The Green Manalishi (With The Two-Pronged Crown)

Now, when the day goes to sleep and the full moon looks
The night is so black that the darkness cooks
Don't you come creepin' around - makin' me do things I don't wanna do
~
Can't believe that you need my love so bad
Come sneakin' around tryin' to drive me mad
Bustin' in on my dreams - making me see things I don't wanna see
~
'Cause you're the Green Manalishi with the two pronged crown
All my tryin' is up-all your bringin' is down
Just takin' my love then slippin' away
Leavin' me here just tryin' to keep from following you..
~
[ooooo....ooooo...ooooo....]
__________________________________________________

Sounds like a pretty cool poem. Actually to be specific it's a set of lyrix for a song called 'The Green Manalishi (With The Two-Pronged Crown)'. Now, what if I were to tell you to get into a mindset that would become one with these lyrics themselves, make them very literal and real, not just cool sounding poetry? Would you think I was crazy to tell you the Green Manalishi is very real, all these things were a true story?
What sort of a madman would believe all that? A madman named Peter Green, that's who! Why? Because it happened to him! Before more on that, let's talk a bit about Fleetwood Mac. If anyone reading this knows who they are (and there's a good chance), likely they will be thinking of a sort of classic rock/pop group that sang a lot of love songs with their fair share of pure smarm. I don't mean to outright diss the group, since they have had many a moment better than so many putrid pop stars in that never ending crystal cavalcade chasing fame and fuckuptness of various flavors. Ok, so here's the classic image of Fleetwood Mac:

Or....

Pretty fun...and campy. A lot like their music. Some music nerds of the highest order will almost bite their lip with indignation or determination to remind folks that the OLD Fleetwood Mac MUST be called 'Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac.' Because once upon a time Fleetwood Mac was a badass blues rock group in based outta Britain and really had not much to do with sticky and sugary love songs for the most part. Peter Green, you guessed it, fronted this incarnation. What made him leave? What made the group's lineup and sound change so drastically?

Peter Green rockin' out

This was like, the older Fleetwood Mac...and stuff..and things like such

Thing is, Fleetwood Mac evolved more than just once and had a revolving door of many different personnel. For simplicity's sake, from '68-'69 Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac hit a strong stride and put out a few albums. Peter Green increasingly went mad, much like Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett. He was struggling with LSD, began to feel the clutches of fame and money in a negative way, and had withdrawn from other band members. Just before he left the band, one of his last offerings was the Green Manalishi song. It was inspired by a horrific vision or dream he had, elaborated with these quotes:

"I thought I had too much money to be happy and normal. Thousands of pounds is just too much for a working person to handle all of a sudden, and I felt I didn't deserve it."

"I nearly died one night, in my sleep. I don't know if you've ever had the experience; I've had it a couple of times and I'm inclined to think it's an experience that people have. But I was lying in bed, I was dreaming, and this little dog jumped up at me and it scared the shit out of me because this dog had died, and had been dead for a long time. It was a stray dog that I brought to the house and just looked after. And it was strange, kind of spooky, like voodoo. And it was a strange little dog. And I was dead and I couldn't move. I couldn't say, 'I'm dead' - It wasn't available - so I just fought my way back into my body... I thought, 'It must come alive' and it did. So I woke up and looked round - the room was really black - and I found myself writing the song. It was about money. The fear I got that the reason this was happening to me was that I had earned too much money and I was separate from all the people. 'The Green Manalishi' was money; they still call it green-backs and things like that, don't they? When you haven't got any money you aren't worth anything to anybody. The line, 'Don't you come creeping around, making me do things I don't want to do', goes off on a mythological definition level, but it starts, 'You're the Green Manalishi with the two-pronged crown/All my trying is up, all you're bringing is down'. It's about money."
- Peter Green, Interview, 1983

So in short, he had this experience where a green devil dog representing Satan and the evils of money scared the living crap out of him. The next day, he went into one of London's largest parks, Richmond Park, and wrote the lyrics for the song. Soon the song filled out and was complete...and ironically became a hit single. It was reported 'ol Pete could no longer sing vocals when covering Robert Johnson's 'Hellhound On My Trail' (a song covered on Fleetwood Mac's debut album)because the connection to the green devil dog was too close and too raw in his mind. Anytime after that, someone else sang it. Which is kinda funny now that I think about it, since the Green Manalishi was about the horrible source experience, and Petey could sing that! Weird. Others would go on to sing it as well, others who dug it and covered it, including mainly metal bands like Judas Priest, Steel, The Melvins, Arthur Brown and Corrosion of Conformity. It is a great song. Once Peter Green left Fleetwood Mac, the blues left with him, and their sound started becoming more generic and pop/rock oriented. Peter would cross paths with the band again with a quick stint as a touring guitarist, but he never fully rejoined. The members who more or less were there from beginning to start of the band's entire span of career were drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie. The band's name came from a sort of a combo of parts of their last names...with the 'Mac' part somehow derived from the 'Mc' in 'McVie'. 'Mc' becomes 'Mac'. Don't ask. To this moment I still think Green Manalishi is Fleetwood Mac's best song ever, maybe because so much soul and emotion was involved and so much was at stake.

