Sound Check -- Geoff Carter: Crawl out of your coffin for the music of Rob Zombie

Geoff Carter's music column appears Fridays. Reach him at [email protected].

You can say what you will about death-disco maven Rob Zombie, and you probably have. He's something of an easy target: Critics rip into him as an Alice Cooper beta version, while parents despise him for his mock-demonic affect.

Even the kids haven't given him his full due, preferring the effeminate, former-band-geek wiles of that Marilyn Manson twerp.

Don't be fooled. Behind the soul-crunching metal beats, hollowed-out eye sockets and Chewbacca fuzziness, you'll find a culturally savvy, slightly mad genius.

Zombie -- born Robert Cummings -- plays to a niche that is being largely ignored by the major labels in their rush to strip-mine the former Mickey Mouse Club: those of us who remember rock and roll -- vaguely -- as a form of idiot rebellion, a lifestyle rich with sex, booze and blissful ignorance.

Yes, ignorance. Not to belittle the fine work Rage Against the Machine is doing -- there isn't a 14-year old in this nation who isn't ready to rally behind Mumia, whoever he is -- but there's more charm to Rob Zombie's form of rebellion.

Terrorism? Radical fundamentalism? The only rational solution is to play fast, drunk and boorish -- very boorish indeed.

On that score, "American Made Music to Strip By" -- an album of remixes from Zombie's hellbilly deluxe -- succeeds admirably, utterly patriotically.

Here are all the conceits that made America great: the cars (in-your-face drag race symbolism abounds), the belligerence (the remixes, by God Lives Underwater, Charlie Clouser, Rammstein and others, are state-of-the-art techno-metal), and naturally, the good old Yankee girls -- one of which figures prominently (and naked) in the Zombie-directed cover art.

It takes serious brains to get this dumb, and to paraphrase the mighty Bjork, it takes courage to enjoy it. Clouser's remixes of "Living Dead Girl" and "Dragula" shake and shimmy in a manner that more or less compels the listener to think of go-go girls slithering on elevated platforms.

Philip Steir's creepy mix of "The Ballad of Resurrection Joe" is custom-made for somebody's cyberpunk film soundtrack, as is Chris Vrenna's repurposing of "Return of the Phantom Stranger."

At any rate, each successive mix takes a more different, more interesting liberty with Zombie's music than the rocker would have taken on his own. It's smart economics on Zombie's part. I'd say that he's destined to become Ted Turner's second at AOL Time Warner, when that predestined eventuality comes around. And then they'll run for the White House. Brace yourself.

There's another side to Zombie that's more interesting still: his instincts as a pop-culture preservationist. His high-intensity rockabilly posturing only hints at Zombie's love for '50s-vintage hot rods, twists and hoodlums.

His record label, Zombie-A-Go-Go, signed up leopard-printed surf and garage bands by the truckload a few years back; with the release of "Rob Zombie Presents the Words and Music of Frankenstein," he proves his devotion to those bands by honoring two of their biggest spiritual influences -- actor Boris Karloff and director James Whale.

The "Frankenstein" disc is a hoot and a half. Personally compiled by Zombie, it features 50-odd tracks of music and dialogue drawn from Whale's "Frankenstein" films.

The famous "It's alive" dialogue, spoken by the inimitable Colin Clive, is given full reign; Zombie plays the material completely straight and reverent, as if making his own film.

It's fun, if somewhat eccentric listening, probably best suited to the shuffle mode of your CD player. One minute you're listening to Christina Aguilera, the next, "The Bride of Frankenstein."

Even with his keen eye and ear for aesthetics, Zombie would hard-pressed to draw the dividing line on that one.

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