You can tell what decade I spent my teen years in.
I have complained on here and on my social media accounts about how a lot of modern post-punk bands sound the same; same Joy Division sounding bass, same droning vocals, same Cure sounding guitar. In fact I have had a bunch of people mad at me for talking about this in the past, but am I wrong? No, I am not. Are there good modern post-punk bands out there? Of course, but they are the outliers and not the norm. Being that all of this is the case I have decided to start buying music from the 80’s that I somehow overlooked back then or that I just didn’t know about. I have also bought some newish metal and legacy band CDs.
I can well imagine some people looking at the above photo and wondering why I would buy a bunch of Now Yearbook pop album compilations. The secret is that they never contain just pop songs. Back in the 80’s the British charts would often have new wave and ‘alternative’ songs in their ranks. More so than in the United States. For instance, that above Now Yearbook 88 comp has Voyage Voyage by Desireless on it, which was a big club hit in the alternative clubs in the San Francisco Bay Area back then. Never heard it on the radio, only in clubs so I was quite happy finding it on this CD. Also, there are a bunch of songs on these from bands that I totally skipped over in the 80’s for whatever reason. Remember, there was no internet and it was easy as hell to accidentally forget about bands back then. All of these were below £10 a piece and some were even below £5.
The above left is a Devo: 50 Years Of De-Evolution 1973-2023. I got this because I don’t own anything by them and I thought that it was about time that I did something about that. The above right is OMD Souvenir, a collection of their singles. I owned some of their music on tape in the late 80’s but nothing since. They were the first concert I ever went to back in 86 so they will always hold a special place in my heart for that reason. The bottom left is Toya’s album Anthem. I have been meaning to buy her music for ages now. She is one of those 80’s musicians that I just totally missed back then, mostly because I was in the US where I never heard her music being played. I have been constantly listening to this and she is sooooo good!The bottom right is Fuzzbox’s compilation Bostin’ Steve Austin, that includes their first album and a bunch of singles. I was very, very pleased to find their music on CD, because I had their first album on tape back in the late 80’s.
Yet more compilations! The top two are pretty easy to sus out so really no need for an explanation. I love Lycia and a few other ethereal bands so that middle CD really pleased me. It is a new comp put out on Cherry Red Records called Cherry Stars Collide: Dream Pop, Shoegaze & Ethereal Rock 1986-1995. I barely own any shoegaze or dream pop so this was a bit of a must have for me. Through it I know I’ll discover more bands. The bottom two are synth-pop compilations, one based on 1980 and the second based on 1981. I love old synth-pop music so these were a no brainer for me to get. Again, listening to these two will lead me to older bands that I have totally forgotten about.
I am beginning to explore metal music a bit more. I have always loved early Danzig and thrash music so it is a genre that is ripe for me to explore. The upper left is Omen by the band Moyra. They are a female lead melodic death metal band and holy shit can the woman growl and sing. The upper right is EndEx by the industrial metal band 3teeth. I really want to explore that specific genre more because I really don’t own that much of it even though I do tend to like it. The middle left is Ofnir by Heilung, and the middle right is Futha also by Heilung. They describe themselves as “amplified history from early medieval northern Europe”. They are haunting as hell and they give off spooky pagan vibes which is perfect in my opinion. The bottom left is OMD’s new album Bauhaus Staircase. I listened to it multiple times yesterday and it has got to be the most political music that they have ever made. I highly recommend it! Finally on the bottom right is Danse Macabre by Duran Duran.
Well, that is it for now. I hope you enjoyed this musical journey of my psyche as much as I loved writing about it, and I hope I introduced you to some bands that you will grow to love.
This is going to be a new series on the blog; showcasing bands who were active in the 80’s that don’t get the attention that they deserve. Since The Fixx aren’t easy to pigeonhole I think a lot of people tend to skip them over. They made some new wave songs but also worked with Tina Turner on her Private Dancer album. I think that is what makes their 80’s output really good. Here are my personal favourites and I hope you enjoy them!
