10/23/03 - The Dresden Dolls play CMJ and see Marylin Manson

Another journey down to New York City in our beloved Ludwig Van....
Brian and I got into a discussion about god-knows-what and missed the exit for 84 off the Mass Pike. Not only did we miss the exit, but we continued on for quite some time without realizing our stupid mistake, even we stopped for gas at a rest stop we had NEVER seen, and I know, because it had no pac-man, and all of the rest-stops on the pike between Boston and the 84 exit have pac-man, and I know, because I always play a game, and I'm getting very good. The club we played in in cleveland had a pac-man and i got to the 10th level and the club in st. louis had a pac-man (but with no sound) and i didn't do as well, but it was really nice that they had it, anyway...

anyway, we missed the exit something terrible and wound up all the way in new york, up north. we realized out stupid mistake and hit a full-on bad accident and calculated that it was very possible that we might miss our show. we spent the next harrowing few hours going completely ballistic in the van (we made up several good songs: "I want a Ludwig Van" to the tune of "I wanna hold your hand" was the most memorable) and arrived at the Mercury Lounge exactly ten minutes before we were supposed to hit stage. we barrelled in, set up, got dressed and were on stage, playing, fifteen minutes after coming in the door. not bad.

after the set we were given four free tickets to the marylin manson show across town. we simply had to go, there was no way around it.
I had never heard a Marylin Manson record album but Brian had, and I was very curious.
pope and manta were with us, so we piled in an automobile and headed to the roseland ballroom, to see what had become of The Youth of America.

surprisingly, the crowd there was not very Youthful, it seems that Mr. Manson has a devoted crowd of older fans but the young youth aren't very excited. he was a very good performer, full of energy he was, but the music was forgettable and the dancers weren't very inspired (though they were sexy, and had o.k. bellies, on the stout side, the way i like).
we secured a nice balcony table up top, due to our lucky special tickets, and manta brought out his large notebook and started to write, and gave me a nice marker and i got to draw on the other side, so i made some sketches of marylin manson and his dancers and another picture of the rock world, which was a sort of globe with flowers sprouting out of it interspersed with some searching, aching, war-weary hands stretching to some unknown goal. it was a nice set of pictures, brian admired them, and we were very cold up there and a little bored, as the music was monotonous and marylin manson wasn't very interesting anymore.

i explained to brian and manta the significance of the deaths-head skull that decorated mr. manson's stage podium (it was an insignia used by an especially brutal and bloodthirsty subsection of the nazi SS, called the "todeskopf" in deutsch...mr. manson's version had imposed mickey mouse ears atop the skull of the head. about as tasteless as you could get, and sort of funny, i thought, though had i been someone killed in a concentration camp, I probably would have been deathly offended). neither of them knew the significance of the deaths-head, and it made me wonder how many in the audience understood mr. manson's disturbing joke. he also arrived behind his podium in blackface, wearing a set of mickeymouse ears, i wonder if this was lost on anyone as well.

Brian and I came down from the balcony, fought our way through the crowd to the front, and made a kind of wild love among the crowd.
Then we left and went back to the mercury, where i promtly forgot to get paid for the show and we left behind more cool short black haircuts then we've ever seen in one small place in our lives.

i stayed up until five in the morning in the safety of my dear friends' house in hoboken, NJ, working on the details of our halloween show, which i am very excited about, we will be performing a little play based on popular culture.