Gothic Council vs. Marilyn Manson in Houston Press

The Houston Press music section has a regular sub-column ‘Gothtopia‘ covering all things Gothic, as they relate to the Houston Gothic scene. In the latest installment, published Apr. 26th, a cadre of spooky-identified crankypants share their terribly relevant opinions on the relative merits or demerits of Marilyn Manson’s Goth cred and influence on the scene. This week’s Gothic Council is represented by Batty (Gothic fashion designer), Liisa Ladouceur (author of the Encyclopedia Gothica), Martin Oldgoth (Gothic DJ), Regen Robinson (Gothic DJ), “living historian” Morrighanne Burns, Sarah Fanning (Night’s Plutonion Shore blogger), Alethea Carr (co-founder of the Age of Decay festival), and Darla Teagarden (artist). For the most part, their opinions are the predictable luke-warm disdain you can usually count on from people trying to hard to communicate their own ‘authoritative’ status within the scene. Always retreating the the relative safety of never admitting you are actually into something, a style perfected to high art by modern ironic hipsters has always comes across as more timid to me, rather than wizened and experienced. But, this crew doesn’t take it too far down the path of rolling eyes and whinging about ‘the kids today.’ I would have liked to see some insight or critique of Manson’s latest release, but mostly I enjoyed reading Liisa Ladouceur break from the group and chastise them for being too negative and a bit cliche.

Marilyn Manson brings his Born Villain tour to the Houston House of Blues Sunday, May 13.

Read the whole column here: http://blogs.houstonpress.com/rocks/2012/04/marilyn_manson_gothic_council.php

I’ve argued before about his inclusion under our little black parasol, and mostly I get gnashing teeth in response. However, I would put forth that as a Reznor protégé his credentials check out, and that many of his tracks, particularly off of Mechnical Animals, fit perfectly as modernist goth tunes.

Posted by on May 1, 2012. Filed under Media, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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