I woke up this morning wondering how the event was going and was met with this news. Apparently a thunderstorm was predicted to hit the event so in the middle of both Iggy and The Human League’s sets people were told to exit the event. That means nobody got to see Siouxsie. Personally I would be very pissed off and I feel sorry for the people who traveled far just to see her.
I used to DJ goth-rock, deathrock and punk music over twenty years ago. It was at the height of when synthpop and EBM music took over goth clubs so it was a pretty dire time to be into goth-rock or deathrock. In fact I was one of the few DJs in the areas that I lived that spun the deathrock revival music that was appearing during that time. So, needless to say, I own a lot of goth music from the 80’s and 90’s. Including tons of compilations. During the 90’s there were a lot of them and many were quite good.
So, I will be spending the next few days uploading all of them to my new laptop. Technology is both a curse and a blessing.
This coming Record Store Day is chock full of cool releases. The only record store where I live has closed so I will have to find them online. Which itself is not a big deal because there are tons of options on Discogs when it comes to purchasing them. If you have never been on Discogs it is a very cool website in which people sell physical copies of music. If you are a collector of physical media it is a very helpful site and you can get some good deals on there.
These records are the ones that I will personally be purchasing. I am not independently wealthy so I am going to be buying them over the course of a few weeks and not all on the same day.
A Flock Of Seagulls – Rare Birds B-Sides And Rarities
This one is an obvious purchase for me because I love the hell out of A Flock Of Seagulls. Anything they put out I purchase. It’s like I have been trained as a Pavlov dog when it comes to this band. Since I have most, if not all, of their 12″ singles I more than likely own the B sides already but I am intrigued as to what the rarities will be. They are perhaps the most underappreciated band to come out of the 80’s. Unlike a lot of other 80’s era bands their music doesn’t sound dated.
Donna Summer – Hot Summer Nights
This is the 40th anniversary of the album and I am excited as hell about it because I love disco and Donna Summer. I grew up in the 70’s/80’s so her music was always around and being played. She had a really extraordinary voice and sang with a lot of soul. Great lady and I can’t wait to listen to this.
Missing Persons – Live in New York 1981
This is a double album reissue. Love them and don’t have this album so this one is a no brainer.
Nena – 99 Luft Ballons 12″
I remember taping this song when it came out and listening to the lyrics over and over again to figure them out. Growing up towards the end of the Cold War, and with the threat of nuclear annihilation constantly in the background, this song will always mean a lot to me. This is a 40th anniversary reissue.
Romeo Void – Live From Mabuhay Gardens November 14th 1980
Romeo Void was an early new wave/post-punk band that came out of the San Francisco Bay Area. Since I am from that area I used to hear some of their songs on the radio all of the time. I feel like I am duty bound to get this. Crossing my fingers for some live saxophone action.
Stevie Nicks – Bella Donna Live 1981
I have always loved Stevie’s music. Did you know that Prince performed the keyboards in her song Stand Back? I know that it isn’t on this album but I think its a cool factoid. I need to own some of her vinyl so this is where I am going to start.
Tears For Fears – Saturnine Martial & Lunatic
Tears For Fears were one of my favourite bands when I was a teen in the 80’s. This is a collection of their B Sides and other rarities from their years with Mercury. This is, yet again, a no brainer for me.
U2 – Two Hearts Beat As One/Sunday Bloody Sunday 40th Anniversary Edition
I make it no secret on here that I love early U2. This has the two original songs on one side and two new versions of them on the other. Only getting this because of the old songs being front and center on this release.
Various Artists – Monsters, Vampires, Voodoos & Spooks
I’m a huge fan of horror punk and spooky Halloween themed songs so this is meant for me. I feel seen.
The Virgin Prunes – The Debut EPs
Love The Virgin Prunes and I plan on buying all of their reissues as they come out.
