EDIT: I am half asleep and mistitled this post! LOL It is now fixed! Iggy Pop is literally one of the people who helped invent punk music so to say that his music is very important is not an overstatement at all. When I learned the other day that this album had been released, and that people were praising the hell out of it, I knew I had to give it a listen.
Back in 1988 I went to go see The Jesus & Mary Chain open for Iggy. I knew a few Iggy songs back then such as I Wanna Be Your Dog and Cry For Love, but after watching his performance that night I went right out and bought a copy of his newer album Instinct and didn’t look back. I was also getting into punk music during that time so that album was definitely a step down the road of the musical journey I would take and that I am still on. So, as a musician he has always been important to me and I respect the hell out of him.
The song calling out famous pop punk musicians.
I am waiting for the cd of this album to get to my house so I have been playing the YouTube videos for each of the tracks and I haven’t been disappointed at all! In quite a few songs he is calling out rich pop punk musicians and their corporate bullshit, which I am totally here for because if one person has the total right to criticize that crap it is him. This album must be causing the boys in Green Day a huge amount of discomfort and that can only be a good thing.
Biting social commentary.
Even the slower songs on this album have a huge amount of social commentary to them. It feels like Iggy got up one morning and said ‘fuck all of this bullshit’ and wrote out some of his frustrations about this rock in space that we are living on. I can’t overstate this enough, but I think this is probably one of the best social commentary albums to come out in quite a while. If you are into punk music you will love this, and if you are new to Iggy Pop this album would be an excellent place to start checking out his music.
You read that right, the Subhumans are raising money for a big new book about their band history. They have been around for over forty years so it is bound to be a really good read. They have already reached their goal but you can still pledge to help them out. I got the book, postcard and shirt combo.
I’ve been listening to them since around 1989 and they were very instrumental, along with the Dead Kennedys, as to informing me what is really going on all around us politically and socially. They are a very important band, and if you would like to get into punk music they are an excellent place to start.
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.
The patch placement on the back I am more than likely going to run with.
You have read that correctly, I have finally started working on the Glenn Danzig themed jacket! This will entail including patches from the Misfits, Samhain, Danzig and other related spooky stuff. The funny thing is that all of this is happening around the same time that I finally got my eyes tested and found out that I need reading glasses. It was getting difficult to thread a needle so that really needed to happen.
We own a cat, can you tell?
Without glasses I managed to sew on the Samhain death dealer patch. I used red thread to make it pop a little. I have decided not to tire the hell out of my eyes any further and just wait for my glasses to arrive before I start on another patch. So, I will be back at it next week. While I was waiting for the last patches to arrive I started yet another project.
Love this hoodie so much!
I bought the above Misfits hoodie from Hot Topic’s website about a month ago. I only order from the site once a year because they charge way too much money for shipping. I’m just going to slowly sew more patches to it and perhaps add some spikes.
All of the patches shown in this post I bought from Etsy.
That is me on the left in early 1991. I’ve posted this photo before but it is one of the only photos of myself that I have from back then. I didn’t like having my photo taken.
I have seen these questions making the rounds all over social media and I thought I would join in since my answers will be a bit different compared to a lot of the other answers I have seen. This is due to being old and also being heavily into punk music.
1. How long have I been goth? My area of the San Francisco East Bay did not start using the word until around 90-91. Some of my favourite bands in high school in the late 80’s, that are considered goth, were Specimen, Siouxsie And The Banshees, The Cure, Gene Loves Jezebel and The Cult. So I have been listening to the music since about 1986. During that time I also loved U2 and The Dead Kennedys so musically I was all over the place. I didn’t call myself a goth until about 92 because the people who used the term first in my area were the uber goobers and I did not want to be lumped in with them. They took themselves way too seriously, which I never did. I have also always had a foot in the punk subculture.
2. How was I introduced to goth? Nobody sat me down and told me what to listen to or how to dress. There was no internet, of course, and it could be kind of difficult to find out about bands. At the first high school I went to I was the only person in my friend group who listened to the music, and they thought the music was too weird. There was a Bay Area ‘modern rock’ station during that time that would play the more obscure stuff late at night and that’s how I learned about a few of them . At my second high school there were more weirdos, and some of them were quite helpful with bands. Back then the term ‘post-punk’ wasn’t used at all in my area, rather all weirdo music, except for punk of course, was called ‘alternative’ or ‘modern rock’. The term ‘alternative’ was ruined by the mainstream record labels who used it for grunge in their attempt to sell ‘weirdo’ music to the masses.
3. What gothic subgenre would you put yourself in? If you regularly read this blog then you know how much I dislike all of the ‘goth type’ crap. It originated as a joke in the 90’s, making fun of the stereotypes seen in clubs. For whatever reason a lot of younger folks, and some deluded old ones, feel the need to fit themselves into a box. I do tend to listen to a lot of deathrock music, probably more-so than any other ‘type’ but I refuse to call myself ‘deathrock’ because there is more to me than just one form of music, and I refuse to box myself in just to please others.
