So Long, Goth History Month

It has been a long dark month. I didn't get to cover all the things that I had hoped to this month, but as I look back, it seems like a pretty good start. I had doubts as to whether I would really stick to the theme for a whole month or not. However, I didn't get to finish what I consider the next two eras of goth music that are represented by my Ultimate Goth mix. Perhaps next year...
One cool thing that came of this for me was pushing myself to rediscover some music that I haven't really listened to for some time. The two biggest rediscoveries were the early era goth stuff. I spent much of the first half of this month listening to early Cure, Siouxsie, Joy Division and Bauhaus. I absolutely love this era and find that I can keep going back to it, no matter what style of music I am into at the moment, and be totally inspired. Normally, I'll pull out on of them here or there, but I was able to really experience the movement by taking them all in together. It really was a movement that tapped into much more than just a style of music.
The other big rediscovery for me was the swans. I absolutely loved them for like a two year period in college. Since then, I would occasionally pull out an album, but that's about it. Trying to write up a segment on them brought to my attention how little I actually knew about them. Thus, out came all of the albums and I spent a ton of time researching them on line. Laying their career out in front of me gave me context to listen to them in and for the first time, I actually listened to their body of music (that I have) as one piece that tells the story of a concept that grew, shifted, matured, and reached it's potential, then was laid to rest. The swans development often reflected the influence of those who came in contact with it, but never wavered from it's core elements even as they shifted from noise rock to folk influences and into ambient soundscapes. I have even started listening to the post swans projects of Michael Gira and Jarboe, which is something that I had little interest in prior to this venture.

With that said, March will not be Irish music history month.

G.O.P. and/or G.O.T.H.?!

This was news to me, but check out Cindy McCain. The pale skin, the severe dark eye make-up, hanging out with the Crypt Keeper... It all adds up. We have another goth. I think that this was taken outside of a Christian Death concert.

The Burning World

This goth month thing is a challenge. There are a number of topics related to it that I still have yet to post and I am thrilled that it is inspiring me to dig deeper into parts of my music collection that I have not visited for some time. On the other hand, I am trying to keep true to my objective and I have resisted posting about some other music related topics that are current and relevant in my mind.

In any case, one band that I have been thrilled to reconnect with has been the Swans. I discovered them in the mid 90's, right as they were getting ready to close up shop for good. Their catalogue of music has been a collector's dream. It seems that virtually everything that they have done has been in limited pressings that quickly went out of print. As I dug deeper into their history, I discovered that, oddly, the holy grail among Swans fans was an album entitled The Burning World. What is odd about it is the fact that it is the only Swans album to have been released on a major label, yet it is among the rarest of Swans albums. Some internet dealers have been asking upwards of 300 dollars for it.

My interest was peeked and the hunt was on. I didn't have to go far to make the kill. In fact, my first stop was Brass City Records (the best record shop in the universe). They not only had the album, but they had it on vinyl as well as the equally rare Love Will Tear Us Apart ep (yes, it is the same love will tear us apart as Joy Division's). They were far more reasonably priced than what I found online.

The two records are quite unique within the Swans' legacy. They are easily the most listener friendly and pop oriented that I have heard. If a group is known for having some sort of extreme quality and they release an album that tones that down, the result is almost always unimpressive. Despite this trend, these two purchases are among the best stuff that they have written. Somehow, taking off the angular hard edge pushed them to focus more on the song craft and structure. Producer, Bill Laswell, definitely helped them to achieve this by bringing in his dub sensibilities and flare for world music. Tablas and maracas replaced the explosive drums with subtly glorious effect. I highly recommend making the investment if you can find it.

Goth mix part 3 - The mid 80’s through the early 90’s

With the death of Joy Division, the self implosion of Bauhaus, and the Cure and the Banshees folding their Goth influence into more pop oriented ventures, there was a gaping void left for new leaders of the genre. Like any other music genre that is healthy and thriving, the sound evolves and experiments with aspects of other genres. All the while, even though the style of the sound transformed and mutated in many different ways, the tone and mood still link them.



The Sisters of Mercy linked the goth sound to a lot of sounds that would become characteristic of the genre. Early on they incorporated drum machines and heavy synth lines that would help form its marriage to industrial music. Andrew Eldrich also most notably added the deep flat voice that worked so well for him and would be imitated by many Goths to follow.



