve been told by several Denver comedians that I would never make it in the world of comedy. That’s very close-minded. I think there’s different kinds of comedy. Because I’m not up there just telling one-liners or whatever, they don’t understand what I’m doing. The advent of Flight Of The Conchords and Tim And Eric made people understand what I’ve been going for this entire time. That kind of makes things better for me.