Radio-active

C60 rise from the dead with a hit

By Sean Richardson

C60 play the Better End with Heidi and Seventeen Friday December 8.

THEIR TIME IS NOW:you can call C60’s hit single “Crazy” derivative if you want to, but it has “smash” written all over it — and there’s no doubt it rocks.

You couldn’t pick a better time than right now to be a pure, unadulterated hard-rock band from New England. Standing atop the commercial heap, of course, are Godsmack, whose Awake, a follow-up to their homonymous 1997 platinum debut, opened at number five on the Billboard charts in mid-November. Menacing Massholes Staind and Reveille came to a lesser degree of national prominence last year riding Godsmack’s coattails. 6gig are riding Tincan Experiment wherever it will take them, which could be far if their radio play keeps up its current pace, and fellow Portlanders Colepitz are poised to do the same when they get their new drummer and lead singer up to speed.

Success has even trickled down to the local underground: Twitchboy and David’s Playground, both long-time faves on the hardcore scene, recently held successful CD-release parties for their Halogen Records debuts.

C60 are the latest hard-rock success story — and an unlikely one at that. Known as Cobalt 60 during their first incarnation, in the early ’90s, they won the WBCN Rock ’n Roll Rumble in 1993 and released an EP, Radiator, a year later. They broke up soon after the EP was released, not to be heard from again until they crawled out of the cobwebs for a one-off reunion show last summer. They thought they were doing the show purely for kicks, but it turns out people missed them more than they expected: the show at Boston’s Bill’s Bar sold out early, and soon after they were approached by Jeff Marshall, owner of the Boston-based Monolyth label, about recording a CD. A little more than a year later, they’ve got a hit single, “Crazy,” in rotation on WFNX and Boston’s WBCN, and a debut disc, C60, in stores.

For an up-and-coming band, getting airplay alongside the Beastie Boys and the Dave Matthews Band on commercial radio is akin to winning the lottery. And the members of C60 are the first to admit how lucky they’ve been. When I talk to singer Keith Smith, drummer Jay Potts, guitarist Dan Mullen, and manager Hugh Burnham over barbecue, Smith uses one word to explain their good fortune: “Love. People just liked ‘Crazy.’ We put some work into making sure the people who liked us the first time around got a chance to hear the new stuff. When they all heard it, they loved it.”

Burnham, a major-label A&R vet and certified punk legend (he was the original drummer in Gang of Four) who also produced the disc, is more philosophical. “It’s a mixture of a number of things. It’s a song that works really well with what else radio is playing right now.

Indeed, “Crazy” has new-metal smash written all over it. Opening with a sinister riff from Mullen and a ferocious scream (“C’mon!”) from Smith, it breaks into a Facelift-era Alice in Chains funk-metal groove as Smith howls, “Turn on my TV/Covert slavery/No good news today/Gotta find a better way.” Mullen lets off a sleazy trill-and-whammy-laced solo at the halfway point that judiciously complements the anger in Smith’s lyrics. You can call it derivative if you want to, but there’s no doubt it rocks.

“I remember when we first played ‘Crazy,’ it was like it was a live show in our practice space,” says Mullen. “Dan came out with the riff and we all just jumped all over it,” adds Potts. “That’s the way it happens with us a lot of the time. That’s what’s cool about this band. We took that hiatus and played with other bands, but when we got back together, it was like, ‘Oh yeah.’ There’s just this magic.”

The band have landed a few prize gigs lately, playing the second stage at the Tweeter Center when Kiss played and the parking lot of the Palladium in Worcester before the second of the two free Limp Bizkit shows there last month. But, they’ve made sure to hit the club circuit as well. “The agent comes up with these shows,” says Burnham, “and I’m like, ‘Where?’ But then I think, ‘I haven’t heard of this place — and that’s why we should play it.’ This is why we’re doing this. We’ve all been at one time the kid who didn’t live in the middle of the city and have it all laid out.” Potts adds, “Those kids hear you on the radio and they go nuts for you when you come out their way.”

For his part, Smith doesn’t seem too worried that C60 are appealing more to radio-listening teens than to the rock cognoscenti. What really gets him is a more widespread problem with the scene. “The kids are the ones that keep rock and roll alive and the independent bands can’t get to them because no clubs will do all-ages shows. At least [they could] do loose 18-plus shows. When I’m on stage, my inner child runs the place. Those are my peeps.”