Watch me write this from multiple angles.
I may have mentioned this before, but in the off chance you're joining us midway through our program, I was raised in a small town in the Midwest. A no-coast style, to quote Mictlan. Having been brought up in a small town with only minimal amount of access to what was a newly-developing internet, I was most assuredly missing out on some of the meats in our cultural stew. While I would discover, years later, the joys of indie rap, trip hop, Japanese authors and other microcosms of my current world, I had to enjoy what was available. Namely, whatever crap MTV peddled to me and what was correspondingly available at the local mall or Best Buy. This is not to make excuses for what was no doubt typical taste of teenage boys - I certainly could have done more research into what the great big world held in store for me. No foolsies, it was my own fault. Whenever I would take the opportunity/risk to branch out of my comfort zone I was often richly rewarded. One of the few avenues available was the dual pseudo-journalism of Rolling Stone and Spin. Their respective recommendations did a great deal for shaping my burgeoning musical tastes. It was through their reviews I was exposed to the wonders of Bjork, Portishead, The Strokes and more.
Additionally I had an older brother with great taste in music - I fully credit him with the establishment of my musical Torah, pilfering his CD collection (how quaint) to feverishly devour albums by the likes of Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam, Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Faith No More. He was a god-send, both in the sense of having a 'good example' (I instead opted to be 'the horrible warning' to my younger brother) and showing me what was in. I would have completely missed the boat on Tenacious D had he not told me, nor would I have been privy to the cult classics of Office Space, the Christopher Guest films and High Fidelity. His attendance at an out of state college, however, limited his influence after a while.
Why do I write all this, you ask? Besides the joy I garner from traipsing down memory lane, stopping occasionally to examine my own narrative? The point is, whether it's in self-conscious defense or simple positing, that I had to eventually cobble together my own tastes and preferences from whatever sources I was exposed to. Everyone eventually finds some thing, some moment, where they realize that not all is pre-ordained and decided for you, that we are free to like whatever wonderful or trashy things we please. For me, one such moment was the first time I listened to Marilyn Manson's album Mechanical Animals. Before you start throwing rotten tomatoes and assailing me with whatever insults and withering glares are instinctual at the mention of the album, let me unpack this statement.
Marilyn Manson is an artist whose reputation is more widely know than the actual art. I do mean art, not just music. While the events and miscast blame of Columbine High School were still fresh in the memories of parents and students everywhere, here was a musician/band vilified for something in which they shared no part. To listen to this group in my small town was to immediately be labeled as one of 'those kids' who wore eyeliner and the big, groady looking JNCO pants that looked like sails. None of that for me, thanks. I was much too wholesome. I was, however, curious about the imagery and songs I saw on the ol' MTV. I was fascinated by the world MM would construct for their videos, full of decrepit, decaying things and broken, dirty landscapes. Generally the songs were pretty good for what they were - intentionally over the top heavy metal. This is not to say MM approached the intentional satire of, say, GWAR, but I always thought of the band more in the lines of a modern day Alice Cooper - it was obviously all an elaborate show, and at times it was interesting to a horror movie fan who liked bizarre music. So when I saw the videos the band had done for the singles off Mechanical Animals I was intrigued. Gone were the nightmarish imagery of torture devices and broken glass. Instead there was strange alien imagery and quasi-futuristic cops, distorted bodies and misshapen people railing against mass media and Kennedy look-alikes. A mish mash of vague ideas, in hindsight, but to a fifteen year old it was something different. So on a whim I picked up the album and it wasn't half bad. Sonically it was a decent album, full of strong riffs and odd structural choices. Kind of cool, and Manson's voice wasn't bad when he wasn't screaming. My older brother had once said the same, that if he would just give in to normalcy and accept that he doesn't have to try to be controversial, he could be a much more appealing artist. But I digress.
