I am going to keep this short and to the point. What the Israeli government is doing against the Palestinians is genocide and ethnic cleansing. They are killing innocent Palestinians who have nothing to do with Hamas. This is what the government of Israel has wanted since the beginning of their statehood; the Palestinians forced off of the land by any means necessary. It is disgusting that the US and UK governments are enabling this and I refuse to vote for any politician that supports the government of Israel. FREE PALESTINE!!!!!!
I got permission from Angela to post this. Please watch her video, it is very important.
About three years ago I made this post about how the fetishization of goth women needs to stop and instead of things getting better in online spaces things have actually gotten worse. If you don’t know who Angela Benedict is she has been into goth music since the 90’s and she makes videos about her experiences within the subculture. She also gives solid advice. A few days ago she put up a video explaining how goth women do not want to be seen as a BTGGF fetish, and the backlash she got from some very insecure entitled men was really disgusting.
For those of you who do not know what the initials BTGGF stand for it’s slang for ‘big tiddy goth girlfriend’. It started as a meme some years back but now it has spread so far and wide that there is a growing cohort of mainly men who think that all goth women are into kink and will be freaks between the sheets. They think that we will let them try anything sexual and that we love being submissive.
To these absolute losers we are nothing but an object to collect; a notch on a bedpost. We are not seen as human, instead they see us as demonic sex kittens. With all of that being said let us look as some of the responses that her video has received.
The spineless idiot first tells Angela that if she doesn’t want to be sexualized that she should stop dressing like a ‘304’. What is a ‘304’? It is slang for a prostitute. So, because she has broken his fetish into little pieces he turns around and victim blames her. Of course he does because mentally he has the maturity of a bratty teenager. A bratty teenager who thinks he is entitled to have his way with goth women. This attitude is dangerous as hell and quite frankly I wouldn’t be surprised if he goes on to commit crimes against goth women. This is why it is so important to push back against this crap.
When Angela points out that he sounds very angry he then states that he can ‘ogle’ goth woman all he wants because we put ourselves out there to be ‘ogled’. What a total piece of shit. Would he ever say that in person to a goth woman? Hell no, and if anybody said that kind of shit to me in person I have a cane and I know how to use it. Just because a woman is wearing revealing clothing doesn’t mean that a man has the right to her body. Also, Angela is totally covered up in this video . The rise of ‘goth porn’ has some men thinking that goth women want sexual attention just because they dress in some lace and velvet. This is perpetuated by sex workers dressing in black and calling themselves goth when they are not. I have nothing against sex work BUT that shit is actually harming real goth women both on and off the internet.
Angela proceeds to call the dude Incel-Irving, which is a perfect name for the guy. I think one of the reasons why this dude is so angry is because he has been rejected by multiple goth women online. Remember, this guy doesn’t have the balls to go up to a goth woman in public and say this kind of shit. He is probably very unattractive and blames goth women for his inability to take a shower or change his crusty whitey tighties. Dude, we know exactly what you are: an incel who will never know the touch of a woman. I wasn’t lying when I told him that.
Angela then tells Incel-Irving that he is making her money every single time he engages with us. Which is the irony of all of this. The man-child thinks he is getting under her skin, when in reality he is showing everybody what an incel loser he is. I wasn’t lying when I said he gives off small penis energy, because he obviously is very insecure about his looks and his inability to score a goth woman. Poor little fella, literally.
The comments above are a little out of order because Incel Irving deleted some of his posts. I don’t think he expected other women to come in and tell him off Surprise!!! He tried putting Angela down by saying that she probably doesn’t make a lot of money being a bartender, while she isn’t a bartender. Proof the idiot hasn’t a clue as to what he is talking about. Angela is right, the guy is probably going to end up losing his legs from diabetes because he drinks bottles of Mountain Dew while sitting in his mother’s basement. He also deleted comments that said that both I and the other woman defending Angela are both men white knighting for her, and that we weren’t going to get to fuck her. Seriously, the idiot mentioned this multiple times. Since he thought we were men he was angry that we were defending her instead of him. Poor thing!
