SIXTH GRADE VISUAL ARTS I.Art History: Periods & Schools B. GOTHIC ART.
Gothic History - Volume One
Transcript of Gothic History - Volume One
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Abbo
Adam + The Antz
Alien Sex Fiend
All About Eve
Anno Lucis
Ausgang
Bauhaus
Beef
Big Black
Big Stick
Johnny BivouacPhillip Boa
Bod
Brigandage
Chat Show
Christian Death
CNN
Cravats
Creaming Jesus
The Cult
Daisy Chainsaw
Dancing Did
The Dark
D-T-B
Diskord Datkord
Electric Dog Sex
Four Came Home
Gitane DemoneGloria Mundi
God’s Girlfriend
Grebo debate
Head Of David
Inca Babies
Jazz Butcher
Junior Manson Slags
King Blank
Kommunity FK
Martian Dance
New Model Army
Panic Button
Pauline Murray
Playground
Ritual
Sex Gang Children
Sunshot
Tones On Tail
ToyahUltravox
Venus Flytrap
Very Things
Virgin Prunes
Witches Of Nemesis
Xmal
Zodiac Motel
GOTHIC H ISTORYThe Goth writings of Mick Mercer
Volume 1
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ABBOABBO INTERVIEW
Ha! At last I trick the girl called Joan into doing an
interview for Panache after the gone but not forgotten
DAF interview of a few issues ago, which didn’t really
count because it was only about five minutes and two
paragraphs long.
As per usual she was hoping I’d forget all about it and
was horrified when I arranged it with Abbo in her
presence. Gradually the realisation hit her. She began
thinking up questions. Two days before the interview
she’d thought up three. In fact she’d even worked outhow the interview would go. (Just like this.)
Joan: Hello Abbo, I like you records.
Abbo: That’s very kind of you to say so.
Joan: Not at all.
END OF CONVERSATION.
Personally I thought it would be more muddled.
Joan: Hello Abbo, I hear you like my records?
Abbo: not at all.
Joan: That’s very kind of you to say so.
END OF PRE-INTERVIEW WOFFLE.I wasn’t even allowed in the flat whilst the interview was
Going on and spent the early evening- avoiding the flea-
infested cat in Johnny Waller’s flat .Then I walked back
and got a bit lost, arriving at Joan’s in a bit of a mess. It
was pretty hot after all. Later I finally wrested the tape
from Joan’s grasp and this is what I heard.
Joan: I mean, do you wanna do this interview?
Abbo: Yeah I do.
Joan: But why? It just seems so pointless, someone you
don’t know comes along and
dominates your life for two hours and then they just go
away. Wouldn’t you rather just go and read a book or
something?
Abbo: No, cos I can go and read a book anytime.
Joan: No you can’t! No you can’t! There’s never ever
enough time to read.
Abbo: It’s challenging.
Joan: Challenging??!!??
Abbo: Yeah, even polite conversation is challenging
Joan: But don’t you get bored saying the same things all
the time?
Abbo: I don’t say the same things all the time. I often saydifferent things.
Joan: But most people just do interviews when they’ve
got a tour coming or an album out, and they go trough
the motions.
Abbo: But they are just standard rock type interviews,
which is why we won’t do them, because they ask the
same questions. I mean, take Wasted Youth, they did
about one a month just to get their mug shots in the
papers to keep some continuity going. In the meantime
they’ve only released two or three singles and they just
say the same thing every time.
Joan: That’s why I get so bored.Abbo: Yeah well that’s how the music biz expect you to
use it. If you’re not in the
papers every couple of weeks, or even every week,
which is why they take on publicity people; they go out
and buy a drink and give the journalists a bullshit story.
We don’t want to be part of it which is why we don’t do
those
sort of interviews. Only ever done two with Sounds,
both with Steve Keaton. Never touched NME or the
others.
Joan: So you just do fanzines then?