Dead Can Dance. Goth also came to blend quite wonderfully with world music. DCD are one of the most beloved bands among Goths. Lisa Gerard and Brendan Perry took the dark imagery of death and sorrow and weaved it into wonderful celebrations of life that drew from structures and instrumentations from around the world. If there really is another dimension that music is channeled from, these two individuals are quite attuned to it. Most of the songs that are sung by Gerard are sung in tongues rather than words and they need to be. What she sings is so moving and intense that applying words to it would somehow cheapen its meaning and value. The live album Toward The Within is one of my all time favorite albums.



The Swans took the somber mood of goth and formed their own vision of horror. Swans came out of the New York noise rock scene and had a reputation for pushing the limits of sound and imagery to extremes. Even to the point of playing a series of shows that were reportedly so loud that they induced vomiting in audience members. Their albums that followed this era set out to deconstruct their reputation of being so extreme. They set out to shock and awe their audience in other ways. Instead of pummeling them with a wall of noise, in a way, they would now woo and kill them softly. And then they would pummel them with noise. They blended ferocious rhythms, tender melodies, and lyrics that delve into some of man’s least favorable qualities: cowardice, humiliation, and failure. The Swans can be beautiful and terrifying at the same time. The fact that they achieve both so well at the same time is what gave them the strength to really move a listener and stimulate a truly haunting atmosphere. I had the pleasure of seeing them on their final tour (luckily it wasn’t the make you throw up tour). The way that they built the intensity of each song was outstanding. Nothing was rushed and they used the power of silence within their music just as effectively as they used pounding rhythms to fill the space and create an atmosphere that you would expect from a David Lynch film.



In contrast to the Swans, The Cranes took the sound to much sweeter places. I just love the innocence of Alison Shaw’s voice. If the Swans’ music conjured feelings of darkness punctuated by beauty, the Cranes’ music conjured feelings of beauty punctuated by darkness. They make me happy in a sad sort of way… which is what I guess the whole goth thing is about.

Who is a goth?

In the wake of yet another school shooting, I felt that this would be a good time to address this issue. The goth image is often associated with these massacres. Why? The black clothes, I guess. These incidents are so far from my experience with the whole goth thing that it is almost comical.
As a group, goths tend to be more like sensitive and artistic, nerds. In my clubbing days, the clubs that I always felt safest in were the goth clubs. Ironically, the people looked the scariest, but that is the point. They are mostly people who aren't scary, but want to pretend and they are. I have never seen a fight between a bunch of goths or a headline about a crime wave being committed by a group of goths. If a true goth were to go on a rampage and kill people it would be much cheesier. They wouldn't use guns. The victims would all be drained of their blood by two mysterious wholes or cut down by a replica of a medieval broad sword.
Here are some goths that you may not have been aware of...


The Mona Lisa



The kids from the Harry Potter films



Tyra Banks



Pope Benedict XVI



Claudia Schiffer



and that cute family living next door

Goth mix part 2 - The OG’s (original Goths)

The late 70’s to mid 80’s

The first four artists listed in my ultimate goth list (see the Ultimate Goth mix) represent how it all started. When it started in the late seventies, it was really just an expansion of what punk was doing. The difference being that while punk wanted to take on and bring down a world gone wrong, goth seemed to want to lament the sorrows of a world gone wrong. Structurally, the sound was very stripped down and maintained the simple garage band structure of punk: 1 drum, 1 guitar, 1 bass, and 1 voice. The genre happened by accident when a bunch of British bands took this basic structure, attitude, and a flair for performance art and began experimenting and building from there. At its best, like any art, the most powerful works don’t come easy and often coincide with some other tragedy.


Joy Division – Stemmed out of Manchester. Their sound was very stripped down and almost mechanical. The singer, Ian Curtis, took his own life after releasing only two records. They were a band experiencing mounting success and were on the cusp of releasing their biggest single, “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” The starkness of their sound production, bleak and haunting lyrics, and reputation for erratic behavior during concerts created testament to the tragic and untimely deterioration of a young soul.