We then proceed to make fun of the guy for his huge mistake and that is that. As of this morning on October the 9th he has not replied and is probably on another site somewhere bitching to other incels about goth women. Off we go to the next loser.
This complete douche canoe thinks it is flattering to be made into a sex object because that is what a ‘romantic goth’ is all about. According to him being a ‘romantic goth’ means you are into romance and that leads to sex. I am not even joking. Not only does this idiot think that sexual harassing goths is okay, he also doesn’t know what the goth subculture is about. Go figure. It’s like this dude got his information from the back of a box of Count Chocula. Angela’s video pissed him off so much that he rage types in caps telling her that she needs to get some self respect and that she isn’t a goth. These little boys always come in with the insults, throwing them about hoping one will stick: such as ‘how dare you not want to fuck me, that means you aren’t a real goth because real goth women would love to get attention from me.’
Angela is correct the people that sexualize goth women are almost always men, because they think that they deserve a goth woman’s attention. What he doesn’t realize is that he has nothing to attract a goth woman. He is an insecure little boy who thinks he knows everything about the goth subculture. He then tries to insult Angela by saying that she probably listens to My Chemical Romance. Proof that he is failing about like a toddler throwing Cheerios everywhere from his highchair. They all end up doing this, it’s textbook.
After insulting him by saying that he will never know the touch of a woman he then proceeds to tell me that I will never know the touch of a ‘real man’. Wahahaha! We all ask him what a ‘real man’ is but he ignores us, and then proceeds to call Angela gorgeous and asks her if she believes in love. I’m not joking, this idiot thinks that all of his insults will make Angela attracted to him? I forgot, he thinks that goth women are submissive and will put up with any sexually tinged insult that comes at them. Fuck off with that nonsense!
I feel that the rise of this sort of behavior towards goth woman is heading into dangerous territory. With that being the case I think it is very important for goth women to support one another when this kind of crap happens online and in person. Every single time I see this kind of thing happen to a goth woman online I jump in because how can I not? I would be a coward if I didn’t help out and that is not the kind of person I am. Listening to The Dead Kennedys for a few decades has primed me to do this. If there is one thing that the punk subculture has taught me over the years is that having somebody’s back in a situation like this is very important. Angela clearly understands this and talks about it in the video. As goth women we needs to stick together.
So, if you are goth and you see this kind of shit taking place online jump in and help. It is not enough to be passive aggressive and shit talk behind backs. If you witness this happening in person also jump in because if you don’t the creep is going to keep thinking that they can easily get away with this crap. They need to be shown proof that their actions are unwanted, Use your streetsmarts and act accordingly. Stay safe out there.
I first heard about this a few days ago but this article really lays it all out, and I must say that I find this disturbing. As a huge fan of dystopian and post-apocalyptic media I automatically know that this type of ‘city’ never works out and always ends in tears. For whatever reason these Silicon Valley uber wealthy nerds think their idea is original. The above photo is from the film Logan’s Run which was made almost 50 years ago if that tells you anything.
This has been done by the Flannery Group who have quietly purchased 55,000 acres of farmland in Solano County in the San Francisco Bay Area. They are funded by various Silicon Valley wealthy investors, because of course they are. The American government has to know all about this because the land surrounds Travis Air Force Base. Since that government is run by the wealthy for the wealthy this doesn’t come as too much of a shock.
They say that this city will have thousands of new homes, clean transportation and orchards with millions of new trees. There will also be thousands of acres of open spaces and parks for the wealthy to enjoy. There is no way in hell that this is intended for people such as you and I. Make no mistake, this is intended as a ‘safe’ place for the wealthy as the environmental collapse worsens in the coming decades.
One of the things that really, really disturbs me about all of this is that where the hell are all of the workers serving these wealthy assholes going to live? Will they have to live in one room tenements in huge apartment blocks inside the walls or outside the walls? Will they have to wait in line twice a day to be bussed in and out? It just feels gross and classist as hell because you know that they will not have the same living standards as the wealthy.