Some people are probably wondering why I am not going to be buying the Cure and Siouxsie & The Banshees reissues. Truthfully? I am not a huge fan of either band. I don’t hate them or anything like that, it’s just that I don’t collect their music. Remember to always buy music that you like, not what others say that you have to buy. If you don’t like any of the releases I have mentioned that’s fine; you do you.
I literally just found out about this an hour ago and I am hyper as hell about it! If you are friends with me on social media you know that I love A Flock Of Seagulls, so I had to buy this! They were one of the bands from the early 80’s that I really loved back then but I couldn’t buy any of their music because my family was very poor. Since that was the case I have been collecting their music over the last few years to make up for lost time. Just thought I would share this discovery because I know that some of you are on the same wavelength as me when it comes to music.
EDIT: It is now 84 songs with no repeated bands. I hate the heck out of Spotify, and don’t use it, but I have decided to start creating a playlist based on the music that I heard in alternative clubs in 88-92. It is a work in progress so this isn’t its final form. During those four years I went clubbing on a pretty regular basis, even multiple times a week. So, these are actual songs that were played back then not some fever dream of somebody who wishes they lived back then. Yes, rap/hip-hop songs were played at all of the alternative clubs in the San Francisco Bay Area back then, and I had a whole lot of fun dancing to them! From what I understand this was not as common in other areas of the US, so this list only represents what I experienced and is not indicative of what happened elsewhere.
Hope you have fun listening to this and discover songs that are new to you.
Strawberry Switchblade was not a goth band just because they dressed strange.
There is a recent Rolling Stone article titled The 50 Best Goth Songs Of All Time making the rounds, and my goodness are people pissed off about it. The main reason being that the author of the article is a noted historian on the goth subculture, Andi Harriman. Personally I think she is full of shit, based mainly on the fact that she writes for post-punk dot com, a very problematic website that I have covered on here before. It is run by a trust fund guy who is actively buying his way into the subculture. You are the company that you keep.
I read somewhere yesterday that dearest Andi has claimed that she was told by Rolling Stone to expand the list with famous bands that maybe weren’t goth in order to appease their audience. Instead of having standards she gave in and wrote it. I guess getting her name on the byline of a Rolling Stone article was more important than telling the truth of things. Go figure. So, come wander down this path of half-truths and outright lies with me. This is going to be fun! I will quote sections of the article and then give my response.
‘The scene was a torch passing of sorts. Murphy’s Bauhaus had helped invent goth during the early Eighties; Way had brought it to stripmalls and arenas in the 21st century. And, still, neither could answer a question that has haunted people for decades: What is goth?‘
Woman, My Chemical Romance is not a goth band. I repeat, My Chemical Romance is not a damn goth band. Just because a band dresses in black does not automatically mean that the band makes goth subculture music. It wasn’t passing a torch from Murphy to Way, it was more like Murphy spitting up in the air and his phlegm landed on Way. What is goth? A question that she sure as hell also doesn’t know how to answer.
Let’s travel back to 1983. A time when London’s Batcave club was in its infancy. There, the aesthetics of goth were cultivated—a love for horror movies and Gothic novels, a sickly pallor and a koosh ball of hair, pointy winklepickers and a mish-mash of fetish materials, and most of all, a romance with melancholy. ‘83 was also the year that vampire-thriller The Hunger, co-starring David Bowie, hit the big screens. Vampires, Bowie, Bauhaus – it was the perfect trifecta, beautifully bound in an orgy of tragic eternity.
Um…on the US West Coast during the same time there were bands doing the exact same thing. The Batcave was not the only place where goth music came into being and was born; it’s just the obvious easy answer that people repeat over and over and over….again. So much of this is repeated elsewhere that there are tons of people who weren’t even alive during the 80’s running around wearing Batcave shirts and patches right now. I was a teen in the 80’s in the San Francisco Bay Area and even though I was alive during those Batcave years I wouldn’t sport a shirt or patch of a place that I never went to. An orgy of tragic Eternity? It’s not an orgy if it is only attended by three people. Just saying.
