Music Monday: The Green Manalishi

It's one of my favorite Melvins tunes. It has awesome dynamics and tension, feels kinda claustrophobic and dusty, yet remains catchy. And most of all - it fits in perfectly with the rest of the album (The Maggot, 1999).




Yeah. So apparently it's a cover of a song by Fleetwood Mac. It even has a nice, psyched story behind it.

Peter Green claims that he wrote the song after experiencing a drug-induced dream, in which he was visited by a green dog. He understood that the dog represented money and the devil.

"It scared me because I knew the dog had been dead a long time. It was a stray and I was looking after it. But I was dead and had to fight to get back into my body, which I eventually did. When I woke up, the room was really black and I found myself writing the song."

Still, to me, the only Green Manalishi is the Melvins one. And, as much as I like Green's story, for me the song brings more otherworldly and dark imagery.

Perhaps it's just the green in the title, but in my head this song got irreplaceably bound with this page from Mike Mignola's Hellboy (click to enlarge):



It's a whole pulp adventure right here!

A new sect becomes popular among the nobles. It leader is a traveler from distant land, known as the Green Manalishi. He claims to have unlocked the secrets of an ancient civilization. When a heir to one of the biggest fortunes in the state starts suffering from an unknown desease, the Green Manalishi is called.

He claims he has to take the boy on a pilgrimage to a secluded abode in the Horn Mountains. "Only through this holy journey will the boy conquer his illness" he says and the two set out.

After several months, the boy is found in front of his father's mansion. Dirty, dressed like a beggar, changed.

"We tried to talk to him sire, but he keeps repeating one thing over and over again" says the chief of the guards to the boy's father.

"What is it?!"

"The God! The God with the Two Pronged Crown is here!"