This whole situation reminds me of the film The Land Of The Dead, in which the wealthy have their own walled off area away from the zombies. They have their own stores and they eat the best food as people outside the walls struggle just to survive. Eventually the walls are breached and their social experiment fails. Historically this always happens when the rich try to isolate themselves from everybody else. People living outside the walls will always breach them when they are hungry and don’t have food to feed their children. Maybe this is why they bought the land around the base; they expect the US military to protect them and their way of life.
Do I think that they will actually build it? I can’t imagine that the locals are happy about this, so I can’t see this being easily done. I think the only way that they are going to be able to build this is if they have direct deals with the U. S. federal government. Maybe they will promise homes for politicians in exchange for help in passing laws? Whatever the outcome this is just another case of the wealthy throwing money at an issue; building an environmentally sound city instead of actually trying to stop climate change from happening.
I think the last time I celebrated the 4th of July was in the late 80’s when I was a teen, and even back then I knew what was up; the racist Reagan administration sucked and there was nothing to truly celebrate. As of right now the Supreme Court has struck down a law concerning Affirmative Action and is now allowing businesses to discriminate against others for any reason they wish. They don’t like the colour of your skin? They can refuse to serve you now. The United States is very quickly becoming a true fascist state and I for one never want to go there again. FUCK THE USA!!!!!
This has got to be one of the most epic ‘fucked around and found out’ chain of events I have ever witnessed online, so I thought I would share since sharing is caring.
Amy Lionheart is a gamer and goth who posts videos of her playing Soul Caliber, among other games, over on YouTube. I only knew about her because she is one of the people who came after me for attacking Madi Danger for having white nationalist beliefs. What is important to note is that Amy is a person of colour who is proud of her Puerto Rican heritage. Yet, she sure loves aligning herself with far right wing racist individuals.
I actually cackled when I read the above interaction. She claims that she doesn’t like both parties, but that lie is exposed when somebody presents her with a screenshot that they took of her liking and following Libs Of TikTok. Libs Of TikTok is a right wing account that mocks the LGBTQ+ community and they spread misinformation and hate about them. The bitch forgot that her likes and follows are public; she isn’t the brightest crayon in the box. Oh…it gets better.
Yep, Amy liked and followed Tim Pool. I think any pretense that she has for claiming that she doesn’t like both sides is pretty much dead and buried at this point. I swear, every single time somebody claims that they dislike both sides they end up being exposed as a right wing moron. This isn’t any different. She is fulfilling the time honored tradition of fucking around and finding out.
So, she thinks people are behaving like ‘fascists’ for calling out right wing bullshit? Really shows you what side of the aisle she is really on. Bitch, you liked and follow Tim Pool so your actual love of fascism is showing. Oops.
After all of this she decided that it would be a great idea to write a really long tweet defending herself. Get the popcorn ready because this is going to be fun.
So she is claiming that she is basically gifting us her presence? Awww….what a sweet thing for her to do.
Being civil to one another does not include liking others who want the LGBTQ+ community to disappear. Sorry to tell you that but your hypocritical ‘takes’ are directly harming people in the gaming community. Supporting far right ideologies in not a valid opinion, rather it is pure hate. A valid opinion doesn’t include anything that might outright harm others.
My favourite part of the screenshot is when she admits to not voting because she feels it doesn’t matter. This kind of crap is the reason why Trump got elected and why so many states are now passing anti-LGBTQ+ laws. Please don’t think that voting doesn’t matter, because it will always matter.
This bitch is a bit dim to be jumping to these conclusions. She claims to be all of these ‘pro’ things yet likes Tim Pool and Libs Of Tik Tok? She doesn’t understand why it’s okay to be left leaning and not conservative in the gaming community. Hon, it’s because the majority of conservatives right now follow belief systems that want to see the basic human rights of the LGBTQ+ community vanished. That is why conservatives are not being tolerated. This just proves how far down the right wing rabbit hole she is hiding in. This chick ain’t coming out of it because she has pretty much been fully indoctrinated into a harmful belief system.
Some people would say that none of this is true because she is a person of colour. Enrique Tarrio, the now convicted leader of The Proud Boys, identifies as being Afro-Cuban, so that argument has flown right out the window. In fact here is an article from the site Axios which explains the rise of white nationalist Hispanics. Way back over thirty years ago I knew a guy who was half Filipino who turned into a WAR (white aryan resistance) skin overnight. Self hate is a real thing and it’s tragic as hell.