Bauhaus – The name. The Bauhaus’ music is sleek, stark and angular, like the style of German architecture they take their name from. As a band name, it already hints at a serious interest in art and creates a mystique by aligning with a culture that was still veiled in taboo. These were the days not long enough removed from WWII to forget the atrocities that took place within its borders and in the midst of the cold war. Germany and Berlin symbolized the divide between East and West, Democracy and Communism, good and evil. Therefore, before the needle even hits the vinyl the listener has the stage set and a head’s worth of context to place the music within. The voice. Peter Murphy’s voice is deep and passionate and can be sincere and sinister. Countless acts to follow would try to capture single aspects of his vocal delivery, but never match the intense theatrics he creates. The Bauhaus lived a short career, but packed a lot of music into their four to five year stint. During this time they would release “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” a nine-minute meditation of vampire imagery that would become the unofficial anthem for goth music the world over.


Siouxsie and the Banshees – The Banshees brought tribal-esque rhythms to punk and helped form the scene with lyrics about voodoo dolls, the classic goth look, and songs that brought bass lines to the front and placed the guitars in the back. Siousxie Sioux’s stage presence and voice is larger than life. 1983’s live album “Nocturne” captures some of their finest moments. Their sound and lineup would grow and change in the years after, but their place in goth history would remain rooted in this era.


The Cure – Much like the Banshees, The Cure went on to enjoy a very successful career after this era. They did however come to an end of their own during this time, much like Joy Division and Bauhaus. Over the course of their first four albums, The Cure moved from a very haphazard pop band to a focused vision of despair. By the time they recorded Pornography in 82, The Cure’s mission was to create the heaviest and bleakest album ever made. Laurence Tolhurst keeps time with metronomic precision that is lifelessly haunting. Gallop and Smith twist their guitar and bass parts around slow plodding buildups that create an atmosphere that is dense and oppressive. On top of this Robert bursts forth lyrics that are connected more by their imagery of doom then a need to make sense. The album starter “100 Years” leads off with the line, “It doesn’t matter if we all die,” and sets the stage. The fact that Robert has a boyish cockney accent that can’t escape its facets of innocence, keeps the album from becoming just absurd in its own darkness. The process of creating such a piece of work took its toll. In the months that followed, as they played the songs on the road the band fell apart and scrapped the tour midway through in the midst of flying fists. They did reluctantly fulfill the rest of their performance commitments and called it quits on the last night. The Cure seemed to have ended. Of course, they would come back to redefine themselves many times over, but at the time it seemed that this was it.

Me as a Goth (part I)

Alright, you may be hard pressed to find photos of me all decked out in the gothic uniform (aside from this shot of me dressed as Robert Smith). The tight clothes, heavy make up, and Aquanet hair don’t blend well with my “built for comfort” persona. However, my commitment to the music and fascination with the scene have been true ever since I discovered that it existed some time in 1991.

That year I came across two albums that changed the way I listen to and think about music. The first being The Cure’s Disintegration. There was reserved and shy kid (could it be a goth?) who sat in front of me in English that year. We wound up working together on a lot of in class assignments due to our proximity. Slowly he came out of his shell and revealed that he was actually quite creative and dynamic, not just a wallflower. We inevitably talked about music. That’s what I do. Instead of analyzing the poetic text structure of Romeo and Juliet or discussing the political implications of Watership Down, we were often delving into discussions on music. He had an undying love for The Cure and spoke very passionately about them. At the time, all I knew was that the singer had crazy hair and that a lot of scary looking people liked them. He found what I would later come to discover. I was building up to ask him to make me a mix when, one day he came into class and told me that his parents threw out all of his Cure records because, “they were the devil’s music.” I was bummed and he was devastated. I had heard that his parents were Scary Religious and absurdly prude, but I had my doubts up until this point. Before this, I never believed him when he told me that he had been grounded for speaking out of turn at the dinner table. When I picture this kid’s home life, I can’t help but think of the neighbor from American Beauty, you know, the kid that filmed bags in the breeze.
Now I had to hear this band if for no other reason than to spite this kid’s parents. I was on a mission. Finally, I heard my first Cure song at a dance. A church dance none the less, take that parents of the goth kid that I don’t remember the name of. I pestered the DJ to play something by The Cure until he finally caved. Fascination Street came on and cleared the dance floor like a bad fart. The driving base line, chiming ethereal guitars, and nonsensical lyrics were like nothing I’d ever heard before. And where was the chorus? Just verses? No guitar solo? A four minute build up before any words come out? Can you do that in a song? All of this filled my head and intrigued me like no music had at this point in my life. I scrounged money together and bought Disintegration as soon as I had enough money. I rushed into my room at home and couldn’t wait to find out what else there was to discover on this album. I put it in the cd player and absolutely hated it. The money for a cd was hard to pull together and buying a disc was an event. Just getting to a record store was hard enough and now I was stuck with a disc that I hated, except for Fascination Street of course. I felt as if I had been duped into buying a dud. The goth kid with the nutty parents had moved away before I ever had the chance to sing the praises of that song I heard at the dance or to pass on the blame for money wasted on a lousy album.
Something kept drawing me back to it. So, every few weeks I’d pull it out and give it another listen. Each time I would be a little more familiar and a little more willing to let go of the assumptions that I had once had about what makes good music. By the time Wish rolled around in 1992, I was fully on board and committed to The Cure.

