― katie, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Fashion nightmare, but quality pop songs sung in a deep voice. I was a goth for a few years and am amazed I never got beaten up. I wore an arm full of bangles, purple tye-dye shirts and pointed suede boots. I certainly deserved a beating.
Key pop moments:
Sisters of Mercy - First & Last & Always
The Mission - Children / God's Own Medicine
Fields of the Nephilim - Dawnrazor
The Cure were a phony, cuddly goth band so they don't count
At least you could tell by the names whether a band were goth or not. "I'd like the new Skeletal Family single, please." "Sorry mate, we don't serve goths."
― chris, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Sarah, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Kodanshi, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
The thing with ALL subcultures, not just your Goths, is putting on that superiority schtick is their (immature, intellectually bereft) way of reconciling themselves to the fact that 99 per cent of people don't share their interests and think they dress funny, to boot. There's more to being different or creative than relative to 'the normal' or in blatantly reactionary terms. Most of the British Goths I have met come from net-curtain homes and whinge all day in Estuary-speak (this voice, when talking about decadence, puts me in mind of Readers' Wives sections of yer top-shelf jazz mags). The American ones are all middle- class because at least when I was growing up you needed time and money to source all the lifestyle accessories. Most of them grow out of it and don't really make such a mark in the world.
Poppy Z Brite, however, is ACE. I commissioned her to do some work for this project of mine and she hooked me up, completely unbidden, with her literary agent. Now THAT is pure class.
― suzy, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Ronan, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Anyway, I dunno about estuary accents either, see goth haven WHITBY.
Yeah, all of the proper goths girls I knew would spend hundreds of dollars on boots or custom leather corsets.
I was never really properly goth in that sense, never had the money or the inclination to dress up like that. I would just wear loads of black, but I really always looked more like an indie boy than a goth girlie.
― Nicole, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― mark s, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
I dye my hair black, own lots of black clothes and have tattoos but shudder at the term goth. I have matching pin-up girl red nails and lips so hopefully this disqualifies me?
― Samantha, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
And speaking of literary, Whitby is Gothland because of DRACULA.
Was Dracula from Whitby? I must go home and read my book of Lancashire ghosts and start a New Wave of North West fiction. It'll be ACE! ANd yes I know Whitby aint NWoNW before anyone sez anything. Actually I think I am on a winner here I even haf a catchy new name for my genre!
Samantha, your look sounds like the Betty Pages. Is this so?
― Alan Trewartha, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Corinne Drewery? *ducks*
You mean like this Dita Von Teese the Betty Page for the 21st Century and don't forget the cherry red lipstick.
― DJ Martian, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Oh, and I hate LA as well so I guess that's explained.
― chris' mate, The G (ex-goth), Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Also New Orleans = Gothtown because of creepiness, humidity, Catholicism, voudoun, Anne Rice and all graves ABOVE GROUND.
― Anna, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― RickyT, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― turner, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― james, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Funny, Ned, I was once gonna write a Busby Berkeley style goth review, "Goths-a-poppin'!" Your show sounds better, though.
― Arthur, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
"I was FUCKED BY THE DEVIL/He sure FUCKED THE SHIT out of me." The Debasement Tapes collection is hilariously wrong as well.
Fret not, Arthur, I like your vision as well. And hey, been to the new Amoeba yet? :-)
― Maria, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Sean, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Hi Ned, no, I haven't been there. Currently unemployed and relatively broke so I think I'd go mad, darling, simply mad if I set foot in the joint. But we should get together soon and maybe Amoeba's just the place. We can go out to eat at Chan Dara on Cahuenga afterwards.
― carsmilesteve, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
I was one, back in the day. For a few days out of each week anyway. Because, you see, I'm completely useless with style commitments.
― Kim, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― DG, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Also, DG's right. Goths are the least snobbish of subculties. Much friendlier than hippies. And they seem to embrace all types: gay, transgendered, handicapped, overweight, anorexic, OLD--anyone can be a goth.
― anthony, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Ally, Thursday, 22 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
As an Ex-Goth (and not even one of those silly people who say "I wore all black, I listened to Bauhaus, I sat in my room and burned insence and read Rimbaud and thought about death... but I WASN'T a goth, honest!" as if denial and nihilism were an inherant part of goth- hood... oh, wait, they are! Never mind!) I can only give you my take on it. I can't speak for Goth now, or what it's become, I can only say what it was for us, then, back in the 80s.