The first batallion of dark 1970s post-punk bands fed off the energy of Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust character, an androgynous creature who didn’t quite seem human. The allure of Ziggy, mixed with the magnetism of Dracula (namely Christopher Lee, Udo Keir, and of course, Bela Lugosi) helped to assemble the essential iconography of the subculture– at once dreadful and oozing with sex appeal.
A whole lot of those bands came out of Los Angeles and not the Batcave; specifically Christian Death and 45 Grave, who both used darkly themed aesthetics in their stage performances. Alice Bag, who was in the early Los Angeles punk band The Bags with Patricia Morrison, actually goes into detail in her book Violence Girl as to how everything creatively morphed after the early punk scene there imploded due to the violence that was happening at shows. I highly recommend her book, because she was best friends with Morrison and her insight is very valuable.
And the sound? It’s atmospheric. Somewhere between a banshee scream or a bellowing, reverberated howl that could part the Red Sea, goth began as a transition point from the jaggedness of punk’s confrontational simplicity into an elegant darkness, one cloaked in sorrow and so much emotion. In order to achieve goth status, there must be as much drama as possible: the music, in true Hitchockian fashion, must be as frightening as a spiral staircase in a creaking haunted house.
Again, a whole lot of early goth bands were anything but elegant. Sex Gang Children, Virgin Prunes, Christian Death, etc…were all very confrontational and anything but elegant, but that was the appeal. You could speak up about how fucked up the world was along with looking like you were mourning it. Personally, that is one of the reasons why I have always been into goth music along with punk; they can be on different sides of the same coin.
Think of this list as a roadmap to that sound—from B-movie horror thrills, to reanimated rock and roll rituals, to complete sacrilege, bulging with blasphemy, bondage, blood and lots of bats. It’s a history that touches on subgenres like dream pop, hard rock, synthpop, and glam, that makes pit stops in Spain and Germany, pays homage at the doorsteps of black-clad country heroes and spooky blues legends, and dives into seedy art rock grottos and DIY punk venues. So pour yourself a goblet of red wine and hold your rosaries tight. It’s gonna be a long, dark night of the soul.
A roadmap to the sound? Then why the hell would you call this list ’50 Best Goth Songs Of All Time’? It should have been titled ‘music that influenced goth bands’ instead then. She should know better than to mislead people with this article, because right now there is a ton of misinformation about it. So much so that teens, and even adults, are running around calling themselves goth without listening to any of the actual music. Instead of trying to stop this crap she is doing her part to perpetuate it. Awwww…….how peachy-keen of her!
I am now going to briefly comment on each band on that list that are in no way goth, and give my reasoning for my opinion on each.
50.Strawberry Switchblade They were basically a pop band who happened to dress in a lot of polka dots. Seriously, that’s it. Plus, Rose McDowall got all cozy with Death In June, a very problematic band. A big huge thumbs down from me.
49. AFI This one is a huge WTF. I actually used to go to the punk club Gilman in Berkeley during the same years that Havok went there before he got famous. I just remember that he had the cover of TSOL’s album Dance With Me on the back of his leather jacket. The dude does like some deathrock music, but that doesn’t mean that he actually makes deathrock music. Their sound has morphed multiple times over the years, but it has never been strictly goth.
47. She Wants RevengeMembers of this band have been accused of sexual assault. They opened a ‘goth’ club in Los Angeles and preceded to do nothing about their workers being sexually assaulted by their guests. Fuck this band up the ass with no lube. I guess our friend Andi is perfectly okay with all of this. Good to know.
45. My Chemical Romance Not a goth band folks. A band isn’t goth just because they dress in black and whine about their lives. The song she chose sounds like straight up pop punk, which is a music genre that really needs to jump off of a cliff.
44. Type O Negative This is one of the big bands that is always called goth by people who don’t know any better. Andi should know better, but apparently she thinks misinformation is okay as long as she gets the clicks. They are straight up metal and that is it.