Abbo: Yeah. Mick once said ‘UK Decay in every bloody
fanzine’; it wasn’t just us going to them, it was them
coming to us. We did go through them all at one stage.
Joan: I thought fanzines always went to the bands.
Abbo: Yeah, they do but some of them might send you a
letter and say are you gonna contribute something
towards it and bands think yeah, we will do but they just
keep putting it off and it never happens. They need
really hassling, it’s only when someone comes and puts
a microphone under their gob.
Joan: Do you ever...what you looking at?
Abbo (his eyes wandering to a book cover):
‘Persuasion’, it’s alright, I thought it said ‘Jerusalem’
(Strange man that he is!)Joan (Pointing to a picture of an old man with a beard):
And in case you’re gonna ask I’m not a Catholic, that’s
just for sentimental reasons.
UK Decay - ZigZag Club
interviewed by Joan for Panache
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Hampstead, 1980
abbo - uk decay- Grandfather of UK Goth -
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‘And there comes no answer in arch or dome. For nonein the city of graves goes home.’
Chesterton, you know. Chesterton. Blunt and to the
point, as puddle trotters will surely testify. There are
thousands of us who can never go home. We live upon
this planet, in these crumbling cities, with a knowledge of
where we belong and where we would like to be; these
translucent longings always cruelly rebuffed by the
reality of a world which drags hope down.
As we live out our small, measured existence beneath
grime and chimneys, alongside ne’er-do-wells and
dereliction of all duties, bands like Alien Sex Fiend call
out where only characters in the Janus Stark mould can
help, and yet never cope.
It is for bands like this that we reserve our night-time
thrills, and bands like this who drive out the chill. It
cannot be encapsulated in mere paragraphs, it requires
pages and goes back a good few years, but bands like
this are morphine for a pain-wracked body, and a
wounded pride. It doesn’t matter who sneer or deride. It
matters only to those who appreciate.
Bands like Alien Sex Fiend are essential, their spirittranscending mere music at times while also hopping
about for cursory entertainment if the mood shifts on its
axis.
I gratefully receive tea from the Fiends in their Palmers
Green flat, wondering whether Johnny Ha Ha (drums) or
Yaxi (guitar) will actually appear from their strange
mission down the Portobello Road.
As it turns out, they don’t, and only vocalist Nik Fiend
and Chris Fiend (synths) are present and correct before
the recorder, glaring and staring, perplexed, at a Soundsalbum review, which has called them, in large print,
‘BRAINLESS’.
When Chris nips out to skip from shop to shop, Nik
unloads a scary tale of pre-Fiend employment. Stay with
it because this leads into something bigger.
Forced at knifepoint to get into the back of his TV
delivery van, Nik was tied up and then driven to a
desolate area where he was blindfolded and thrown into
a little hut having been soundly kicked around.
“They were asking me the prices of the stuff and beinggenerally nasty, proving that they were men. They
starting banging my legs with spanners demanding I co-
operate, but I was co-operating.
“When you do a job delivering things you don’t think
how many thousands’ pounds worth you’ve got there,
you just think, Shit, I’ve got to carry THIS! They gagged
me and left me for two hours. I couldn’t see anything and
I just watched my whole life go past in front of me. For
the last hour they held me captive, covered me with a wet
diesel rag. They were outside deciding whether they’d
dump me in a car somewhere or set fire to me.
“The older bloke there said, ‘No, he’s no bother, we’ll
dump somewhere’, and I thought, ‘What? Dump me in
the river in the bloody van or something, because I
ALIEN SEX FIENDALIEN SEX FIENDALIEN SEX FIENDALIEN SEX FIENDALIEN SEX FIEND- circa ‘Who’s Been Sleeping In My Brain?’
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“I quit, and that’s why I put everything into this band.
That and two years before, my sister and the baby she’s
just had got run over by an artic lorry and crushed, so I
figure, mentally, that’s what pushed me over the top.
