A New York punk scene legend was killed by a mail truck whereas strolling residence after acting at an East Village watering gap on Friday evening.
Chester “Chet” Mazur was a “torchbearer for sleaze rock,” one good friend mentioned, a staple of an ‘80s and ‘90s underground music scene laden with black leather-based, late-night pierogi and the camaraderie of penniless performers. At 66, he was nonetheless enjoying alongside his band, The Rasslers, in downtown dives till the day he died.
James Simmons, 61, was charged with leaving the scene of a deadly accident, in response to the NYPD. Mazur had completed enjoying a set at Otto’s Shrunken Head, a tiki bar on East 14th Road, early Saturday and was a block away from his Hell’s Kitchen house when he was struck by the mail truck. When the identification of the sufferer was found, punk rockers flooded social media to commemorate Mazur’s legacy.
Dave Giffen, a guitarist for the rock band Alice Donut and government director of the Coalition for the Homeless, retold a working joke amongst Mazur’s pals: In the event you ever wished to search out him, you might simply “stroll into any of the the cool dive bars in New York Metropolis and ask who’s seen Chet, and invariably any individual within the room could be like, yeah, I simply noticed him.”
Mazur, a local of Buffalo, first skilled notoriety as a Columbia College undergraduate. He scored an A on a paper a few Rolling Stones album — in a category recognized for an teacher who refused to present A’s. Giffen, a fellow pupil, heard in regards to the paper and obtained to know Mazur. Quickly, he started working as Alice Donut’s street supervisor.
“He didn’t have a driver’s license, didn’t have nice imaginative and prescient, was not likely nice with cash, however was such an attention-grabbing and full of life conversationalist that while you’re on a 14-hour drive, Chet is who you need in shotgun,” Giffen instructed The Metropolis Reporter on Monday. (He’d simply gotten off the telephone with Useless Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra to inform him the information.)
When the band didn’t have cash to e book resorts whereas on tour, Mazur would chat individuals up within the crowd, scoring couches for the workforce to crash on, Giffen mentioned.
Richard Marshall, a member of Alice Donut within the early ‘90s, recalled Mazur’s weird efficiency artwork, which he unleashed on the viewers because the band’s opening act.
“He was this character who stored attempting to take his personal life and failing at it, and the piece was stuffed with numerous philosophizing about that have, and I assumed it was completely good. I assumed it was genius, truly,” Marshall mentioned in an interview. “He obtained booed every so often, however a few of the audiences completely cherished it.”
Eileen Connelly, a member of the all-girls rock band Thrust, which was lively within the early ‘90s, remained pals with Mazur for many years after he served as an on-stage dancer for her concert events. He had a crush on one of many band members, she mentioned, and was greater than prepared to take part. However other than his typically eccentric and hardly-ever family-friendly performances, she mentioned, Mazur was “extremely mental.”
Together with his distinctive nostril and dirty t-shirts, Connelly and her pals had been “fairly certain” that Mazur was the inspiration for Butthead from the ‘90s animated hit “Beavis and Butthead.” (A consultant for “Beavis and Butthead” creator Mike Choose couldn’t instantly be reached for remark.)
Tallahassee Throwdown
Mazur went by life working odd jobs, making artwork, and saying sure to simply about every little thing, pals instructed The Metropolis Reporter. Within the final years of his life, he’d secured an house on West fifty fifth Road and a job with town’s youngster welfare company, which he referred to as “significant” however boring as a result of it wasn’t music, his niece, Mary Mazur, instructed The Metropolis Reporter.
A number of members of Alice Donut recalled an afterparty in Tallahassee, Florida, that become a brawl, and the way Mazur stepped in to guard the band when the cops had been referred to as.
“They mentioned, ‘Give us some ID.’ And the one piece of ID he had was a New York Metropolis public library card that had been burnt in half as a result of his house had simply had a hearth, and he was, I believe, in actual fact, homeless at that time,” Giffen mentioned.
Michael Jung, one other guitarist for Alice Donut, added that Mazur tried a “Homer Simpson-style” retreat into the bushes after giving the cops his charred library card.
“He was one of many sweetest, kindest, gentlest individuals I’ve ever recognized,” Marshall, who stayed in contact with Mazur for greater than 40 years, mentioned. “Except for all his creative and cultural contributions, he was only a candy, caring, considerate, loving human being.”
Mazur, was at all times “on the margins” of New York Metropolis, Giffen added. A memorial for the punk rocker is within the works, however till then, the sticky partitions of East Village dive bars maintain onto a long time of his friendship, tales, songs and monologues.