43. Echo And The Bunnymen If I had a dollar for every single time a misinformed kid calls this band goth I would be a wealthy woman. They were never goth….at all. I actually saw them live in 1987, so I was around when they were big, and they were never called goth. The internet has been spreading this misinformed crap for the last decade. Sorry kids, just because a post-punk band made maybe one or two sad songs in the 80’s doesn’t make the band goth. Period. Thanks Andi for perpetuating this bullshit.
41. Suicide They have always been considered punk. That’s it.
38. Fad Gadget Their songs used to be played in the alternative/goth clubs I went to over 30 years ago, but that doesn’t mean the band was goth. I have always considered them to be a new wave band more than anything else.
36. Nine Inch Nails Seriously? Wahahahaha!!!! Industrial music, maybe, but definitely not a goth band. Nope, just a trust fund dude whining about how shit his life is while playing a keyboard.
33. Depeche Mode I have always loved their album Black Celebration, but is it a goth album? Synthpop definitely, but not really goth. They were an important goth gateway band for me in the 80’s, but they themselves were not a goth band. They could lead you down a road of discovery if that is where you wanted to go. A lot of people would just stop at them and not go any further, and I found such people to be boring as hell.
32. Johnny Cash I love some Johnny Cash, but was the dude goth? Nope, he was solidly a country musician who sang about dark subjects. Then again a lot of old school country bands did the same sort of thing and they don’t appear on this list. I think Andi only included him because of his Nine Inch Nails cover song, a band who is also not goth. Way to go Andi!
21. The Velvet Underground Definitely a proto-punk band, that is in no way goth.
12. Iggy Pop Again, a proto-punk band and not goth….at all. Iggy Pop’s music isn’t goth just because Ian Curtis hung himself while listening to one of his albums. I saw Iggy perform in the late 80’s and it sure as hell wasn’t a dark romantic performance; it was aggressive, energetic and punk as all hell. If he tours near you go and see him, he puts on an excellent show.
7. Joy Division They were a solid post-punk band and that is it. Ian Curtis killed himself before the subculture was even fully formed so I think sticking the music of the band into a goth box does it a disservice. Retroactively calling bands goth is just lazy and trite journalism. I wrote a whole article about how they were never a goth band. The only people who think they are goth are the kids running around who think that all sad songs must be goth. They couldn’t be more wrong.
6. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins Not a goth musician at all. I wouldn’t even call him proto-goth. However, I think the dude influenced the hell out of horror punk and shock rock. The Misfits even played some shows with him over forty years ago. Just because a musician uses dark theatrics doesn’t make said musician goth. That is unless you want to call both the Misfits and Alice Cooper goth.
4. David Bowie Again, yet another musician who was in no way goth but whose music influenced both punk and later goth musicians. His music is very important but it just isn’t goth, and that’s okay.
Well, that’s it folks. What lesson can we learn from this whole mess? That to some people getting an article in a mainstream music publication such as Rolling Stone is more important than actually telling the truth. Sad but true, and it is this attitude that is really hurting the subculture right now; fame at all costs, and if you have to step over people and lie to achieve it then so be it.
Back in July the website tried to promote the very problematic band She Wants Revenge. Money is more important than the safety of women apparently. It was only taken down when enough of us complained.
I can well imagine that some of you are wondering why I am feeling the need to write out a post about such a peachy-keen site that promotes so many bands within the goth community. Well, sometimes things are not all that they seem to be; scratch the surface and sometimes you will find something very onerous underneath. Since I am not one to shy away from controversy I immediately knew that I has to write about this and tell people the truth as to what kind of website they are actually supporting.