“I don’t consider what I do is contrived. I think what I do
is emotional. I think people who have had some bad
times can see it in us, and I think that’s why it’s pretty
violent sometimes. You go onstage and just reflectwhat’s happened to you.
“There’s no way it’s false The make-up is put on, I’ll
admit that. The make-up isn’t really ME, but I see it as
we’re trying to do an ‘Evil Dead’ type thing onstage
where it’s a dream and you get involved with it.
“It’s like somebody having a bad time among these
nightmares, and everyone has nightmares. It’s just an
escape and there’s lots of little doors in the songs.”
Chris is back now, having made a total cock-up with theshopping, to find Nik pressing newspapers and cards
onto me, souvenirs from the recent (successful) Fiend
trip to the States.
In about a year the Fiend catalogue has grown from an
initial demo to include a tape available through
R.O.Records, two singles, an album and a video, and all
of this because of a mystery man, an enigmatic creature
who none would suspect.
A man they call The Prof, believed to be lurking
somewhere in the drains beneath the Melody Maker
office, reviewed their tape, leaving his judgement openwith a crafty, “a cult following is assured”.
This brought the band to the attention of Ollie Specimen
who promptly threw them on at The Batcave...and it all
went on from there.
Bands like The Fiends were recently castigated by the
laughable Nick Heyward. “Arty students,” he said, with
that smear of a mouth.
“I enjoy doing art,.” confesses Nik happily. “My way. I
don’t consider myself better than anyone else. If we’rearty then I prefer hanging around with people who are
into drawing and films.
“We’re not artsy-fartsy. I used to drive a truck and carry
cement on me back and I don’t consider that arty. Like
the muslin (the onstage scenic effects the Fiends carry
with them to gigs), it’s something we want to create, like
taking your little home around with you, to make the
stage yours.
“That’s all we do, it’s not arty. If our songs are about
nightmares and darker aspects, not Aleister Crowley and
all that, which people aren’t always so personal about,
then the music has to be wild and we do the best we can
for the money.
watch too much tv, and I was hoping it wasn’t going to
be the worst.
“In the end they drove the van to Victoria and left me. I
didn’t move for an hour in case they were still around
and then I shouted for help and this woman walking her
dog, which had stopped for a crap, heard me.
“Next thing, there’s all these sirens and the fire brigade
cut me out. I was bleeding all over the place. They
loaded me onto a stretcher and then the police came
along and dragged me off and interrogated me for four
hours at the police station, until I collapsed with shock.
It was just like in “The Sweeney’ where one, then two,
come in and have a go at you.
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form of Australian guitarist Marty Wilson Piper,
longstanding Church maestro, a man who not only
sprang to their aid, but would brook no nonsense.
Together they have just made some of the mostshockingly original music available to ears this year.
Suspicious of any developments after the abattoir that
was “Scarlet & Other Stories”, that most delightful of
‘difficult’ albums, I greeted the release of “Goodbye Mr
Sorrow”, at best a more strident version of their rockier
pop side, presumed lost three years back, with a breezy
cynicism, but the b-side, “Elizabeth Of Glass”, emerged
as a finely wrought mood piece; a poignant modern
marriage of dispersed technology and brain-scanned
emotional draughts. Doubts were dispelled.
Rumours abounding that the album is even stronger, Iwent in search of their much vaunted ‘darker side’ and I
am not disappointed. Several crates of crack ampules
have clearly been moved elsewhere shortly before my
arrival at an exceedingly normal flat in North London,
where Andy Cousin and Mark Price, less recognisable in
their stocking masks, appear fiendishly cheerful. Julianne
Fagin busies herself in Hell’s Kitchen, over ‘tea’, ‘coffee’
and kalashnikovs (available for hire by the hour). Women
of the night in the attic are forced into a feeble
impersonation of pigeons, lest they give the game away.
The atmosphere positively crackles with evil.
Public Enemies Numbers One to Three play me short
excerpts from the new album, provisionally titled “Dust”,
and, passing over one inoffensively dancey item, this
heralds a completely new avenue for them to strut down.
