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"I didn’t think anything would come of it" writes Daisy Berkowitz in the cover notes to LunchBoxes & Choklit Cows. The album was released in 2004, and featured some of the earlier Spooky Kids tracks to which Berkowitz holds the distribution rights.

But before we go into this little foray (see "Lunch Boxes and Choklit Cows" disk info), lets belt backwards in time to 1989 when Berkowitz – guitarist Scott Putesky – and Marilyn Manson – or the green gilled Brian Hugh Warner as he was born (Warner’s first performance with the Spooky Kids almost didn’t happen as he spent a lot of the time throwing up from stage fright in the toilets of Churchill’s Hideaway)– first met and discussed the beginnings of what was to become one of the most controversial rock groups of the nineties.

Back in 1989, Warner was a student at Broward Community College in Fort Lauderdale Florida. At that time he was working towards a journalism degree and gained experience in that particular field writing for now defunct pop culture magazine, 25th Parallel. It was whilst interviewing some of the most influential bands of the time, including My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, and Industrial Goth King Trent Reznor’s Nine Inch Nails that Warner began researching establishing a band of his own.

During the interviews he conducted he noted the pro’s and cons of each band he met and used this information to put together the kind of band he wanted – one that he felt would work in the fickle entertainment industry and one that would push the buttons successfully without crashing and burning.

Meeting with Scott Putesky one night at a student party, Warner showed the guitarist his ideas and some of the poetry and lyrics that he was working on. He proposed the putting together of a band.

Along with bassist Brian Tutunik – Olivia Newton Bundy – Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids was born. The band took their names from amalgamating the names of Starlets to Serial Killers.

The images that band took – which included the names they chose – were part of the concept of good and evil "the black and the white". In his autobiography, Long Hard Road out of Hell, Manson writes: "Marilyn Monroe had a dark side just as Charles Manson has a good intelligent side".

Right from the beginning, Warner and Putesky created a band that was ‘stylishly bizarre’. Their tapes were designed by the band themselves, chiefly by Manson and they worked tirelessly on self promotion. This was helped by the army of fans they gathered along the way.

The bands promotion called for fans to phone radio stations to request the band being played, as well as flyer posting and bizarre but successful stunts that thrust the band into the limelight. They were Florida’s answer to the grunge depressing scene that was coming out of Seattle at the time.

Along the way, the band produced and recorded a large number of demo tapes, which were sold at the gigs and passed out to the hungry listeners, much in the vein of recreational drugs to eager users. The bands own production wasn’t enough and often second and third generation copies of the tape exchanged hands in darkened corners.

They listened to tracks which are famous to this day – My Monkey (based on a Charles Manson track), Cake and Sodomy and Lunchbox (all three of these appeared on the first commercial release Portrait of an American Family, when they were signed to Nothing/Interscope Records) were all first recorded on the demo tapes – tapes which had names such as "Refrigerator" "After School Special" and "The Family Jams".

It was the bands raw energy and bizarre stage shows that included hanging meat filled piñata’s from the ceiling and smashing it onto the moshing revellers that further cemented the bands rise.

However right from the beginning band members changed – Bundy was one of the first to go, replaced by Brad Stewart – Gidget Gein – on bass. And Stephen Biers – Madonna Wayne "Pogo" Gacy – moved from playing with toy soldiers on the front of stage to playing the keyboards. The drum machine that the band had in the beginning was lucky to survive until 1991 when it was finally replaced by Fred Streithorst – Sara Lee Lucas.

The band continued on their popular rise, receiving a couple of Slammies – Florida’s own metal music awards (it was at one particular Slammie’s that friend Jeordie White won an award with then band Amboog-a-Lard. Jeordie would later join as Twiggy Ramirez).

They were also helped in their popularity by DJ Scott David of WYNX-FM, a fan who played many of the bands demos on his programme.

In 1992, the band shortened their long winded name down to Marilyn Manson – as there was a conflict with the band name and the frontman, Manson was known as Mr Manson (And Mr No Name Manson) on subsequent recordings.

In 1993 Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails launched his own record label – Nothing Records – under parent company Interscope. His first and most significant signing was Marilyn Manson. He also asked the band to support them on their "Self Destruct 94" tour.

From then the Spooky Kids well and truly hit the big time. Florida was left behind and the bands phenomenal success rose and rose with the first album "Portrait of an American Family" which featured rewordings of popular tunes. The fan base went with them and followed the true dawning of Marilyn Manson.