4. What do you believe to be the bases(basis) of the gothic subculture? First, I would love to point out how the person who wrote out these questions uses both the terms ‘goth’ and ‘gothic’. We used to always use both of the terms interchangeability way back when but now ‘gothic’ means spooky architecture, while ‘goth’ means the subculture. I think the basis of the subculture is the music more than anything else. Without the music there wouldn’t be a subculture. Period. The clothes and make-up are secondary. Anybody who calls themselves goth but who doesn’t listen to actual goth bands is more than likely a trend whore; a person who jumps from trend to trend. Since the term has been super popular in the mainstream for the last few years there are quite a few of these people floating around all wearing the same really shit Demonia boots and the same kind of outfits. I find them all boring, but it is rather entertaining when these fashion victims bitch about their Demonias falling apart within a week of wearing them.
5. What do I dislike about being goth? I know that a lot of goth women bitch about being sexually harassed by men who think all goth women are kinky, but that hasn’t happened to me at all in real life. I think it’s mainly because I look older and use a cane. There are some upsides to being diseased and middle aged. There really isn’t anything that I dislike since I am in my own bubble of existence. I am just me being me.
6. What do your parents think of it? My mom was with me when I got my first undercut in 88, so she has always been very supportive of me and has said that if she had been my age she would also be goth. I have a cool mom. My dad died back in 85. I honestly think that his death had a lot to do with me becoming a weirdo. I was already an outcast for being poor and having a dead parent so morphing into a goth/punk weirdo wasn’t a huge step for me to take. In fact just about everybody into goth/punk music back then was some sort of societal reject.
7. Eyebrows or no eyebrows? Eyebrows, because I look like crap with them shaved off.
8. What is my favourite band? I have a holy trinity of all time favourite bands; Samhain, Christian Death (mostly Valor) and The Dead Kennedys (Jello only). Those three groups have probably influenced me more than anything else. I actually got to tell Valor that in person the other month which was cool as hell. Uber goober Rozz fanatics may get mad at me for liking Valor’s music more than the music of Rozz but I just don’t give a shit. Seriously. Stay angry and irrational over something that happened about 40 years ago, it’s entertaining.
9. My opinion on Marilyn Manson? This question is a bit young for me since I was already in my twenties when he reared his very ugly head. I remember seeing people younger than me at the clubs in the late 90’s trying to look like him and it was hysterically funny. The fact that it came out that he is an abusive asshole didn’t come as a shock to me. In the wise words of Jello Biafra:
You ain’t hardcore ’cause you spike your hair
When a jock still lives inside your head
10. What were my baby bat days like? I didn’t really experience that because I was so all over the place musically. However, it kind of sucked being into both punk and goth bands at the same time back over 30 years ago because according to some people I was too punk for goth and too goth for punk. The punk subculture was way more welcoming to me and I actually gained the nickname Vampira because of dressing in all black and loving the Misfits, Samhain and Danzig. It was actually a bit tough being a woman into those three bands back then; they were considered ‘guy’ bands because of the violent imagery and horror content of the songs. I have always been into horror and sci-fi films and novels so I identified very heavily with those bands and they spoke to me a lot. Kids these days get into the fashion first and then the music, but back then it was the opposite. I listened to goth and punk music first and then slowly started dressing ‘dark’. Even back then I did a lot of DIY type projects so I always painted my own leather jackets and upcycled clothing. However, there was a US clothing chain called Contempo Casuals who sold a whole lot of weirdo friendly clothing. Just about every single person I knew back then had a least a few pieces of clothing by them. I had a pair of black crushed velvet leggings from there that lasted me about ten years. No joke! So the older people in the US saying that all they did was thrift is a total lie, and they know it. I even found a long multi-layer black lace skirt in a regular mall store back then.
So, that is it! I hope you had as much fun reading this as I had writing it. As you can see my experiences are a bit different since I was also into punk and got into the music first. It was a road of discovery for me, not a destination. Especially considering that the term ‘goth’ wasn’t even used in my area until after I was already listening to the music.
As I have previously stated before on this blog I do not accept anything for free for reviewing products. I have always felt that it is really disingenuous to accept free swag and then brag about it online. That is what so many younger content creators are doing within the online goth/punk communities these days and I find it really boring and trite. This is all to say that I bought every single item that you see contained in this post.
The back of those same shirts. The red print looking white in these photos are just reflections, the lettering is not white at all.