What I gathered, having listened to the album and seeing the artwork and accompanying videos, was that while previous efforts had been in the Alice Cooper vein, this was a modern David Bowie/Glam Rock take on the Manson sound. It really wasn't too bad. It really was quite an ambitious re-invention from the ground up for the band and a brave move, to be honest. All the kids wanting more violent, supposedly Satanic imagery were confronted instead with androgenous images and proclamations about rock being dead and the hollowness of pop culture. A pretty clever trick to play on the world, in hindsight. I was skeptical, then, when Manson would years later decry the album as similarly fake and an attempt to simply hook in the mall kids. Sure, it looked like it worked, at least on a dummy like me, but I felt like he was dismissing the album simply because it was such a departure from their typical sound and style. I think what really happened was Manson was a bit embarrassed by a failed attempt to switch gears and simply reverted to what had worked. As a concept glam album it still works and has some great song writing on it. Sure, there are some trite or predictable lyrics to be found, but you have to give them credit for branching out and incorporating acoustic instruments or techno/electro elements to the degree they did. Having been pigeonholed as a metal band and straying from expectations so much took some guts, so I can understand why they would be sheepish to admit it never caught on. How often does Garth Brooks discuss Chris Gaines? Remember KISS going disco? Yeah.
All apologist ranting aside, it wasn't really the album itself that made such a huge impact on me, but the way I perceived it in contrast to what I perceived to be its broader reception. Vividly I can recall how teachers or parents of friends would recoil or sadly scold me for listening to it. Looking back its almost quaint that music could be perceived as so evil or threatening a mere fifteen years ago. It was more the idea that I found something that was actually kind of a hidden gem, a rich but inherently flawed album that was deeper than anyone I knew would guess.
I may have mentioned this before, but in the off chance you're joining us midway through our program, I was raised in a small town in the Midwest. A no-coast style, to quote Mictlan. Having been brought up in a small town with only minimal amount of access to what was a newly-developing internet, I was most assuredly missing out on some of the meats in our cultural stew. While I would discover, years later, the joys of indie rap, trip hop, Japanese authors and other microcosms of my current world, I had to enjoy what was available. Namely, whatever crap MTV peddled to me and what was correspondingly available at the local mall or Best Buy. This is not to make excuses for what was no doubt typical taste of teenage boys - I certainly could have done more research into what the great big world held in store for me. No foolsies, it was my own fault. Whenever I would take the opportunity/risk to branch out of my comfort zone I was often richly rewarded. One of the few avenues available was the dual pseudo-journalism of Rolling Stone and Spin. Their respective recommendations did a great deal for shaping my burgeoning musical tastes. It was through their reviews I was exposed to the wonders of Bjork, Portishead, The Strokes and more.
Additionally I had an older brother with great taste in music - I fully credit him with the establishment of my musical Torah, pilfering his CD collection (how quaint) to feverishly devour albums by the likes of Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam, Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Faith No More. He was a god-send, both in the sense of having a 'good example' (I instead opted to be 'the horrible warning' to my younger brother) and showing me what was in. I would have completely missed the boat on Tenacious D had he not told me, nor would I have been privy to the cult classics of Office Space, the Christopher Guest films and High Fidelity. His attendance at an out of state college, however, limited his influence after a while.
Why do I write all this, you ask? Besides the joy I garner from traipsing down memory lane, stopping occasionally to examine my own narrative? The point is, whether it's in self-conscious defense or simple positing, that I had to eventually cobble together my own tastes and preferences from whatever sources I was exposed to. Everyone eventually finds some thing, some moment, where they realize that not all is pre-ordained and decided for you, that we are free to like whatever wonderful or trashy things we please. For me, one such moment was the first time I listened to Marilyn Manson's album Mechanical Animals. Before you start throwing rotten tomatoes and assailing me with whatever insults and withering glares are instinctual at the mention of the album, let me unpack this statement.
All apologist ranting aside, it wasn't really the album itself that made such a huge impact on me, but the way I perceived it in contrast to what I perceived to be its broader reception. Vividly I can recall how teachers or parents of friends would recoil or sadly scold me for listening to it. Looking back its almost quaint that music could be perceived as so evil or threatening a mere fifteen years ago. It was more the idea that I found something that was actually kind of a hidden gem, a rich but inherently flawed album that was deeper than anyone I knew would guess.
