"Phillip Garrido who is accused with his wife Nancy of kidnapping and raping Jaycee Lee Dugard and holding her captive for 18 years in their backyard, gave two disturbing CDs to Marc Lister in 2006, according to his local newspaper. Mr Lister, who was a client of Garrido's printing business, initially put the music away unplayed...But he has now listened to the collection of suggestive rock songs and trippy synthetic ballads apparently written by Garrido - and has discovered repeated clues to his warped sexual tastes. " So says this report, which analyzes some of the lyrics.
I found a 20 minute audio clip of Garrido's music lurking on the website of Northern California station CBS5 which I then recorded, and chopped into 4 smaller sound clips. Whoever posted this didn't include the entirety of each song, just a minute or two of each. Which is plenty, believe me.
So what does the music of a crazed religious-fanatic pedophile kidnapper who fathered two children from his victim sound like? Lightweight rock that occasionally suggests the likes of Chicago or Foreigner - and those are the best songs. A crappy demo, like countless others from not-too-talented would-be rock stars. Actually, the bouncy bubblegum that begins the second segment threatens to be a fun tune until the unappealing vocals kick in.
And that's what evil sounds like. Nothing like death-metal or gangsta rap. Just a bunch of routine Dad-rock. The songs aren't even religious, as I was expecting. Sure, the lyrics declaring his love of some "little girl" are now creepy in context, but I didn't hear anything explicitly depraved in them. If it was anyone else singing, no-one would raise an eyebrow, any more then when the Beatles (or Stooges) sang about their "little girl." Apart from some lyrics referring to his time in jail for a previous offense, there's nothing remotely dark or menacing here. They're love songs. The truly evil don't think that they're evil. He thinks he's full of love and the Holy Spirit. And Charles Manson wrote mellow folk songs, and John Wayne Gacy painted pictures of clowns.
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9 comments:
Wouldn't it be so much worse if Garrido's music had any redeeming qualities. Its awful.
Charles Manson on the other hand could actually write a tune. 'Lie' is a pretty weird record but it definitely stays with you.
Maybe that's why Manson is still known and Garrido is most likely to be totally forgotten by the public imagination within a decade.
As to Gacy the painter....yuk.
Not a huge Manson fan, but "Cease to Exist" is a beauty. Good enough to be covered/stolen by the Beach Boys, but Charlie's version is superior.
I will say that Phil beats David Koresh, tho.
I wanna say, though, the sadness and delusion is definitely there on those recordings, even without the context. He conveys his own pretense of innocence but undermines it with creepy vocals, organs, and reverb. I think I'd definitely be scared by this guy's personality even if I only heard the recordings and not the news stories.
it's too bad you do posts like this, where other people's misfortune becomes just another novelty.
otherwise i think this blog is great.
Just another novelty? Did you even read the blogger's comments?
This doesn't make me feel any less disturbed about the whole thing, but damn, nice find.
"The truly evil don't think that they're evil. He thinks he's full of love and the Holy Spirit. And Charles Manson wrote mellow folk songs, and John Wayne Gacy painted pictures of clowns."
That says it all for all the sexual predators; priests, abusive husbands, rapists, coaches, serial killers. They escape detection because they really believe their own rationalizations.
I can point to thousands of lyrics that are no better or worse than these, yet I sincerely doubt the authors are doing the same things.
The question is how to tell the difference.
"Truly evil"... The real meaning from my point of view of serial killers writing cute folk songs is that there may not be such a gap between Garrido and the average normal guy...
I would not like to take away any sense of responsiblity, though.
But it is so easy to draw a line between them and us (those who do not kill, rape, lead a cult, etc.) Come on, we all have the same dangerous instincts!
Some good points being raised here. Veddy interesting...
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