So what kind of website is it and who originally started it? The original founder of post-punk dot com was Joshua Pfeiffer, and he started the site around 2004 to share information about the lesser known goth, post-punk and alternative bands that he was discovering. He couldn’t find a site online that was a repository of information about the music, so he scoured the internet, asked people, interviewed musicians and did a whole lot of independent research to create a site in which he could share his love of the music. He is also a musician and a DJ who has worked with a lot of people within the goth, alternative and punk communities. In other words the site was a work of love for him and the others who also participated in the day to day running of it. He did not do it for the money, and since it started to take more and more of his free time, which he didn’t have much of to begin with, he handed over the site to somebody who promised that they would run it in the same manner; Alex Baker, a promoter who was at the time living in New York.*
Who is Alex Baker? Where do I even begin; should I start off on what he claims he is or what he really is? Here are the basics. Our boy Alex is the son of a famous mainstream record producer. Who? At this point I really don’t care. I only know of this because our little Alex brags about it and shows 80’s photos of his dad with various famous musicians of the decade. I’m going to let Alex tell us what happened next, according to an interview that he gave in 2020.
In 2012 I started the process of taking over Post-Punk.com and relaunching it, which was done in 2014. Prior to this I had been doing event promotions in NYC, at clubs like The Limelight, Pyramid, CBGB’s, Knitting Factory and more, and had also ran a print publication.
Redakce / proti sedi
Funny how he doesn’t mention Joshua Pfeiffer, the person who actually created the site. Relaunching it into what exactly? Why would a website that is there to only share information need to be relaunched? Didn’t he promise that he wouldn’t change the site? Oh dear!
In the same magazine article quoted above he goes into how he moved to Berlin but it got too techno for him so he decided to move to Los Angeles part-time to be closer to all of the post-punk/alternative bands there. Oh, and he can travel to Europe to catch all of the music festivals there too. Needless to say the guy has a serious amount of cash. The kind of cash that you can’t make from running a website or from being a promoter within the subculture. He has to be getting money from his father to afford all of this. I’m not going to put him down for that because plenty of people that receive an inheritance or an annuity aren’t totally self absorbed liars. Rather, it is how he uses his money, or doesn’t, that I would like to have a chat about.
So, we have established that Alex is in no way broke and has a considerable amount of money that allows him to regularly travel to Europe. Since this is the case why does he charge bands for album reviews and always begs for money to support the site?
Let’s tackle the whole pay to play scam first. I know that some of you won’t know what this means, so I’ll explain. Back in the 50’s-70’s it was very common that when a music producer or record label wanted singles played on the radio they would quite often pay the radio stations to play the songs. So, whomever had the most money came up on top. It didn’t matter what they sounded like, as long as the radio stations received the cash they got played. Since I know all about how this pay to play scam works I was a bit shocked to see our little friend Alex pulling this shit right out in the open. Not only does he charge bands money to be reviewed, he also charges them money to get such things as an Instagram boost. As a person who has run my own blogs on and off for almost twenty years I know that you can link your site to your social media accounts so that you don’t have to bother doing it manually. Charging a goth/alternative/post-punk subculture band money for all of this feels as dirty as a rolled up dollar bill on the floor of a bathroom in a goth club. So, who gets the most coverage? Any band that has money. Right now that means all of the Joy Division/Cure clone ‘post-punk’ bands, because the youngsters really dig them and buy a lot of merch and music from them. I’m not knocking all of those bands, but how is it fair to the bands that are broke and trying to get their music out there? It isn’t and it sucks.
I took screen shots of the whole band submission process on post-punk dot com. Come with me on a voyage of greed on the HMS Post-Punk! I will post a photo and explain what you are seeing underneath.
Awwww……how sweet they want to give us high-quality video content. We are pretending we are a band right now so go along with it. We are in hiding.
I just picked that we wanted an article published about us. Why? Because we play good music and are cool. Don’t forget that!
Would we like our music reviewed? Of course we would because we play good music and want people to find out about it. Wouldn’t our review just automatically appear on their Instagram page when they post it onto their site? WHAT!!!!! A ‘contribution’ amount of $150 for them to write a review and create an Instagram post of us? Why should we be contributing any money to a website that was meant to just be a central repository of band information in the first place? Oh wait, that’s right, when our friend Alex took over the site he decided to turn it into something that his daddy would be proud of; a mainstream endorsed music website that is all about the cash and who you know, rather than simply being about the music. I have even heard talk from different people who ‘know’ that Alex is also only allowing bands on the site that he deems ‘attractive’, that they need to have a certain ‘look’.
