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The Curse Of The ‘Butterfly’ is no horror movie. Crazy
Town lived it when that song blew up. But where critics hurled “boy
band” comments, Ozzfest audiences threw bottles. Now they attempt
to reconcile success with credibility on darkhorse. by Sean
Plummer
If the rock star thing doesn’t work out, Crazy
Town co-frontman Bret ‘Epic’ Mazur might want to consider
a career in diplomacy. Crowd reaction to the band’s appearance
at last summer’s Ozzfest show in Toronto was, shall we say, mixed.
And by “mixed” I mean bottles got thrown.
“It was a growing experience,” Mazur says,
“and it’s part of what makes us who we are today.”
But bottles?
Mazur downplays the incident. “Actually, that
wasn’t that bad because Doug [Miller], our bass player, actually
told everybody to grab their bottles and throw them at the stage. And
they did and they had a great time doing it. By the end of that show
a lot of people left there going ‘you know what? Those guys are
alright.’”
Other fans were more easily swayed — though it
took some work. Crazy Town’s overheated collision of hip hop, rock
and new wave failed to ignite the public’s imagination right away.
The first two singles off their debut, 1999’s The Gift Of Game,
stiffed. Then the band was pulled off Ozzfest 2000 after co-frontman
Seth Binzer (a.k.a. Shifty Shellshock), a drug and alcohol fan, checked
into rehab. Refocused upon Binzer’s release, the band unleashed
their secret weapon: ‘Butterfly’. Built around a Red Hot Chili
Peppers sample, the smooth track topped Billboard’s Singles
chart and helped propel Gift’s sales past 2.5 million. The
video — featuring a buff, shirtless, tattooed and pierced Binzer
— helped make the band heartthrobs but did little for their cred
among Ozzy’s minions.
“You take your primarily heavy metal and hardcore
fans, and I can understand them not understanding us or not wanting
to,” Mazur says of their sometimes chilly Ozzfest reception. “We
felt like we still had something to prove, even though we had this big
hit that had come out in the time in between that Ozzfest and the year
before. ‘Butterfly’ comes out and blows up and then there’s
a whole lot of kids out there who don’t know the whole story.”
While it would be an overstatement to describe darkhorse,
Crazy Town’s new album, as mature or deep, the music has benefited
from both their improved musicianship (pre-production began shortly
after the road-hardened band finished touring last fall) and demeanour
(Binzer is off narcotics, Mazur is a devoted father). Both frontmen
are writing about more than just sex, drugs and parties (the perils
of success, self-doubt, and humility are recurring themes), but Mazur
doesn’t think fans will have any trouble digesting darkhorse.
“The fans that we got because of whatever airplay
we got on the more mainstream radio stations, those kids have grown
up,” he reasons. “A few years have passed since our first
record came out. And so in knowing that we’ve grown up and that
we’re not going to make Part Two of the first album, we were kind
of just quietly confident and hoping that our fans out there weren’t
going to be alienated by anything that we were doing, and hopefully
they’re not.
“I feel that we knew that there was a lot more
that we wanted to do, even on the first album,” he says. “But
when you’re a recording artist and you’re making a record,
in a way you have to kind of spoonfeed the people your ideas because
otherwise you just lose them.”
One such idea: have rapper Mazur sing. He thinks his
singing voice is “kind of lame, but people have told me ‘wow,
you can really sing!’ And for me, all I hear are the blood, sweat
and tears that were put into it. The way I look at singing is that you’re
supposed to be getting a message across. Look at somebody like Bob Dylan
for instance. If he had to go try out for a choir, I doubt he’d
be picked, and that’s one of the world’s greatest, most identifiable
singers in the world.”
So doubt their talent if you like, just don’t
doubt Crazy Town’s sincerity. And while their good looks may have
goosed ‘Butterfly’‘s success, Mazur insists that Crazy
Town is no pre-manufactured punk boy band — no matter what the
critics say.
“Anybody who says that is just trying to hate
on us, and it’s usually guys, and it’s really unfounded ”
Mazur says of such accusations. “When that comes across still,
obviously they’re just intent on hating us and that’s fine,
go ahead. Love us or hate us, just don’t say we’re okay.”
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