The other music discovery that changed my perceptions of music was Nine Inch Nails’ Pretty Hate Machine. I discover NIN at a Jesus Jones show at Toads Place in New Haven. (I know, I know, but I was 15 and it was a concert) Between acts, they would show videos of what were then college radio groups. Jane’s Addiction, Carter USM, EMF, Urban Dance Squad, Fishbone, and the like filled the screens and speakers. Eventually the video for Head Like A Hole came on and the rest of the night was second stage to the four minutes and thirteen seconds that the video occupied. The throbbing synthesizer and shredded vocals on the chorus coupled by whole persona that Trent created at the time, the shaved sides of the head with the black dreads tossed about the top, the chaos of black tape whipping around he and Richard Patrick as they tore at the E chords on their guitars as if they were trying to saw through them. The energy was overwhelming. And then when Trent gets snared by the feet at the end and is being reeled into the roof as he just thrashes about the band upside down, taking out band members and drum kits with his flailing body that is frantically grasping at everything to pull itself down, that image left me feeling like there was nothing that could possibly happen on the stage that night that would top what I had just witnessed. I was right.
Pretty Hate Machine was an instant favorite.

Goth 101

Goth is a music movement. The term is often misused to describe a fashion sense or to categorize people that look dark and spooky. To learn more about what Goth is and si not, I suggest taking a look at some of the resources that I have gathered in the GOTH LINKS section. Some of it is pretty cheeky. Then again, so is the scene itself.

The Ultimate Goth mix

If I am going to focus a month’s worth of entries on a single genre of music, I’d better set the stage for those of you who are not well acquainted with it’s music. “Goth” music generally formed in the post punk music scene in the late 70’s and grew and changed from there through today. Broadly, it consists of dark themed music that can be as beautiful as it is crushingly depressing. Most of it has been built around rock song structures, but does not limit itself to that. Like any other genre of music, there are a few noteworthy pioneers that define and expand the genre and many, many mediocre followers that drag down the integrity of the movement. The best Goth bands were those that never set out to be part of the genre to begin with.

Here is a starter kit of songs by such pioneers to check out. I would post mp3s of them, but I’m not that capable yet with the blog thing. All of the songs should be downloadable from iTunes, emusic, or other legal music sites (I wouldn’t endorse searching free music sites, like say limewire). 26 songs can get expensive though. You can give them the free 30 second listen on iTunes or Amazon, but the impact is far better if you let yourself hear the whole thing. For example, Bela Lugosi’s Dead is a nine minute opus that slowly builds to a haunting end. I can’t imagine that the 30 second snippet would capture that. Please let me know if you feel that any essential tunes were skipped.

Joy Division – Love Will Tear Us Apart, Dead Souls
Bauhaus – Bela Lugosi’s Dead, Fear of Fear
Siouxsies and the Banshees – Cascade, Israel
The Cure – A Forest, 100 Years
The Sisters of Mercy – This Corrosion, Ribbons
Dead Can Dance – Host of Seraphim, Don’t Fade Away
Cranes – Jewell, Lilies
Swans – Mother/Father, The Love of Life
Nine Inch Nails – Hurt, Closer
Marilyn Manson – The Beautiful People, Lunchbox
Faith and the Muse – Annwyn Beneath the Waves, Heal
Lycia – Pray, Frozen
Voltaire – Ex-lover’s Lover, The Vampire Club

It’s always nice to have a story to go along with the music. I’ll group these by era and give some context to listen to them within in the weeks to come.