Have you never seen these Samhain shirt designs before? Me neither, and that is why I had to get them. Out of Glenn Danzig’s three different bands Samhain is the one that doesn’t have the insane level of gear that the other two have, so it is difficult to find items of the band that are out of the ordinary. This seller on Etsy has designs that I have never seen before so I am assuming that they came up with them themselves. I mean some of the elements of the designs I am familiar with, but I have never seen them quite like this before. They cost me about £18.00 each and for the price they are really good looking. The red is a little orange in places but you can’t notice that unless you are looking up close. All in all I am very happy with this purchase.
Yes, that is a Bee Gees patch and I am not ashamed!
I have been buying a lot of patches lately. Some are going to be for the Glenn Danzig themed jacket while some others will be used in projects in the future. I especially love the hand-painted severed heads Misfits patch. It’s such a work of beauty that I had to order more patches from her. If you are into Glenn Danzig at all, or like spooky imagery, you will spend money at her shop.
If a band that you like has little to no merchandise Etsy is a great place to find gear. Make no mistake, you should always look on Bandcamp first but Etsy is there for you if you happen to like bands that broke up decades ago. The only thing I would make sure to do is read the reviews of the products, because there are people on there selling substandard gear out of China. In fact there are whole stores on there that do that. When in doubt do an easy reverse image search, because that will tell you if multiple stores are selling the exact same item.
A glass pumpkin cookie jar that has become my new spooky hair clips container.
I haven’t made a music themed jacket in a little over thirty years, Seriously, it has been that long. Why? Because I am a fangirl of so many different kinds of things that it makes it difficult for me to just focus on one aspect as to who I am.
I have been massively listening to the Misfits, Samhain and Danzig lately, if you haven’t noticed, and an idea popped into my head a few weeks ago; make a Glenn Danzig themed jacket! Originally I was going to use a New Look striped jacket that I got on clearance, but after some thinking I am going to use the one below instead. It’s another New Look clearance jacket that I got about five years ago.
Love the 50’s vibe of this jacket.
If you are a fan of Glenn you know that the number 138 is a Misfits reference. I had sewn those numbers onto the jacket a few years back so in reality it was already started. Over the last few weeks I have been scouring Etsy for cool Misfits, Samhain and Danzig patches and I have found some really unusual ones. Also, I will be putting some spooky little patches on it as filler because to do otherwise would be blasphemous. On top of that I have bought a bunch of cone studs. I just have to be patient for all of the goods to trickle in. I don’t want to start until they are all here. If I have some that I won’t use I will just save them for a future project.
I really hope that this inspires you to create something of your own. I believe in you and if you ever have any questions about how to proceed with a DIY project please feel free to contact me because I would love to help if I can.
I have loved The Misfits, Samhain and the original line-up of Danzig for about thirty-two years. Yes, I am that old. I even saw the original Danzig line-up perform in San Francisco in October of 1992 and it still holds up as the best show I have ever been to. This is all to say that I have always seriously loved the music of Glenn Danzig.
My all time favourite album is November Coming Fire by Samhain. I love it so much that I finally sought out and bought a mint condition first edition US vinyl pressing of it. I got it the other year for only about £140.00 so I know I am a lucky bitch. Early Danzig is my next favourite era followed by the original Misfits. No, I haven’t been to any of the Glenn fronted Misfits reunion shows, mainly because I now live in Europe. However, if the original Danzig line-up ever tours I would fly to New York, Philly or even Boston for that. Just saying.
Here are my all time favourite songs from each band. I enjoy sharing music so I hope that you find something that you really like and connect with.
Going to this show was kind of like a pilgrimage for me because I had not seen the band live for about 25 years. This was due to a combination of living in places were bands generally don’t stop at and being perpetually broke. I saw them live twice in the 90’s when I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area so I at least got to see them perform before. I know how lucky I was. I currently live in the UK Channel Islands, which is far from just about everything. This means to see shows in England I have to fly into London, which isn’t exactly cheap. So for me to see a show there I have to really, really, really, etc.. be a huge fan of the band I am flying to see. Just saying this so that you know the viewpoint I am coming from; I am a huge fan of the band. I was diagnosed with MS about five years ago and I decided that I needed to see them again because I have no idea how physically screwed up I’m going to be in the future.
My husband and I were in the front of the line to get in, of course, and I met some very cool people and had some really good conversations about the band, the current state of goth music, the Dead Kennedys, Samhain and other subjects. I have forgotten their names because I suck in general at remembering such things so please do not be mad at me if you guys are reading this. You guys were awesome and it was very cool connecting with other people at a show.
The first band up was a duo named the West Wickhams who played a minimalist type of music consisting of guitar, a drum machine and some synth manipulation. I have to be honest, I am not the hugest fan of this type of goth music. However, the guitarist/singer was so earnest that they had me tapping my feet. That actually counts for a lot when you see bands live because you can instantly tell that they are really into performing their music and that they want you to go down a road of discovery with them. I hope that they keep at it and continue to do shows because their lyrics were really good.