If you don’t have a problem with anybody based on their sexuality, identity, ethnicity, race or religious views then why are you liking and following Tim Pool and Libs Of TikTok, both of whom speak out against all of it? In reality she obviously takes issue with all of those things. She actively likes others with far right extremist views so her words are devoid of any sort of meaning. I can’t take this bitch at all seriously, mainly because actions speak far louder than words, and her actions are very problematic. People who are for the human rights of others are not going to be following Tim Pool or any of his ilk.
She is taking a break from Twitter? I would really be surprised if she comes back using the same name. She will probably change her name in hopes that people won’t find out who she really is. She has fucked around and is now finding out, and that can only be a good thing as far as I’m concerned.
EDIT: It is now May 12th and Amy in her infinite wisdom has blocked me on Twitter. These types always do this sort of thing because they are cowards.
Wednesday, the latest image that the goth grifter is poaching.
I can hear you asking, what is a goth grifter? To put it simply it is somebody using the goth subculture in order to make money, receive free gifts, or to gain popularity in ‘alternative’ subculture circles in general. Through my years of listening to goth and punk music and participating in various ‘scenes’ I have seen my fair share of them so it is fairly easy for me to root them out. All of the information included in this article is public and quite easy to find so I didn’t have to dig far to get any of it.
One year ago Madi Danger thought that all post-punk music was goth, as evidenced above. EDIT: As of 15/01 she has taken down my comment. Too late Madi, too late!!!!!
The most recent really obvious case that has totally jump started me into finally writing about this is the mysterious appearance of the self proclaimed metal and goth music lover Madi Danger. I first saw her on YouTube last year when she made a ‘intro to goth music’ video that misrepresented Echo &The Bunnymen and Joy Division both as goth bands. I corrected her just on the Bunnymen inclusion, because I didn’t feel like being called a gatekeeper. She came back with the whole ‘post-punk is a genre under the goth umbrella’ fallacy. I automatically thought that she must be really young to think that since it is surface level misinformation. Somebody older and wiser would know differently. Well, guess what? Imagine my surprise when I found out that she was twenty-four years old when she wrote the above misinformation.
The question that immediately comes to my mind is why would a fully grown ass woman in her mid-twenties suddenly hitch her trailer to the goth subculture? She obviously knows a whole lot about metal music and is a big fan of that genre. Yet, she all of a sudden likes goth and wants to share her surface level knowledge of it with everybody? It just really feels inauthentic, like she is hitching her identity now to ‘goth’ because it is what is very popular. She has the teased hair, the clothes, and all of the frippery, but it’s just really a shell that is easily cracked. She is using goth as an additive to her already metal identity, to gain more attention and more of a following. You know what? I wouldn’t hold anything against her at all if she was a youngster, but she is now twenty-six years old. This is a grift for subculture clout, and a painfully obvious one at that.
They quite frequently will call themselves a ‘trad goth’, which always makes me roll my eyes.
The next kind of goth grifter that I have run into a lot online are the ones who call themselves ‘trad goth’. They think that calling themselves such will gain them more goth community clout since the goth grifter feels that anything out of the 80’s is cool. They copy what they think the 80’s were like, but since they weren’t even born in that decade it just comes across as really shallow and reeks of desperation. They want what the 80’s produced, such as goth music, without any of the hardships that the people who actually went through that decade lived through. It’s the exact same crap as the wannabe hippies of the late 80’s; people longing for a decade, which in reality, they probably would not have fit into.
They link to an Amazon wish-list, because of course they do.
The goth grifter doesn’t really have any shame and will usually openly advertise their Amazon wish-list as the person above has done. They do this, of course, to receive free products. My huge question about this is why the heck do they think that they deserve free merch from complete strangers? What are they producing that is so damn special that they think that they deserve these goods? It takes some ego to think that their contribution to the goth subculture is that important and that worthy of attention, when in fact the information they share is usually limited and based off of misinformation. So instead of helping the subculture they hinder it, because all of the youngsters who follow these grifters head down the same path of outright lies and half truths. It’s a goth circle jerk.
