Just how twisted are you, Brad Roberts?
During an interview at The Edmonton Sun world headquarters, the singer of the Crash Test Dummies ponders the question for a second, arches his eyebrows and lets out an evil laugh in that booming baritone of his: "Bwa-ha-ha-ha!" That's his answer.
Leading the band at Red's on Monday, he probably prefers to let his twisted music speak for itself.
"It's a little warped," he admits.
A little. The band's latest album, Give Yourself a Hand, is a musical glossary of perversion. Suggestions of necrophilia, infantilism and all manner of 'isms and 'philas can be found amongst Roberts' blackly humourous rhymes. He claims he had no idea what lurked inside his mind when he wrote them. It all flowed out of him like a polluted stream of consciousness. Charles Bukowski would be proud. Roberts reveals his secret: "I just wrote anything that came into my damn stupid fool head! Bwa-ha-ha-ha!"
And he loves his new computer: "I would get up in the morning, have a cup of tea, open up the computer and say to myself, what rhymes? ... I would write 100 lines that rhyme. Then I'd wait an hour, have a couple of cocktails, come back, look at it and I'd say, well, this half is garbage, but this half is a little better, and, furthermore, if I take these two lines and put them first with my cut-and-paste feature and another two lines next to that, all of a sudden those lines that were merely mediocre get new life breathed into them."
The 1999 version of Crash Test Dummies might as well be a different band than the one that played here eight years ago. Musically, Give Yourself a Hand is a startling change of direction. Keyboardist Ellen Reid, who did such a fine job on Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead, gets to sing more, but it's mainly because Roberts discovered his falsetto. It adds an entirely new dimension to a singer known for such hits as Superman's Song and Mmm, Mmm, Mmm, Mmm (which may go down as the most ridiculous song title of all time).
It took a move to New York to draw it out. Roberts now lives on the third floor of a brownstone apartment deep in the heart of Harlem, where people walk down the street singing funky rhymes to themselves. He's the only white guy for miles.
"And I'm as white as they come," he laughs. "I was pretty apprehensive at first. It's a funny feeling to walk down the street being a complete minority. Eventually I grew much more comfortable there. The neighbours started to get to know me. I found my favourite greasy spoon. And now I love the neighbourhood. I thrive on it. I have never had any problem with anybody. And I'd be more scared to walk around dodgy parts of native Winnipeg than in Harlem."
Roberts moved to Harlem because the rent is cheap - though he could certainly afford more - not to absorb the culture and steal the music. That's already been done many times. He'd prefer to say, "I made the atmosphere I was living in grist for my own mill, rather than just trying to copy it."
Besides, there is nothing more "absurd or pathetic" than a white person pretending to be black.
"When I see teenagers walking down Queen Street in Toronto with the big pants and they're going 'yo' and 'whasup,' I think to myself, you little s---. I live in the depths of Harlem. I don't say 'yo,' I don't say 'whasup,' and you little s---s would be pistol-whipped in about five seconds and I'd be in there pistol- whipping you with them. Get your own culture, for Christ's sake. It makes me sick."
Roberts is dangerously close to being the pot that calls the kettle ... well, you know. In the same breath as dissing white rappers, he compares his new record to "black pop from the '70s," like Barry White, the most famous low voice of all time.
In any case, Roberts is delighted at the confusion he's undoubtedly caused among Crash Test Dummies fans.
"People are shocked to find out it's us. I feel like I've done a big self-transformation, so that makes me pretty happy. I don't have a clue how the fans are going to react. I think it'll either go through the roof or right down the toilet. There will be no middle ground."
Again with that evil laugh. It's a little disconcerting, frankly.
Answer: Pretty twisted.