This doesn’t stop out dear Alex from regularly asking for yet more money to run the site, even though the dude is loaded. So, not only is he a liar he is money hungry as well.
Awww….look at Alex. He’s started a fundraiser for the site even though he is charging for reviews AND is loaded.
He even tried to crowdfund over £20,000 to start a print magazine, and it failed. Finally some good news.
What is the real reason behind why he took over the website in the first place? He wants the power and clout that owning a popular site within the subculture gives him. He wants to be the person that the mainstream music press goes to when they want their questions about goth/post-punk music answered. He wants to be the person who appears on podcast shows talking about the bands that he ‘discovered’. He wants his head up on a post-punk Mt. Rushmore sandwiched between Ian Curtis and Peter Hook. For him this is all a means to an end, with the help of his dad’s money and connections.
The last thing I want to discuss is something that really cracked me up. Since I knew that I was going to be writing this I kind of paid attention to the website’s Facebook page. The other day the below post appeared, and by golly do I have a lot to say about it!
Can you imagine somebody being so out of touch with reality that they would think that posting about the Dead Kennedys would give them some punk cred? Wonder no more because Alex has struck again! This has proven to me that he has never actually ‘listened’ to the Dead Kennedys. Jello Biafra would verbally demolish him because he has ALWAYS been against the mainstream music industry and what they represent. So much so that he wrote a song on the subject called Anarchy For Sale, about how corporations steal ideas and try to sell them back to the subculture that they stole them from in the first place. Sound familiar?
More and more people are whispering about all of this and are genuinely scared to say anything because of the power that he is currently holding over every single musician in the subculture. I have no doubt that Alex really enjoys holding the sword of Damocles above their necks, In fact he probably gets off on it.
I’ve been into goth/alternative/punk music for over 35 years now. Over that time I have witnessed some very egregious shit go down, but I must say that this is the first time I have seen somebody with obvious mainstream ties try to buy their way into the subculture. You can have all of the money in the world, but that won’t make you ‘authentic’. Do you know the people who are actually authentic within the goth/alternative/punk subcultures? The people who actually ‘listen’ to the music and love it for what it is; not for some perceived clout. They can be broke as hell and dress in clothes they got from Walmart but because they actually ‘listen’ to the music that will always make them more authentic than our boy Alex will ever be.
I was originally going to make that last paragraph the end of this article but since little Alex seems to love posting about the Dead Kennedys without actually ‘listening’ to them I thought I would help him out. These are all of the songs from their album Bedtime For Democracy that really fit into this entire situation quite well! Remember, these songs are just from one of their albums. Enjoy Alex!
Anarchy For Sale (1986)
Chickenshit Conformist (1986)
Hop With The Jet Set (1986)
Macho Insecurity (1986)
I Spy (1986)
*I’m now told that Alex actually bought the site in an auction when Joshua couldn’t afford the website any longer. Alex still ruined the site, so this doesn’t make any real difference.
This is an interview between Ken of Sounds And Shadows and Jose Hernandez Riwes Cruz of Hueco. Jose has been into goth/alternative music since the 80’s in Mexico and has just written a book called Jumping Someone Else’s Train in which he explains how the subculture formed there. A while back he asked us in the Sounds And Shadows Facebook group what we were called before the term ‘Goth’ was used in our areas. I mentioned to him what my friends and I were mostly called way back in the mid to late 80’s in the SF East Bay and some more information.
Most, if not all, of you know my real name on Facebook is Megan Wood McGuigan so that is not a secret. It is just so cool to feel appreciated, especially by people who are very knowledgable about a genre of music that means a lot to me. I am not giving the exact time of when I am mentioned because it is a very cool video that should be seen in its entirety. A huge thanks to both Ken and Jose.