                        Perhaps the devil dog looked something like this?       (derivative/modified work based on a pic by poeticalkrissie on DeviantArt)

Album Covers That Look Like Other Album Covers

Some are blatant parodies, tributes, or ripoffs. Others are more vaguely reminiscent of each other in comparison. Let's check some out:

 Wow, looka all that. I think it all started with Elvis and his debut album. Personally I think Elvis is severely overrated and not even close to being the 'King of Rock and Roll'.  Yet his influence and part played in rock history cannot be denied. A partial testament to that fact is these ripoff album covers. The ones shown above are only a FEW of the many out there. Who are some of these others? Hasil Adkins was probably born around the same time as Elvis, give or take a few years. His style was very rockabilly too. Yet he was backwoods and did not shake his pelvis or wear fancy outfits, and sang songs about mutilating chickens. He was usually a one man band, playing many instruments at the same time!  You could say he was from the weirder darker side of early rock and roll, and nowhere near as commercial. The Haze (as he is sometimes known) helped pave the way for some of the future punks and psychobilly folks.

Speaking of punk, let's move along to The Clash and Sylvain Sylvain (of the New York Dolls).  WHY would these punkers be influenced by Elvis? As tame as he seems now, he was seen as rebellious then, since people were a bunch of super squares back in that day. When you listen to the Clash or New York Dolls, you'll hear that early boogie-woogie rock and roll sound in a lot of their tunes, I mean they grew up at least partially listening to Elvis. Joe Strummer (lead singer of the Clash) was known to be a big Elvis fan, his favorite song being "Crawfish". It wasn't just the Clash's London Calling that the 'Elvis visual theme' was used, it was also used for the Train In Vain single. 

Strummer even styled his hair sorta like Elvis! But I digress...

 

 Let's talk about some divas now. In 1988 Madonna was all the rage and Sonic Youth and alternative/punk legend Mike Watt (see my earlier post of him at :http://fox-actors.blogspot.com/2011/08/high-wattage.html) did a sort of fun side project called the Whitey Album, under the name Ciccone Youth. Ciccone is Madonna's original surname and the album was a sort of avant garde 'Madonna tribute' poking fun weirdo fest that included corny drum machine beats and even two Madonna cover songs.  I always thought the album image was SY bassist Kim Gordon pretending to be Madonna herself, but the pic is actually OF Madonna. A couple of years later, Madonna released her Erotica album with a strangely similar cover. Check out the two:

 Just as I find Elvis overrated, but love the Clash and many others influenced by him, I think Madonna is overrated but love Sonic Youth/Ciccone Youth! Speaking of diva, Annie Lennox's Diva reminds me quite a bit of the Stone Temple Pilots album Shangri La Dee Da. I'm not so sure about influence visually or musically between the two at ALL, it could just be sheer coincidence the covers remind me of each other. Either way it's not as obvious of a resemblance as others:

What next? The Japanese experimental genre-jumping group Boris have an album called Akuma No Uta, which is a total parody of English folksinger Nick Drake's Bryter Layter:

 

 Boris also have an album (featuring the Doomriders as well) called 'Long Hair and Tights'..which  is loosely stylized after classic British metal band Judas Priest's 'Screaming For Vengeance' :

 Then there's yet another album cover influenced by  Screaming For Vengeance. It's by a band called Hatebeak, which is death metal whose 'singer' is a 19 year old Congo African Grey Parrot. That's right, a parrot singing death metal. Pig Destroyer fans should note the band also includes Blake Harrison. 

There's a really great retro revival garage-psych group called the Lyres who were around since the late 70's practically. They did a total ripoff of The Rolling Stones' 'Some Girls'. At least their music is very original:

 Hasil Atkins (who I mentioned earlier) seems to have something in common with Social Distortion here:

 Dig it. The band Ladytron (named after the Roxy Music song) recently released an album called 'Gravity the Seducer'. I haven't really heard much Ladytron and I'm not sure I'd be that into them, but the name of this album is so awesome, as well as the cover art. It seemed curiously similar to Tangerine Dream's 'Stratosfear' :

 Not so sure if I'm so down with the Bedouin Soundclash either, though I've noticed their 'Sounding a Mosaic' album cover reminds me a ton of the Stooges 'Funhouse'...one of the best punk albums EVER:

I mean, is it just me or is there a lot of similarity there? 

Then there's Brand New's album 'The Devil & God Are Raging Inside Of Me'...which reminds me of the Violent Femmes' 1983 self titled debut, which is another really classic album from the vaults of quirky alternative rock:

I love the surrealism of it all. Little girls and paint flaking off seems so ordinary yet at the same time you say- 'what's the story behind this?'

 I'll finish this post with some Beatles and some funny parodies of their covers. There's Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention doing 'We're Only In It For The Money'...which was a parody of the Beatles' 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' :

Both are must have albums! For some more obscure Sgt. Pepper's knock-offs,check this:

 

The first depicts  'St. Captain Freak Out and the Magic Bamboo Request' by Acid Mothers Temple, a crazy experimental psychedelic Japanese group. The second is the Rutles'  'Sgt. Rutters Only Darts Club Band.' The Rutles are a hilarious Beatles spoof group. The third is the Easy Star All Stars' 'Easy Stars Lonely Hearts Dub Band.' If you hadn't guessed by the picture, they a bunch rasta dub ganga rascals.  There are SO many Sgt. Peppers ripoff covers out there.

 The Residents are one of the weirdest groups out there, preferring to wear masks (usually giant eyeballs) and remain anonymous. Their music is strange too. I love their 1974 debut, 'Meet the Residents'..which features a defaced cover of 'Meet the Beatles'. They might've got in some shit for it I think, not sure.

 Another real laugh is the 'Abbey Road EP' by the Red Hot Chili Peppers...taking inspiration from the Abbey Road of the Beatles-->

HAhaha. Now that's probably enough for now. I'll post some others sometime in the future....