OTTAWA - Things recently haven’t been going well for shock-rock’s leading man, Marilyn Manson.

His new album The High End of Low has been savaged by the critics, who have also noted that his theatrics, which were considered shocking by Wal-Mart standards in 1992, have grown stale.

Meanwhile, his current tour continues to unravel. There was a major dustup between the fans and police after his Winnipeg show last week, and surprisingly small crowds just about everywhere else. Fewer than 1,900 mascaraed fans showed up at Scotiabank Place last night.

Yikes.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, Manson lost his voice, and had a hard time finishing the show.

Oh well.

Shock-rock. The music du jour and rite-of-passage for bored and rebellious teens everywhere. In my day it was Alice Cooper. A man named Alice? Shocking!

I loved it. What better way for a pimply, hormonal teen to show his independence and give parental authority the finger than to play Marilyn Manson, or in my case, Cooper, as loud as possible?

That was the audio age. Manson brilliantly adapted shock-rock to the video generation. So what if the music’s boring, it’s all about the image.

Lucky for the ailing Manson, all he’d have to do to keep this bunch happy is a few costume changes.

So here we were, 40 minutes late and the fans up front are chanting “Manson! Manson!” while behind the black curtain, they’ve really cranked up the clouds of dry ice and eerie music a la Black Sabbath’s first album. The black curtain falls, revealing an American flag with a swastika-like thunderbolt instead of stars while Manson sings We’re From America with a metal rasp. Shocking.

But not as shocking as Manson’s voice, which is crapping out. Mostly because of all the swearing and screaming he does in every show.

Manson’s vocal range is about the same as his speaking voice.

“You have to sing more than me, mother-effers,” Manson said as if he was doing the fans a favour and would stick around before growling his way through Disposable Teen.

He got all 1939 for his new single Pretty as a Swastika, with a leather SS officer’s cap and backdropped by four banners with fascist-looking dollar signs. I remember ones like them from a Swans album Time Is Money (Bastard).

Shocking.

Another costume change, this time into a German petty officer from WWII and an American flag wrapped around his shoulders for Irresponsible Hate Anthem, followed by a touching comment about his love for Lindsay Lohan.

All these costume changes and rounds of medication ultimately dragged the show down to a painful crawl and while Manson covered his frequent absences with funny audio clips, fans looking for something more physically exciting than Manson’s ironic sense of humour gradually lost their patience. Not all, but many.

“Kids, don’t do drugs. You’ll become a rock star, party (my term, not his) with beautiful girls and wear silly clothes. So don’t do drugs,” Manson joked before The Dope Show and later, his prodding cover of the Eurythmic’s Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).

By about the 60-minute mark, Manson had had enough and threw in the towel.

Could things get any worse?

Poor Marilyn Manson. Could it be that the fans don’t care anymore? Or perhaps they’ve simply grown up and moved on.

Die Mannequin opened the show.