“Ravens” and “Touched By Jesus” will singe all
prejudices; hubritic slabs of majestic turmoil so good I
cannot see the necessity for “Goodbye Mr Sorrow”, but
it is easily explained.
“We had to bring out a song that would get on the radio,
otherwise we were buggered, basically,” Julianne shrugs.
“It would mean later on we could bring out more
interesting tracks. It’s a shame to have to play safe but
when you’ve been away a long time we’ve kind of had
to.
“We knew when we’d written it that it had a purpose,
because its working title was “Here You Are, Mr A & R”,
and that just says it all, but that was after we wrote it and
not before. The charts are so weird at the moment. If
something like that foul Crystal Waters song can get toNumber One, and Colour Me Badd, then that,” she
shrieks, pointing at the comeback sleeve, “is High Art!”
Hard-core indie afficiandos could appreciate this
material.
“I think they will,” she affirms. “It’s getting them to hear
it, and that’s what all this negative image thing is all
about, because of the way we’ve been perceived,
because of our association with The Mission in the early
days and the flirtations with...well we were Goths in 1984/
1985, five, six years on? That’s not really what’s it all
about. I don’t believe in that anymore, I don’t go and see
those bands...I don’t like those bands. If Fields Of The
Nephilim and Ride are playing the same night there’d be
no competition, it’s ridiculous. I’m a fan of Ride actually.”
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It’s the way she says this.
“I really like them,” she gushes, with a jolly squirm and a
sense of awed pride, as Mark prepares her medication.
“If people think we are a bunch of fey Hippies making
folk-tinged rock then we’re not really going to make
much headway. I wish we could play less safe, and the
next single is a safe one as well, because we’ve got to tryand get some Americans into us. So if we can somehow
convince people the album is worth waiting for, then
we’ll have achieved a goal, but it’s not really by releasing
these singles.”
This reliance on singles seems odd. Hadn’t Phonogram
consigned them to Album Band territory?
Julianne: “No, if they’d said, ‘Okay, you’re an album
band’, we’d have disappeared up our backsides and
made an album even more difficult than the second one
but in a way, thankfully, they didn’t write us off. Theyhave this idea that we could be one of the biggest acts
on the roster, or whatever....or we could be dropped, in
the next batch of droppings, I suppose.”
What unhygienic lives these pop bands lead! With that
second album All About Eve found themselves at the
cutting edge of Hippy Crap, popularising a form of
sleeping sickness. The night before the interview saw me
approaching the task that could not be put off any
longer. With a psychiatrist standing by I listened to
“Scarlet”, actually nodding off during that benchmark of
sterility, the blockbusting adventure of blues legend
Blind Lemon Curd. This is where they reached rock bottom, f**ked to their very foundations
“Can you imagine what a sad and pathetic situation we
were in when we thought that was exciting?” Julianne
whimpers.
“/ didn’t think it were exciting!” Mark retorts, hotly.
“No, / didn’t!” Andy agrees, indignant.
“That was mine and Tim’s fault completely,” Julianne
murmurs. “Tim turned into Paul Kossoff, and I was, ‘ohyes Tim, that’s really nice’, being the supportive ‘chick’,
and there’s these two tearing their hair out...and there’s
this crap hierarchy of Couple In Band, doing their own
thing without regard for their buddies, so it was a
completely unfair system that results in this mismatched
mish-mash of things happening at the end of it.”
“Do you remember the idea for the ‘Evergreen’ video?”
Mark asks, adding fuel to the fire. Julianne shakes her
head, intrigued. “Dressing up as old people,” he recalls.
“I’m sorry....I’m SORRY,” she wails, finally lifting her
head to announce, “haunted by your mistakes! I think
we thought we were fifty when we did that album, Val
Doonican could have guested. At the time I believed in it
but I was only deluding myself. I can only be
embarrassed in retrospect.”
And in retrospect is there anything good about a
relationship occurring within a band?