Ghost Dance was up next and they were very energetic and looked like they were having fun. I only knew a few songs by them but they had me up from my seat and dancing, holding the railing for safety because my right ankle tends to give out on me. Anne Marie looked like she was having a great time and she interacted with the audience a bunch as evidenced by the photo above. She had some tech issues with her mic during the first song but that was sorted out and didn’t affect the performance at all. Their last song was Promised Land, which was a song that she originally performed with her earlier band Skeletal Family. I totally wasn’t expecting that so it was very cool hearing it performed live. Their performance was very good and if you have a chance to see them go for it because you will have a good time and not be disappointed.
Up next was Christian Death. Before they went on they had issues trying to set up their video on the screen that would be shown behind them. They ended up just removing the screen, which in the end didn’t really matter because their performance would have been great with or without it. I love their new album Evil Becomes Rule and they pretty much played the entire thing. The first two times I saw them there wasn’t a second guitarist so it was very cool getting to see both Maitri and Valor concentrate more on their parts within the songs. It enabled Maitri to put more emotion into singing songs such as Beautiful and it really showed off her vocals to a degree that I had never heard live before. In other words she was totally on fire during the show and she was more front and center than usual.
Valor also put on a really good performance because he got to concentrate on his singing and playing rhythm guitar instead of stretching himself too thin by playing lead guitar constantly. That is not to say that he didn’t play lead guitar at all, it just allowed him more of a choice as to what parts he wanted to perform. He has always been an excellent guitarist so I have absolutely no complaints about his playing at all. He even played some acoustic guitar which was very cool. Their other guitarist was Chuck Lenihan who also did an excellent job, along with their new drummer.
When you go to a Christian Death show you know that you are going to hear Valor railing against politicians, religion and the British royal family, and this show was no different. I actually really appreciate that side of his performance because too few musicians are using their platforms to say such things. He has always been outspoken and it is one of the reasons why I have always loved the band. It harkens back to how political punk was in the 80’s and it really shows the connection that he has always had with that music and subculture.
After they were done with playing the album they dove straight into Forgiven, This Glass House and then Sick Of Love. The audience was bouncing all over the place and there was such energy that you couldn’t help but join in. The audience was part of the reason that the show was so good. You could tell that all of them were into the music, and it was very awesome to see some teenagers in the audience also having a great time.
This next part still has me tripping out so please forgive me if I babble a bit about it and get disjointed. After Sick Of Love they left the stage for about five minutes and then came back out for an encore. I was very near the left hand side of the stage which was on the same level above the crowd. When Maitri came out she made a beeline towards me to the other side of the railing and asked if I was Megan. I responded that yes I was and she told me to come around the railing and get on stage with them. I was so surprised that I forgot my walking stick. I told her when I went around the curtain to the stage that I might fall and she said not to worry and reassured me that I would be okay. That relaxed me a bit which helped with my nervousness and it was a very sweet thing for her to say. I stood next to her while she told the crowd that I flew in from Guernsey; that I was a very supportive fan who defended them online and that I was very much appreciated for what I was doing for the band.
As you can well imagine by this point I was borderline teary but then something really astonishing happened. They announced that because of all of this I was going to get to join them in singing This Is Heresy as their encore. Holy shit! HOLY SHIT!!! I am not the greatest singer but by golly I belted my heart out! There were parts that I just let Valor sing because I previously knew that in live performances he sometimes goes off pace. However, by the last part of the song I was yelling ‘Soaked in the blood of men, not the body of Christ!’. After the end I gave them hugs, exited the stage and went to the merch area to wait for them there because they told the audience that they would come out for photos and autographs. Sure enough they did. My husband took a video on his camera of all of this, so once he figures out how to transfer it to me I will upload it in a new post.
I cannot overstate how much of a sweetheart Maitri is. She thanked me yet again, we got some more hugs in and I left her side just insanely happy knowing that I was able to make a difference as to how she is perceived as a musician.
Valor was absolutely no different. He is also a very nice and friendly person. We got to talking and I asked him if he had ever met Jello Biafra back in the early 80’s because there was a whole lot of cross pollination when it came to punk/deathrock type bands between San Francisco and Los Angeles during that time. Sure enough he told me about a car trip he took back then with Jello to San Francisco from Los Angeles. It made perfect sense since as songwriters they both write songs about pretty much the same topics. I mentioned Jello to Valor because him and Jello are the two lyricists who largely made me into who I am today; somebody who heavily questions politicians, religions and other such things. He was very grateful towards me for telling him that, which in turn meant a lot to me. The circle of life.
Without a doubt Valor and Maitri are the nicest musicians I have ever met. That is saying something because I met Henry Rollins over thirty years and he was a very cool person too. They definitely edge Rollins out to take the top spot on my list. If you have a chance to see this band live go for it because you will not be disappointed by their performance or by who they are as human beings.
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.
