Amongst those who dubiously self-identify as Dylanologists (a stupid term coined by the vile A.J. Weberman, arguably the most loathsome of all 60s counter-culture figures) it has been long recognized that Bob Dylan suffers from a rare form of mental insanity. This madness, and madness it is, is not listed in the DSM but can be identified by its sole symptom: those with Bob Dylan’s Disease will, and for no apparent reason, put weak material on officially released albums while hiding simultaneously recorded material of superior quality.
With Dylan, this started early– “Mama You Been On My Mind”, “Farewell, Angelina”, and the masterpiece “She’s Your Lover Now”– and has continued throughout his whole career. Think “Up To Me”, “Abandoned Love”, and “Blind Willie McTell”. The appearance of “Mississippi” on Love and Theft, a track originally recorded for Time Out of Mind, makes us wonder if Dylan isn’t still at his old tricks. (Although it’s just possible that Dylan may have been in the right, as producer Daniel Lanois reportedly had layered polyrhythmic drumming on the Time original.)
With Tuesday’s release of The Lost Tracks of Danzig, a 2CD set of outtakes from the history of Glenn Danzig’s eponymous band, we must report sadly that we have found another sufferer of Bob Dylan’s Disease. Some of my readers might, of course, wonder if there is any genuine qualitative difference in any of Danzig’s output– ain’t that all just some gol danged heavy metal crap?
Well, no.
Glenn Danzig has had some strange luck– the Misfits were great, but what in the hell were they? A band so weird that it took suburban kids 15 years to turn them into a cheap psychobilly cliche. Samhain? Well, jeez, I love Samhain but even I can’t tell you what the heck that was about. And then, yes, finally, Danzig. Again the odd luck held– the first album was released in ‘88, the second in ‘90. Both surfed on a wave of accessible, radio friendly metal, getting Glenn Danzig a house in Los Feliz but tarnishing his reputation as a metal goon, something the man’s endless cock of the walk posturing has done nothing to abate.
Both albums offer a uniquely weird blues based rock structured around a super crunchy guitar sound and The Voice’s lyrical throwaways on the motifs that have consumed Danzig from, we presume, early adolescence– skulls, blackness, blood, demons and women. Then came Danzig III, an album I like, but which really is kind of metal, and then the live album/double-EP that gave us the ‘93 single of “Mother”, solidifying forever Glenn Danzig’s reputation as Metal Dude. The follow-up was Danzig 4p, a great album and the most successful of all of Danzig’s experiments. (It is also almost certainly the only major label release to reference the Scientology off-shoot The Process Church of the Final Judgment.)
And then came the darkness. With a demonic host of malign and bloody skulls, Danzig fired the band that’d been with him for all four albums (and was the final Samhain lineup) and made 5: Blackacidevil, an album of Trent Reznor fanfic about three years too late. Then 666: Satan’s Child, and then 7: I, Luciferi. The less said of either, the better. 2004 saw a happy return to form with Circle of Snakes. The Voice sounded terrible on the previous two albums, and while weaker with age, it’s fine on Circle; the major problem being production. For whatever reason, the album is poorly leveled on big systems while sounding just fine on headphones.
And that was supposed to be it: Circle of Snakes was the last album by Danzig, the band. But Glenn Danzig, the man, had a vault full of inverted crosses and unreleased tracks, and he began rumbling about releasing them, and so he has. And I am here to report that The Lost Tracks of Danzig is significantly better than anything since Danzig 4p, and also that Glenn Danzig has Bob Dylan’s Disease.
The first disc is all Danzig 1-4, and yeah, of course that’s going to be great. But the second disc has outtakes from 5-7, and they’re so much better than anything on those albums that unless you accept mental insanity as a defense, it’s impossible to figure out why they were omitted in favor of the tracks that comprised the original albums.
Music may be the only artform where murdering your darlings constitutes a mistake. That’s weird, but how else do you explain it? Actual insanity? Monstrous egotism? The total inability to discern one’s own efforts?
I have no idea! But boy I really like The Lost Tracks of Danzig. This is all.