What many people seem to object to is the po-faced seriousness of it all. Revelling in nihilism and teenage angst and dressing up like a vampire and obsessing about death at the beginning of your life is an inherantly silly thing to be doing. The make-up, the clothes, the mime-washing-a-windshield dancing, all very silly.
But some of us KNEW IT. We laughed at it even as we were doing it. It was a way of coping, a way of dealing with our own adolescent angst, depression, fear, coming into sexual awareness at a time when sex became frightening and could KILL you. It wasn't fear of death, it was fear of immortality, which is a much more frightening thing when you are 18. The thought that you could go on forever in this horrible half child, half adult, undead unalive state was worse than the thought of suicide.
And the look... I touched on this in the first thread I bent towards Bauhaus. It was a deliberate rejection or parody of the excesses of the 80s. The 80s were about gaudy colour, big hair, larger than life, exagerated design, so goths were about nothing but black, even bigger hair, larger than death, exaggerated ugliness. Fashion in the 80s was about peacock celebration of glitz and gaudiness. Goth celebrated ugliness, corruption, death, make-up used to disfigure rather than accentuate sexuality.
It started as a bitter pisstake of New Romantic; the dour, Northern anti-style of proto-Goths like Joy Division meets the art school through the ages German expressionist weirdness of Bauhaus and the Japanese kabuki stylisation of Siouxsie.
I can understand why the goth subculture goes on today, it's just no longer where I'm at. But that doesn't mean I can't still laugh at it. ;-)
― kate, Thursday, 22 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― katie, Thursday, 22 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
I bought a bottle of wine tonight from Spain that turned out to have a black cork in it. Now maybe black corks are normal things in some part of the world or other, but they're damn well not anything I've seen before. This as further proof that it is impossible to compete with Bimble's inherent gothness. You have been warned.
― Roasted Ghost (Bimble Is Still More Goth Than You), Saturday, 18 October 2008 05:49 (fifteen years ago) link
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_zDgw4yU3QkA/SgmcXXyqs-I/AAAAAAAAABE/va_X5WKQ348/s320/3118109937_e46dccf43a.jpg
http://gothsinhotweather.blogspot.com/
― mookieproof, Wednesday, 3 June 2009 18:26 (fifteen years ago) link
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_zDgw4yU3QkA/ShEZzSRm8kI/AAAAAAAAAC0/W6Bhn7tYUNQ/s1600-h/FatGothKid.jpg
― Chaki Demus & Pliers (ENBB), Wednesday, 3 June 2009 18:33 (fifteen years ago) link
dammit
― Chaki Demus & Pliers (ENBB), Wednesday, 3 June 2009 18:35 (fifteen years ago) link
i went to a goth party last friday, and it was very strange but kind of fun. they played an entire Christian Death album, and some old-time Bauhaus shit, then it sort of went the way of 80s-postrock dance party, which is not inherently goth, but pretty good nonetheless.
― the table is the table, Wednesday, 3 June 2009 19:44 (fifteen years ago) link
was it a birthday party
― Vokuhila (latebloomer), Wednesday, 3 June 2009 23:23 (fifteen years ago) link
ba-bum-FLOP
― Vokuhila (latebloomer), Wednesday, 3 June 2009 23:24 (fifteen years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-84L3kiFyA&feature=player_embedded
― Vokuhila (latebloomer), Wednesday, 3 June 2009 23:26 (fifteen years ago) link
I've got a gentle respect for hot weather goths.
― cant go with u too many alfbrees (Abbott), Wednesday, 3 June 2009 23:35 (fifteen years ago) link
That is commitment.
― Hatfail of Hollow (Nicole), Wednesday, 3 June 2009 23:44 (fifteen years ago) link
Lucian is a sanguine vampire, not an energy or psi vampire like his mom.
― Vokuhila (latebloomer), Wednesday, 3 June 2009 23:47 (fifteen years ago) link
Goths in Brisbane are hilarious/awesome, they walk around with black lace umbrellas to keep the sun off
― Chaka Demus & Plies (sic), Thursday, 4 June 2009 12:24 (fifteen years ago) link
I've got a gentle respect for hot weather goths
I was just thinking the same thing - especially when i got to this photo.http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_zDgw4yU3QkA/ShZzAvehEJI/AAAAAAAAADw/A0zM591PHrs/s1600-h/vampyres_tk_2.jpg
There's a lot of effort gone on there.