Your ‘goth queen’? Oh FFS.
I feel kind of bad for calling out this particular person in the last three photos but they embody so perfectly the point I am making. I have been running this blog as a hobby for over two years now and never once did I think that it would be okay for me to throw up an Amazon wish-list so that I could get free crap. In fact I do not make a dime at all from doing any of this. I do this because I love both the goth and punk subcultures and want to share real information, not half truths and lies that I have pulled out of my ass. I was actually a teen in the 80’s who lived through that decade not somebody playing 80’s dress-up for cash and prizes.
Because of the mainstream popularity of the series Wednesday you now have numerous goth grifters who think that dressing in black and copying a dance makes them automatically a goth. It reminds me of when Mansonites in the 90’s did the same exact crap; copying an image that they think gives them an entryway into the goth subculture, when in reality the opposite is true. When people try so hard to match an image is just reeks of desperation. How is any of this different from the endless grifting that the Kardashians do on social media? It’s done for the exact same reason; to be popular despite not having a discernable talent. Oh wow, you can buy some black clothes online and do over the top ‘goth’ make-up. In the words of Teddy Roosevelt; bully for you. You don’t deserve special treatment for it, or over the top praise for doing what thousands have done before you.
What is the best thing you can do? Not give money or gifts to any of these goth grifters. Within a few years they will more than likely drop out of the subculture and pivot to another grift. Remember Sebastian Columbine? No? My point exactly.
At first I thought I was seeing things, but they are indeed doing this.
This has always been a topic that has stirred controversy; companies charging more for plus sized clothing. So much so that most clothing companies have stopped doing this due to pressure from the general public. Since this is the case why the heck does Hot Topic think that this is a great idea? I’m guessing that they are counting on people not noticing. Surprise, I have!
Pretty recently Hot Topic have decided to start selling ‘goth’ looking clothes once again. Quite honestly the pieces actually look better, and cost less, than the dreck that Killstar is pushing these days. So, please don’t think I am bashing Hot Topic when it comes to that. In fact I recently bought a very cool Misfits hoodie from them and it is of very good quality and I love it. The reason they are doing this is because they saw goth becoming a huge trend once again and wanted some of that cash. To think otherwise is just being very naive.
Two more examples.
As per the photo above you can see that they are not doing this with every single piece; the two not highlighted are the same price. Why not just spread the cost between the two versions instead of punishing plus sized people by charging more for a slightly different size? This, quite honestly, reeks of trying to make more money off of plus sized people since Hot Topic knows that it is more difficult for them to find alternative type clothing that fits.
It’s kind of funny that the plus sized skirt is actually cheaper right here on sale. However, the regular price is still more.
I don’t see them changing their ways unless enough people start yelling at them about it. It is very important to stand up and make your voice heard in these types of situations, because sitting on your hands and doing nothing does not create change.
The above ‘thing’ is what happens when you don’t gatekeep the goth subculture.
For the last couple of days I have been going back and forth in my head trying to figure out whether or not I should make a post about all of this. Why? Because my first husband, just like Jake, was a verbally and emotionally abusive piece of shit. So, I have been through exactly what Jake’s abuse victim, YouTuber Toxic Tears (aka Kaya), has been through. Being abused never completely leaves you and is something you have to deal with for the rest of your life. Personally, I have worked through that trauma pretty much on my own and I made it through the other end reasonably intact. However, seeing a younger woman going through the exact same crap publicly really breaks my heart and I feel like I have to speak up to not only support her but to warn others not to fall for the same shit.
Who, or what, is Jake Munro? He is an infamous thirty-one year old poseur goth YouTuber who has openly admitted to hating goth music and the subculture, but tags himself as goth in just about every video he makes. He is basically a clout chaser trying to make money off of the subculture. That’s it. I am not going to link any of his videos from this blog because I don’t want to give him views from here. You can easily find all of the crap I am talking about via Google and YouTube so what I am saying isn’t a secret at all.
