 |
|
 |
||||||
|
||||||
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Marilyn Manson The Golden Age Of Grotesque 2003 Nothing/Interscope
...As I was saying, the golden age of rock 'n' roll will never die as long as children feel the need to laugh and cr—oh, wait a minute: that wasn’t me, that was Ian Hunter in "The Golden Age Of Rock 'n' Roll." But that was thirty long years ago and, as all original CREEM readers know, a lot of muddy water’s flowed under the musical bridge during the past three decades. So let’s agree to stop living in the past and take a look instead at some of the new upstarts who’ve leeched their way onto the scene since then. Which brings me to the erstwhile Brian Warner who has managed to eke out an image for himself by being to spooky contact lenses what Elton John used to be to big eyeglasses back in the ’70s. Except that Peter Gabriel was wearing equally weird contacts on his album covers thirty years ago. Oh, I’m sorry: I promised I wasn’t going to live in the past. Anyway, after coming up with his one bonafide hit early in the game (the guilty pleasure "The Beautiful People," whose opening toe-tapping power chords have already become a sports arena standard), Mr. Warner proceeded to successfully plunder both David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane albums on his humorous hard-rocking glam rock throwback Mechanical Animals. He then followed up that genuine laff-riot with the medically ballistic Holy Wood, a serious high-concept album about the Kennedy assassination. Except that John Foxx had already recorded a JFK death concept album called Metamatic thirty years ago. Oh, I’m sorry: I promised I wasn’t going to live in the past. Anyway, had Mr. Warner continued to make big statement art rock albums like Holy Wood, he might’ve had a good shot at joining fellow label-mate Trent Reznor in the Serious Artiste pantheon. Unfortunately, he opted instead to try and revive his fading goofy glory by releasing The Golden Age Of Grotesque, which has got to be the absolute dismally worst record I have ever heard in my life from an erratic schlock rocker with half a dozen prior convictions in his catalogue. When Mr. Warner starts writing entire songs like "(s)AINT" around hoary thirty year old T-shirt slogans (FCK: THE ONLY THING MISSING IS U), it makes you wonder if his next lyrical insight will be the ever-popular I'M A VIRGIN: THIS IS A VERY OLD T-SHIRT. Then again, I'M WITH STUPID would probably be more appropriate given that he’s still stealing lines from Aladdin Sane ("bright young things," "suck baby suck") that Bowie himself stole from Evelyn Waugh and William Burroughs. And I won’t even point out the exquisite irony that it’s on a song with the Wal-Mart censored title "This Is The New S**t" that Mr. Warner even manages to rip off Freddie Mercury who first sang "let us entertain you" on Queen’s Jazz album some thirty years ago. Oh, I’m sorry: I promised I wasn’t going to live in the past. Anyway, the general consensus here at America’s Only is that far from being unsettling (he wishes), Mr. Warner’s continued rote use of fake Nazi imagery on The GAG as a means to outrage the masses has become tediously trite of late. But that’s what happens when you load up on drugs and watch The Night Porter too many times. And while we’re on the topic of grand theft audio, did I mention that Mr. Warner stole his new SS-inspired "MM" band logo from a two year old video game? He thought no one would notice that he took the "W" logo from Id Software’s Return To Castle Wolfenstein and flipped it upside down for his own use. He thought wrong. I could go on, but I think you catch my drift. If, as cartoon characters go, Rob Zombie has become a first-rate Scream Dream era Ted Nugent, then Mr. Warner isn't even a second-rate Creatures Of The Street era Jobriath anymore. And that's a libelously grievous insult to the late Mr. Boone’s homo-neurotic classic of, you guessed it, thirty years ago. Hey, promises are made to be broken.
|
||||||||||||
|
—Jeffrey Morgan July 2003 |
||||||||||||
 |
