Thursday, May 7, 2009

interview with a soapdodger, charlatan and charismatic miscreant



let me introduce you to the family: "wanna buy a f@ckin' lady bic ?"


II

One has to be careful...
when picking up the soap. In many penitentiaries, it's perhaps better not to bathe at all. If one can get away with it. An act of self-preservation well suited to those family values subsequently adhered to out on the Spahn Ranch.

Charlie don't surf, and he ain't no skateboarding toothpick.

Like Aleister Crowley, his primary addiction was in subjugating lesser egos and bending them to his prison scarred and hopelessly addled will. And unlike Crowley, he lacked the proper financial backing. Just so much dime-a-dozen cultivated theatrical shtick, picked up here and there with the indiscriminate zeal of the habitual garbage raker; the pink snouted truffling connoisseur of hand-me-down homilies. With an adequate inheritence - who knows ? - the road to the the new dawn may have been paved with gold instead of chicken bones and rats' tails.
 

To the recently paroled thirty-two year old Manson, stepping loose on Haight Ashbury in March, 1967 after serving more than fifteen years in various institutions for violations as diverse as grand theft auto and the pimping of a minor, the impressionable naiveté - if not vacuity - of so many disenfranchised flower children must have seemed a freak gift to be toyed with at leisure. Straight time can never have been realistically debated as an option.

III

"I was so smart when i was a kid,
that i learned i was dumb. Fast."


"That's beautiful."

charlies's cherry-picked band of gypsys.

A sociopath with a Rasputin complex as virulent as herpes - no Ed Bunker, certainly - a life sentence of segregation, for his own protection, ultimately reawaited him back behind the razor wire in the aftermath of Helter Skelter; ironic, given his half-assed lip service to the codes of the Aryan Brotherhood.

Foxy Loxy, king for but a day, the sky was quick to fall back in.

The following interview is culled from Daniel Hancyz's "Rebirth Movement" remixes of "Psychedelic Soul"; a double CD bootleg release of Manson's 1967 sessions recorded at Universal Studios, Hollywood which previously suffered from poor fedelity and lacklustre editing. The version of "Look At Your Game, Girl" differs significantly from that previously released on "LIE: The Love and Terror Cult" through Awareness Records.


IV

"I'll tell you what i generally do
- and this is kinda crazy -

well, we go round and visit a lot;
we go to people's houses..."


do what thou wilt.


I suspect my ruminations on garbage picking
were directly inspired by this rather fine piece.


illustration by ib.

CHARLES MANSON: INTERVIEW from " Psychedelic Soul (Rebirth Movement)" Bootleg (Universal Studios) 1967/2009 (US)

CHARLES MANSON: LOOK AT YOUR GAME, GIRL from " Psychedelic Soul (Rebirth Movement)" Bootleg (Universal Studios) 1967/2009 (US)


REBIRTH MOVEMENT (THE DANIEL HANCYZ REMIXES)
ED SANDERS ON THE FAMILY (LINK SUPPLIED BY JON)

5 comments:

Denier said...

Based on these Manson tunes and a few others floating around the Net, Charlie didn't have a bad voice. Just took it a little hard when he didn't get that record contract. Maybe Phil Spector can produce some new tracks now that he's gonna have a lot more time on his hands!

ib said...

Yes. Manson possessed a fairly commercial voice, if surprisingly tame and ill-fitting for the period. Given Terry Melcher's interest - on the say-so of Dennis Wilson - it would appear Charlie was the victim of his own particular inability to suffer guidance or constructive advice.

Ditto Spector; owner of a lonely heart backed up with a .357 magnum.

Personally, I suspect Phil might withstand jail time to a lesser dgree; if only down to the fact that the authorities regard him a lesser risk and consequently choose to house him in mainstream population.

We shall see.

ib said...

By the by, I poked around this post - perhaps my fifth on Manson - for far longer than is seemly. I am running out of shit to say, but my voyeuristic fascination remains unbridled.

Lean pickings, trash can or not.

Löst Jimmy said...

Your Manson pieces are interesting and well constructed ib, I can understand the fascination

Have a good weekend brother

ib said...

Cheers, Löst Jimmy.

Oddly enough, it was only when listening to this interview - snippets of which have been sampled down the years and appeared hither and thither - that it dawned on me how just how much Dennis Hopper had borrowed from this "Charlie" for his splintered monologues in "Apocalypse Now". A different Heart of Darkness altogether.

Strange that it never rally occurred to me before.