For over ten years he dated another YouTuber named Toxic Tears, who is actually a goth. His channel only gained traction because of her linking his videos to her audience. In other words he used his girlfriend to jump-start his own ‘career’. He cheated on her multiple times over the years and openly flirted with underage girls while around her. So to say this dude is a creep would be a huge understatement. Some skanky bitch, who was married and has a 4 year old child, cheated on her husband with him and they are now a couple. Toxic Tears and him broke up about a year ago…but it was anything but normal.
Dearest little Jake literally threw her out of the place they shared and she was made to stay in an unheated workshop room. He had isolated her from her friends and made her be financially dependent on him, which is one of the HUGE things that abusers like him do. She eventually landed back on her feet, got a new place to stay and was starting to work on picking up the pieces of her shattered life. For about a year she was finding her freedom and healing from the abuse, then out of nowhere a few days back he makes a two hour video claiming that he is the victim and that she never respected him or appreciated all of the money and presents he gave her. Seriously. I guess he expected everybody to praise him and to feel sorry for him. It backfired. He expected her to cower, but instead she made her own three hour response in which she describes all of the abuse she went through and how absolutely horrible he was to her over the years.
Her three hour response. Please do not watch if you are triggered by talk of abuse. EDIT:This video has been ‘age restricted’ as of 3/12/22.
It took so much courage for her to do this and I really respect her for putting herself out there and for telling the truth as to how things went down between the two of them. However, it really pisses me off that she had to do this in the first place. Jake is such a fucking rabid abuser that he thought that he could still control her over a year later. He is nothing but a narcissistic immature asshole who looks like a cracked out version of Marilyn Manson, who also just happens to be an abusive asshole. Birds of a feather. Learning that he is insecure about the size of his penis and about his short height makes perfect sense. Awwwww…….the poor little guy. Literally.
So, what can we learn from all of this? That the goth subculture needs to be policing itself way more actively than it is doing right now. Abusive poseurs like Jake Munro should not be welcomed into the subculture with open arms, they should instead be kicked to the curb. Fuck Jake Munro and fuck you if you support his abusive bullshit.
Sexual predators, wannabe goth bands and shit nu metal…oh my!
Before I start I would like to state for the record that I do actually like some of the bands featured above; Killing Joke, Body Count and some others. However, it’s on another continent than me and I tend not to go to shows where known sexual predator musicians are being featured. Just wanted to get that out there in case somebody thinks I’m being hypocritical about all of this.
Anyways! There sure seems to be a lot of new ‘alternative’ type festivals going on these days, mostly put together by the mainstream music industry. The above band line-up is so chaotic that it feels like they put a bunch of alternative band names in a hat and picked them out randomly. There is a whole lot of ‘I remember this band being edgy in the 90’s’ vibe going on here. Nevermind the fact that general admission tickets start out at $250.00. That is an insane price to pay for a one day event. It’s obvious that it is all about the Benjamins and not the actual music. Remember, all of the kids want to be goths or alternative these days so the people who put this together are counting on that to make a pile of cash.
EDIT: Just found out that it is being put on by Live Nation. No surprise there folks. They want your hard earned cash, and if women get sexually assaulted by musicians performing there so be it.
Screenshot I took of when post punk dot com featured the band a little while back. They only took it down when a bunch of people, including myself, complained. They can never deny that it happened.
There is one more thing even more messed up than all of the stuff I have already mentioned; they put known sexual predators She Wants Revenge on the bill. This article by The Los Angeles Times is the most complete as to detailing what went down exactly at the club Cloak & Dagger, a space both members of the band ran until it was shut down due to public pressure in 2021. They broke up for a time, but are now back together being covered by such problematic websites as post punk dot com. I’m guessing they handed the site a huge wad of cash to feature them, since that is what they do to the majority of the bands featured on their site. I guess money is more important than protecting the lives of women. Go figure.
The only way that any of these mainstream produced festivals are going to change is if people stop going to them. Cruel World featured Morrissey, a racist windbag. This one features She Wants Revenge, a pair of sexual predators. People will crow online all about how black lives matter and how woman should be treated with respect, but will turn around and go see bands who are the antithesis of what they claim to believe.
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.
