Sings

Demo recordings that Manson used to try to become a successful musician like the folks he idolized. Singer songwriter stuff mostly but some decent psychedelia infuses a lot of it. Recording quality is low fi and presence of female voices make it all the more creepy. The tracks where he thinks he’s The White Album are good musically, especially when it gets noisey, which it does. But it varies mostly from surprisingly good to painfully bad near-Outsider Music. Fascinating stuff of course, like Adolf Hitlers shitty paintings. Sad thing is that these recordings imply that had he stuck to doing this (instead of taking advantage of young confused women and being responsible for vicious murders), taking more drugs and cultivating his experimental side and maybe hooking up with other weirdos he could’ve been a KZSU stalwart. Instead, this is a creepy curiosity, a glimpse into his mind that yields no surprises whatsoever. Play along with cellmate’s Unabomber Manifesto for creepy curiosity kudos. Later tracks sound like the recorder was left on as creepy maniacal laughter and little anecdotal intros and outtros are present, with him spouting spoken word philosophy (#22). Eesh. I hate to say it, but, good stuff.

1) “love” feel, melodic singing that’s not bad, but very derivative of Baccharach and other composers of the time
2) tribal hippie feel, here we go, craziness with refs to psychology 101
3) mechanical man, anti-social tendencies loud and clear, with noisey layers
4) solo guitar, “people say I’m no good”, more antisocial stuff, rhythmic with bongos
5) more “love” feel smarminess, eesh
6) cool noise in intro, woman’s voice sample echoey, then a slightly southern feel, “arkansas”
7) women singing, childlike nursery rhyme feel, veery creepy
8) “garbage dump”, hillbilly, oh man, this is so awful its fantastic
9) jangly, antigovernment theme thinly veiled, womens chorus of background vocs
10) anti society, jangly solo guitar/vocs
11) slightly bluesy, dated
12) ironically a song about being in jail
13) noisey and clunky, weird
14) cheesy as shit
15) jangley slightly bluesy, last 30 minutes of him talking anarchy (!)
16) maniacal laughter in the spoken intro to a cheesy one
17) another brief intro to a very forgettable stoned dude with a guitar
18) cheesy “love” feel again, ends cold
19, 20, 21) awful cheesiness, bordering on outsider music and good that way
22) Interview, him spouting about how smart he is and shit
23) minor toned blather 24) a love song, cheesy
25, 26) his cheesy Gabor Zsabo tracks may be the creepiest of all, total throwaways