Summer Madness

June first, D.C. hits a Code Orange index for air quality. This means you're showering three times a day, and all attempts at elegance are thwarted by sweat drenchings. Yucko. But as the crazies hit Capitol City, it seems appropriate to focus on the nature of madness. In preparation for the concert at the 9:30 Club tomorrow night, I did a bit of research on the influences of the Brian Jonestown Massacre.

BJM took me by surprise one afternoon riding shotgun with my friend and fellow writer Neil Defalco, and I immediately demanded to know who it was. It's a familiar, San Francisco sound, circular in sensibility, tortured voice and enigmatic lyrics overtop. The psychedelic sound amongst eight musicians, one of whom, the founder Anton Newcomb, seems taken with something behind the personage of one Charles Manson. But he's definitely not the first rock star to be fascinated with mass manipulators. If we recall Pink Floyd, we remember the allusions to Hitler, and Churchill, and the general distrust of those who seem to influence the air we breathe. Manson is probably part Lenin part Woody Guthrie, for his nature of common man, travelin' minstrel slash pimp slash hereditary criminal. The combination sounds crazy, and maybe that's why he's crazy. But at the same time is pretty bullshit-free.

BJM did a reworking of Manson's song "Arkansas," called "Arkansas Revisited." Maintains much of that train-hopping feel I compared to Woody Guthrie.

He was at worst a monster and at best an opportunist, but wherever his morality lies, for certain Manson is of vital importance to the twentieth century, perhaps only for the way he harnessed the dark side of the Movement, drawing in absolutely everyone including Beach Boy Dennis Wilson. He had to have been a pretty likeable or interesting character for charming so many into his cause. And yet he had no illusions about whether or not he was a "smart man." He claims he isn't in the interview, and it's true he has no education, and he grew up and kept low-brow company his whole life. (Pimping in your early twenties=low-brow). There are those (perhaps Newcomb included) who still like to argue that no one that dumb could have been that manipulative. Isn't it funny how we have a weird sense of respect or admiration for those who so deftly enrope others into one single, often selfish or destructive cause? It's learned behavior, not skilled and fulfilling the basest of instincts, often a result of severe self-doubt in the endless quest for approval. Not a skill, not a talent, just a personality flaw.

But damn, some of the nastiest people have made the coolest music.

Thank you God for auto-tune.