― Brandy Frotte and Reel De La St-Jean (Ned Trifle II), Thursday, 4 June 2009 12:31 (fifteen years ago) link
Oh I see - no linking, eh?
Well, it's here anyway.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_zDgw4yU3QkA/ShZzAvehEJI/AAAAAAAAADw/A0zM591PHrs/s1600-h/vampyres_tk_2.jpg
― Brandy Frotte and Reel De La St-Jean (Ned Trifle II), Thursday, 4 June 2009 12:32 (fifteen years ago) link
See, I have never met ANYONE EVER IN MY LIFE who dresses like that.
Outside, maybe at at stretch, LARPers dressing steampunky at a con or something. But ffs. Nobs.
― Trayce, Friday, 5 June 2009 00:02 (fifteen years ago) link
classic, duh. goth girls = hot
― brian krakow has a posse (bug), Friday, 5 June 2009 00:03 (fifteen years ago) link
lol, no.
― k3vin k., Friday, 5 June 2009 00:04 (fifteen years ago) link
lol, yes!
― brian krakow has a posse (bug), Friday, 5 June 2009 00:05 (fifteen years ago) link
http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f362/rthomas80us/gothapotamus.jpg
― Two Will Get You Three (B.L.A.M.), Friday, 5 June 2009 00:07 (fifteen years ago) link
http://www.industrialgothic.com/
― brian krakow has a posse (bug), Friday, 5 June 2009 00:09 (fifteen years ago) link
GBOTW is still GOING? wow. Couple of my friends were in that years ago, I think.
Well, when I say friend, I mean "horrible cow who assaulted me at a nightclub and is a basket case that I worked with", but whatevs.
― Trayce, Friday, 5 June 2009 00:15 (fifteen years ago) link
incredibly, yes.
― brian krakow has a posse (bug), Friday, 5 June 2009 00:18 (fifteen years ago) link
Its funny looking at the late 90s images, theyre all fairly down to earth, proper old school girls. The recent stuff is all fetish porn and suicide girl shit.
― Trayce, Friday, 5 June 2009 00:20 (fifteen years ago) link
Goth goth goth
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/10/29/style/goth.html?_r=0
― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 29 October 2013 20:58 (ten years ago) link
finger on pulse
― I like to think I have learnt a thing or two about music (Neil S), Tuesday, 29 October 2013 21:52 (ten years ago) link
- What I admire about that 'gothopotamus' person upthread, and the other person in the photo, is that the look transcends what they've got to work with physically. There's a dark, glamourous ideal that they're going for, and, whether or not that's a good ideal, the devotion to it against all the odds (short fat male w/ eyeliner for example) is surely Classic.
- Mystery and imagination are precious even in their most degraded forms, true/false - Goth doesn't age well VERSUS why the hell not be 32, pushing your kid in a pram, wearing a black top hat and army boots
― cardamon, Tuesday, 29 October 2013 23:11 (ten years ago) link
The older I get the more I appreciate sullenness and misanthropy.
― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, 29 October 2013 23:16 (ten years ago) link
Goth at the BBC! Sex Gang Children! Lols a plenty and some great music!!!
― Barry Gordy (Neil S), Friday, 31 October 2014 22:22 (nine years ago) link
https://www.morbidanatomy.org/morbid-anatomy-products/black-on-black-a-live-online-illustrated-zoom-lecture-by-leila-taylor-author-of-darkly-black-history-and-americas-gothic-soul
― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Wednesday, 1 July 2020 15:42 (three years ago) link
TS: ostro v visi
― Well, that's a fine howdy adieu! (Old Lunch), Wednesday, 1 July 2020 15:45 (three years ago) link
It's World Goth Day! I made a playlist, mostly obvious stuff but I will ride or die for the Tanya Tucker track belonging in there: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7AngEshubU4FnaeXGm54Cp?si=81988a85b72c423b
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Monday, 22 May 2023 14:53 (one year ago) link
massive goth banger!! i think i've played it...5 times this morning. i would totally play this out at the club. if i had a batcave to spin at.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5V1c3Hnypw
― scott seward, Friday, 11 August 2023 16:13 (ten months ago) link
Basement of your store, it can happen.
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 11 August 2023 17:08 (ten months ago) link
look Ned i'm on the ILX!
― scott seward, Friday, 11 August 2023 17:52 (ten months ago) link
Hurrah!
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 11 August 2023 18:17 (ten months ago) link