Bad Wizard

As dynamite monster boogie shows go, you’d have to be in some biker metal Valhalla, or at least the wilds of Sweden, to find a more audacious slice of riff rawk pie than Bad Wizard’s 2001 debut, "Free and Easy", an album packed wall to wall with sex-drenched outlaw anthems juiced up to city block torching volume with nary a buzz-killing dip into pussyville in sight. It’s like some long forgotten mid 70’s 8 track that explodes when you press play, a wild mutation that’s equal parts Motorhead, Cactus, and whatever the Symbonese Liberation Army’s house band sounded like. The Wizard are flag wavers of an elite freak force of far flung Super Rockers- bands like Boston’s own Cracktorch, Detroit’s Lanternjack, Hamburg Fucking Germany’s Nixon Now-that are sloughing off the ‘stoner’ tag affixed to every greasy heavy rock band these days, and cracking open the pre- Sabbath vaults of volume for an even purer extract of rockage. Not stoned, these cats, but drunk- on gas fumes, on napalm, on power and Pabst Blue Ribbon, but most importantly, on lethal doses of holy fucking rock and roll. There is some master plan in all this, I’m sure, and I mean to discover it. But first, I think we need to address the band’s Hobbit-baiting moniker.

Bad Wizard? Really, bro, fuckin’ Bad Wizard?

"You know, I probably wouldn’t have even gone with it, but…" Curtis Brown, throat-man and chief propagandist in the Wizards of Badness, spits a lipful of tobacco into the sink before continuing. He’s attempting to quit the smokes, you see, physically preparing himself for a ten month, rock star- making, hit and run road campaign to support the new record. "Jesus, that’s gross", he complains. There’s a sniff of attitude in Curtis’ voice, which was probably born, not made, but it’s one of the reasons that Bad Wizard have cemented a rep as rough and ready snarl bearers. "I wanted to call the band Black Power, but we played as that once, and these punk rockers threw bottles at us, so we decided to change the name." Son of a bitch. Total rock glory torn asunder by lefty punks with no concept of swaggering cool. I mean, can you imagine the t-shirts? "I didn’t even know about any of the stoner rock bands with similar names, like Electric Wizard for instance", he tells me. "But what happened was, my friend Marty was assed -out down on Flatbush Avenue, and he walked into a beverage store, and he said, ‘Give me some assed- out beer’, like Night Flight or whatever, and the guy says, ‘I’ve got Bad Wizard.’ So he says, ‘Oh, yeah, give me some of that’, but when he gets out to the car, he sees that it’s just a Budweiser. So he walks back in and says, ‘Hey I thought this was Bad Wizard’, and the guy says, ‘Eet iss, Bahd Weeser’. It was just his strange accent." There you have it, the terrible true tale. So keep all that ‘Gandalf’ shit to yourself.

Bad Wizard’s backbone, Curtis and battery man Scott Nutt, shot like angel dusting rockets out of their solar powered home state of Georgia back in ’99, leaving the remains of their former band Harvey Milk to fester in the soggy confines of Athens’ hipster doofus indie -simp scene. They quickly nestled deep in the bowels of New York City like sewer gators and ate countless fledgling band mates alive until Marc Tanner (bass), Eddie Lynch (guitar) and the good looking one, Tina Gorin (lead and slide guitar) showed up. 24 months and a clutch of bad highway wisdom later, and ‘Free and Easy’ hits the streets, freaking out the squares and making it safe, once again, to rock out with your cock out. "Yeah", Curtis freely admits, "I write about sex mostly, y’know. There’s always inspiration for that somewhere." There are also other inspirations in the lair of their royal Badness, but Kyuss ain’t one of them. Sure, they’re on doped-up-to-the-tits label TeePee Records, and they sport a look that you could describe as positively shaggy, but don’t point the Stoner Rock finger at the Wizard, baby, because that ain’t their bag. "Those long slow grooves", Curtis sighs, "I’m sure you appreciate them when you’re stoned, but if you’re not, you don’t." Bad Wizard, he says, are more about the proto-action rock of the MC5 and blues punk fuzz of Blue Cheer- movers, not groovers. "I try to date the sound a little, because all those guys that you’re talking about, Cactus, Uriah Heep, MC5- they’re like my heroes", he says. "Those guys were so fucking cool, like beyond being bad asses. They were bigger than life." Personality is another sticking point in his assessment of the stoned immaculate crowd, because let’s face it, Scott Hill is no Axl Rose. Mr. Brown is much more interested in the return of the total rock star than an anonymous air of general dudeness. "Oh, fuck yeah, man. One of my favorite bands in the 90’s was Urge Overkill, so I’m into all that." And let us not forget, excess fans, the Zoso factor. "Zeppelin, for Christ’s sake. I mean, I’m 30 years old, so that’s the kind of stuff I grew up on, and before punk rock, it was the stuff I listened to. I guess that kind of stuff was what turned everybody off, and got people into Black Flag, or whatever. The idea that anybody can do it. Well, anybody can do anything." That doesn’t mean, I offer, that they should. "That’s it", he laughs. "That’s the fuckin’ truth."

"We lost a dog on the road." Pardon, my brother? "We lost our dog in Montana. We actually missed playing in Denver and Des Moines because we were looking for it. We didn’t find him, but the bartender found it like 4 days later after we got home, and she just brought him back to our bass player a few day ago." Curtis is giving me a verbal snapshot of Bad Wizard’s initial, pre-record release, bare bones campaign in the trenches. "Well, at least Montana’s a good place to get lost, if you’re a dog." Undaunted by petty disaster, the Wizard carries on. "The idea is that we want to be a touring machine. We want to stay out there for 10 months at a time." Churning out a monstrous record is one thing, but in the Bad Wizard camp, rock and roll is best served live and raw. "It’s a party on stage", Curtis says of the live Wizardry, "with underage, uh, whatever." He laughs, cryptically. " It’s a good time, man." The band is readying themselves to spend most of 2002 in their van, moving from town to town like electric gypsies, bringing the rock, and free drugs, with them. "I’ve been getting nitrous oxide, you know, hippy crack", Curtis says. "I’ve been filling up balloons and handing them out lately. People seem to like that. It keeps them up front anyway, the hippy crack." Curtis laughs again, self satisfied, master plan in place and ready to roll. "There’s still a lot of people out there that like rock and roll", he tells me. " That’s for damn sure."