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Music of the Week – Glenn Danzig – Who Killed Marilyn? / Spook City USA

This is the first solo release by Glenn Danzig, a two songs 7″ recorded in 1981. Glenn played all the instruments on it.
It’s quite interesting because it develops two of the main themes and obsession of his future solo career: the obsession for the morbid side of the USA pop culture, portrayed here in the paranoia regarding Marilyn Monroe’s death (You think it was an overdose / But could it have been the pact / Could it have been the Kennedys / Was it LAPD / It ain’t a mystery / Baby not to me) and the focus on the macabre details, and the B-movie aesthetic used to portray the dark and hidden in everyday light but drowned in denial side which lies behind the mask of the optimism and the (apparently) bright and solar values of the mainstream USA culture, a message brought by using repetitive and obsessive tones ( See-through spectres cruise the hallways /Spook City U.S.A./ Poltergeists in the middle of the roadway / Spook City U.S.A.) and a macabre sense of doom ( Here is where I’ll die for sure / I don’t want no substitute / Spook City U.S.A. / Spook City U.S.A).

Here is the full single, with both songs.