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What is Goth?

Well why not stick my nose in this one?

Goth is a movement that has its roots in British Punk. It has always been based around music. Goth is not a lifestyle. Goth is not an orientation. Goth is about music. A Goth is a fan of that genre of music who tends to dress the part.

"The goth tag was a bit of a joke," insists Ian Astbury. "One of the groups coming up at the same time as us was Sex Gang Children, and Andi -- he used to dress like a Banshees fan, and I used to call him the Gothic Goblin because he was a little guy, and he's dark. He used to like Edith Piaf and this macabre music, and he lived in a building in Brixton called Visigoth Towers. So he was the little Gothic Goblin, and his followers were Goths. That's where goth came from."

Pete Scathe's: History of Goth

Goth Music for Goth People?

So what is Goth music? If you want to really know then check out Pete Scathe's excelent History of Goth. But here is my personal take.

The term Gothic pre-dates the Punk bands of the mid 70's. The term conjures up ideas of the 'shadow' of civilization - Gothic is not 'Evil' - the concept is far closer to Jung than Crowley.

The Gothic Architecture of the medieval period was later considered a regression from the ordered Romanesque and Classical styles. Gothic literature challenged the niceties of the novel and poetry at the time. Gothic as a label in regards to music has the same overtones. Societal norms of respectable and unrespectable, male and female, light and dark are overturned and reinterpreted.

Brit punk in the mid '70's with it's Art-School leanings was bound to walk this ground. Some of it has been explored by Art-Glam folks in the late 60's and early 70's already. Rather than the 'destroy' impulse, certain bands and individuals embraced 'subvert'. You can find this aspect in the music of pre-pop Adam and the Ants, early Ultravox!, and UK Decay. Listening to the material from these artists one notices tribal drum rhythms and increasingly prominent bass lines. The dark glam aesthetic seemed to come about at the same time. Here was a theme that was being explored by a number of artists as the initial explosion of Punk energy faded away.

There is an observable transition between bands moving from Punk to Post-Punk to Rock. Musically expect to find best Goth has to offer caught in that first transition, in a tension.

The Batcave

In the early 80's a scene formed around bands such as Bauhaus, Southern Death Cult, Specimin & Sex Gang Children. The fans became jokingly known as 'Goths' .This movement was generally despised by the music press and centred in London around the Batcave Club.

By 83-84 the Batcave Club, which had started out Glam but soon come to represent something other, was playing:

• Virgin Prunes: Pagan Love Song
• Bauhaus: Lagartija Nick
• Cramps: Cos you've got good taste
• Sisters of Mercy: Temple of Love
• Banshess: Dear Prudence
• Killing Joke: Tension
  
• Specimen: Telltale
• Public Image: This is not a love song
• Alien Sex Fiend: Ignore the machine
• Xmal Deutschland: Boomerang

Watching videos that relate to the Batcave one aspect that stands out is the camp nature of the scene. Androgyny was common. It is also quite clear that the folks back then did not take themselves too seriously. "Goth; you either get the joke, or you are it."

In the US there were similar musical explorations and transitions, reflected in aspects of the Deathrock and Art-Punk scenes.

Goth in the mid 80's, 90's and 00's.

So what about all the other music that seeped into the Goth scene?

The first thing is that bands like The Sisters of Mercy began to take Goth in a more Stadium Rock direction in the mid 80's. They kept the Glam element and much of the imagery but musical produced something else entirely. Other bands that had been instrumental in defining elements of the sound such as Killing Joke also moved in a Rock direction. For some reason this sound became the 'Trad Goth' mainstream. The Goth Rock direction seems to have been the door through which Metal began to slip into the scene. Heavy Metal was and is the musical antithesis of the androgenous, arty early Goth.

Secondly. early Industrial and Synth-pop artists shared aspects of the Goth aesthetic and this was obvious within their musical output. In the early mid 80's Nitzer Ebb came along and reinterpreted the punk-post-punk hinterland with electronic instruments. Along with Front 242 they sowed seeds which would grow into the rather odd Electronic Body Music scene of today, although very little of their early sound continues in modern artists.

Thirdly it is a surprise to many that My Bloody Valentine started out as a third rate Goth Band before they moved in a Shoegaze direction. But the Dream-Pop and Shoegaze connection to Goth is still there, and lives on in a range of dark Indie, and Ethereal bands to this day. Some Ethereal artists tended towards the folk end of things, sadly Neo Folk is now fairly riddled with Nazis.

Goth Today.

So what of the term Goth today? It works on three levels.

Firstly it seems to be used to refer to any teenager who dresses badly in black and listens to Schock-Rock. This is not Goth.

Secondly it seems to refer to a wider 'underground' scene of folks who listen to a whole range of odd music, ranging from from cheesy Dark Trance (Cybergoth), through Folkey Symphonic Operatic Metal, and a whole other range of music. The one type of musical direction that is hardest to find with this scene is of course the early era of Goth itself. Is this Goth? Aspects can be.

Thirdly it can refer to that early era of music and the bands that still soldier on in that musical style, treading carefully between punk and post-punk, subverting the respectable and revealing the shadow of society, and of course doing it with tongue very much in cheek. This is Goth.

Goth in the Future.

So what of those of us who are still exploring the musical and aesthetic themes that 30 years ago where beginning to be flagged as Goth? Do we try to redeem the label? I think yes.

So a personal statement.

I could call myself a Deathrocker, but Deathrock is different, because the musical, social and political landscape it inhabited a subverted in the early 80's was different.

I could call myself a Batcaver, as some non-english speakers do, but the Batcave was almost the tail end of the movement between Punk and Post-Punk, and makes you sound like an Adam West fan club member.

So sod it.

I will call myself a Goth. Who cares what the term has been taken to mean? Who cares that the media and the scene have both twisted it into some sort of onanistic freak show? All labels are broken. Socialist? Christian? I embrace these labels whilst knowing others understand them entirely differently. The same has to go with Goth.

There is not better option I can think of.

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