You Downloaded WHAT?

I think the year was 91 or 92. I cannot remember exactly. MJP along with two buddies of mine and my buddies sister went to a concert. We knew the headlining band since they opened up for Guns N Roses the previous year. We were excited to see them. For a change there was an opening band that we had never heard of. This is before the easy access of Internet. So we tried to look up some of their stuff at local music stores. We could not find anything. All we knew was the band was called...... MARILYN MANSON.

The concert was at Fair Park in Dallas in the old arena that was used back in the 70's for hockey and was now used for horse and cattle shows. Small venue....maybe about 5,000 total. Now getting out of the car we instantly knew something was different. It looked like we had four yuppies going to a GOTH convention. You know the old song from childhood....ONE OF THESE THINGS IS NOT LIKE THE OTHER.......we were the "one of these things."

On we go into the concert. Me, MJP and my buddy Todd have seats up in the stands. Jay and Todd's sister have seats on the floor. We were not too excited about Just Jay and Todd's sister going on the floor by themselves but Todd's sister was headstrong. She was only 15 but she looked 20 so we did not like this at all. Still she insisted. So Jay promised he would stick by her. I was just hoping Jay's Karate was up to date in case he needed it.

The concert starts and some band comes out and puts us to sleep...considering they were a heavy metal band this is a something.

Then out comes Marilyn Manson.....the place starts going nuts. The whole floor starts slam dancing. The guy next to me starts moshing so hard he bounced into me and fell to the floor because I pushed him to the ground when he hit me. My head is now on a swivel because I assume this guy has buddies and I am expecting to get jumped. Nothing happened. The guy apologized and went back to his moshing after I helped him up. The rest of the set for MM we just stared in awe of what we were seeing on the stage. It is not often you see a grown man as big as a string bean wearing a leather thong and that is it on stage. The music made no sense as most of the lyrics sounded like just grunts and screams into microphone.

At the end of the concert we just walked to MJP's car....I don't think we said anything. We got to MJP's car and noticed someone turned his antenna into a pretzel. As far as we were concerned that was the last time we were showing anywhere Marilyn Manson was at.

Fast forward about 15 years and MM has dropped his band and is solo. Some of his music is starting to actually get air time on the radio. There are still some signature MM riffs but for the most part his music, while still very heavy, actually dare we say.....is okay.

I called MJP one day on the way home from work and told him that I had a confession to make. I admitted to liking the new single by MM. MJP revealed that he too liked it but had not said anything.

This started me on a mission to listen to more of MM's music. I must say he has several songs now that I like. Now don't get me wrong....I am not going to a concert of his....I am not going to buy any of his albums. There is still a high "crap" factor to some of his music.

Fast forward to today. There are three songs of MM that I really like. So I downloaded them on ITUNES. My wife, the lovely T-Lady comes into the room and hears the song playing and she looks at me with an expression on her face of such disappointment you would not believe.

The difference between she and I is that I can see that his appearance is schtick. It is part of the "character" that is Marilyn Manson and actually listen to the music and if I like it fine. Notice I only downloaded 3 songs out of the more than 100 there are to choose from. I have not joined any fan clubs or gotten contacts to make my eyes yellow as MM has done.

Tracey cannot get over the appearance of MM.

This got me to thinking. We have other artist on the IPOD that have a more troubled past than MM but their appearance is more streamlined.

So yes! I have Marilyn Manson on my IPOD. You can now start the bashing.