LET’S TALK ABOUT CRAZY TOWN #early00s #numetal

When you think about it, the late 90s are maybe the most underrated years in terms of awesome music. Some of of my all-time favorite pop artists Mandy Moore, Christina Augilera, and Blink-182 blew up in the late 90s, not to mention gems like Jordan Knight’s comeback song, all of which are still totally great. It’s also when we got Linkin Park, Korn, Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock, and tons of other sick bands that combined the most annoying and ignorant aspects of white trash and poor black people.  But maybe the very best of late 90s douche rock was Crazytown, and it’s time that we gave them their due!

I know Vince is all up on Spotify’s dick, but when it comes to bands you really love, you want to own the physical artifact. I definitely love Crazytown, so before I wrote this, I hopped on eBay and picked up the entire CxT discography, for a grand total of 74 cents. I know what you’re thinking: I got ripped off! But not so fast: both CxT albums were 1 cent each, although I had to pay 72 cents for Shifty’s solo album. I’m not sure what makes that one worth 36 times more than the other two put together, but valuation of physical assets is kind of a black art that I don’t totally understand, so I was OK with paying top dollar to get these albums that mean so much to me.

After the break, a detailed breakdown of the entire CxT discography, some trivia, and my thoughts on whether Shifty and I could have a bromance!

The Gift of Game (1999)
The cover of this album has some hottie on it sucking on a lollipop, I guess because they want you to imagine her performing oral sex, and that makes you think about her having a penis in her mouth instead of a lollipop. I have a hard time getting aroused by her, though, because she combines every awful 90s trend into a single image: tribal tattoos, excessive piercings, Betty Page hair, arched eyebrows, and I’m guessing she’s wearing Mudd jeans, even if you can’t see them. In any case, you probably only know the hit single “Butterfly,” but actually this record is packed with sick jams from top to bottom.

My favorite song is “Darkside,” which showed the world that Crazytown was versatile, going from tender ballads like “Butterfly” to uptempo rockers like this song. In case you thought CxT didn’t know anything about rock, Shifty’s lyrics in “Darkside” namecheck the Circle Jerks, Bad Brains, Sex Pistols and all kinds of other ill shit:

Nasty na na, ha, ha
Darkside marijuana.
Fueled of the drama.
Drifting on the darkside.
I’m the black eye bomber.
Do what I do on a darkside
Rendezvous.
Raising hell, out the shell.
Of fantasies I never tell.
Dispersin’ untamed perversion.
My bad brain’s working,
Circle jerking, rocking riddles,
Sex pistol, sexperts
Acting uncivil.

Damn, son!! That shit got me almost as excited as when I saw Mark McGrath wearing a Circle Jerks shirt in Sugar Ray’s video for “Answer The Phone.”

The album closes with “B-Boy 2000,” which is an awesome rap/rock thingamajig featuring KRS-ONE (famous for declaring that the “li-bary” is “where they bury the lies!”). I really like the song, but there is one part I wish they would have changed. I know Shifty isn’t strong in terms of quantitative methods (I mean, if he even has a GED I’d be pretty amazed), but when he drops the line “Destroying MCs with my vocal algebra,” I wish that he would have said something like “vocal differential equations” or even just “verbal Lagrangian relaxation.” It just sucks because I don’t think he realizes that a reasonably smart 7th grader should have a pretty good handle on algebra, you know?

Darkhorse (2000)
This is the album that helped me realize that I was a douchebag. More specifically, I saw that I started out as an ironic douchebag that just listened to CxT for a joke, but had become an honest-to-god, authentic douchebag who seriously liked them. I remember the moment as though it was yesterday. I was lifting weights, and the song “Skulls and Stars” from this album came on my iPod, and I thought to myself, “Man, the lyrics to this song are really good! I can’t believe I used to laugh at this band, they’re seriously good.” Then I thought, “Holy shit, I just flexed in the mirror while telling myself that Crazytown is a great band. What have I become?!” I’d like to think that Shifty would have been proud of me. He’d be all, “Fuck it dude, it doesn’t matter what anybody thinks. People told us we were crazy for combining rock and rap, but we flipped the script on those fools. Don’t even trip, fuck the haters, bro!” He’s right. You can laugh at me and Shifty if you want, but just remember: they called Galileo a fool, too!

I’m definitely feeling all the hotties in this video… not so much when it comes to Shifty’s landing strip, though :/

As far as the cover goes, it depicts what seems to be the same girl from their first album, only now she has a better haircut, wings, and she looks really tired. I’m sure that Shifty and Epic have a hella deep explanation for every detail in the image. They always do, sort of like on Miami Ink how some self-absorbed hot girl will come in and ask for a tattoo of a dolphin on her hip, then drone on for twenty minutes about what it symbolizes.

Split 7″ with Paul Oakenfold (2003?)
After their second album, Crazytown released a three-way split 7″ with Paul Oakenfold and Psycho on Ax/Ction Records featuring the single “Starry Eyed Surprise.” I first heard it in a Coke commercial that they played at the theater before some movie. It is possibly the ultimate summer jam, right up there with “Steal My Sunshine.”

Shifty – Happy. Love. Sick. (2004)

It didn’t get a lot of love, but Shifty’s solo album is tight as fuck! I non-ironically love “Slide Along Side” and it makes me feel like I could definitely chill with Shifty (srs). Both of us DGAF and can party hard as fuck, but at the end of the day we are nice guys who just want to be loved :(<3 U SHIFTY // H8 U RACIST MEDIA THAT KICKS A GUY WHILE HE’S DOWN

Closing thoughts
I have come to terms with the fact that I seriously like Crazytown. At first I thought it would be funny to listen to them as a post-ironic bit, like “Hay guyz I like the absolute worst band on the planet, look at me!” And it is pretty funny in that context. But like I said earlier, I turned the corner, and I honestly like their music. I seriously think their first album is really catchy and fun and I am kind of mad that I never saw them live.

Not only that, but I feel like Shifty and I could definitely have a bromance after seeing him on Celebrity Rehab. He needs someone like me in his life to help him “get centered” and focus on what’s really important. Maybe we could start doing yoga or something, then kick it at the juice bar afterwards and just talk about life, I don’t know.

-Sergeant D.

Sergeant D. gets all up in your dick every day at Stuff You Will Hate.