“Fuck all!”
TRANSITION can be a painful business. (Ask Dr Jeykll.)
Alongside “the humour in our work is often overlooked”(Ian Curtis) the other grand cliché is a band’s avowed
disinterest in their previous, presumably ridiculed, album,
dismissed with, “we never listen to that now”, but here
we can well believe it, and rejoice in the fact. With anger
shattering the reverie, All About Eve now juggle fear
with fun - deep, very dark, and breathtaking. A
commercially attuned Pixies couldn’t have done better.
“When I listen to it I wish there was even more things
like “Touched By Jesus” on it,” sighs Julianne, “because
we were being a bit tentative about this, we wanted to be
brave in small doses, which isn’t ‘brave’ I suppose. Inareas of this we’re incredibly courageous for us, but it
just makes me think the fourth album will be even more
off-the-wall, hopefully.”
Stillness counts for nought these days. There are
jackasses and whippersnappers demanding action.
Justify this to them.
“I think Ride fans would get out of us a lot of what they
get out of Ride. We’re more controlled. Ride are wild and
abandoned but I think they’ve got great melodies. On
this album there are moments where we let go. It’s not all
pristine, it is noisy in places. And it is to do with Martycoming along with his Vox and Rickenbacker, a very hip
combination he’s been playing for ten years...you could
almost see the steam coming off it in the rehearsal room.
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ALIEN SEX FIENDHERE CUM GERMSAnagram
Apart from a ponderous “Death” to
sully the sidings, this is another fine
continuation of the Fiend adventure,
of the pioneering spirit, from the creepy baby brother of
‘Pump Up The Volume’ (“Mission impossible”) to themodern day cyanide sandwich of ‘Isolation’ and ‘My
Brain is In The Cupboard’. Let your fingers do…the
strangling.
‘You Are Soul’ is a rush of menace in the ears, a
toothbrush fashioned from barbed wire, but all attention
floods to “Sleeping With My Boots On’ which deserves
the hefty acreage it occupies in closing proceedings.
“Well we’ve had enough of all the shit that you’re
dishing out,” Nik insist inside a bubbling pink sea. “Take
the matter by the throat, sort the busy fucker out”. I
didn’t realise they sang nursery rhymes in Hell. Just goesto show
For lost souls everywhere.(Melody Maker)
BIG STICK: Drag Racing (Recess Records)
WAITING patiently in the drawer, decaying audibly, this
is perfect pop, with its eyes plucked out. No matter how
many times I play it I still can’t believe it exists, still can’t
quite translate the experience. More than the usual
slobber clobber, this one minute and 37 measly seconds
acts as an antidote
to this week’s slop
bucket. The sleeve’s
a disgrace, naturally.
The music is felt,
not detected,
amongst the
carnage and the
images are alien, but
this must be the
most gorgeous item
currently littering
this planet.
“In the summer I
wear my toob-top”
A mad beauty, like Colour Box strung out on strychnine,
their irresistible barbarity and ammo nitrate achieves, with
some epic split seconds, the kind of sexual autopsy report
most art-noise gangs never manage in a lifetime of
wrecked hairstyles and pouting lips. - Lurching vora-
ciously towards your nipples, John Gill (guitar/vocals)
and Yanna Trance (rhythms/vocals) are the Daredevil and
Black Widow of intestinal bleeding.
“. . . and Eddie takes me to the drag strip.”
(Melody Maker Singles)
ANTS/SLITS/SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES - Der Vortex.
So this is The Vortex? It’s certainly a big place: many passages
drifting off into the horizon.
The crowd was naturally packed with well known and not so
well known folk of the New Wave. Mick Jones sat brooding at
a stool, his calm exterior hiding the bristling inner emotions
that few care to understand, and in the quarter of an hour he
was there only a couple of people bothered to talk to him, andeven then his replies seemed a bit minimalist. One of the people
trying to bridge the communication gap with this street
commando was Senso. No nude exhibitionist displays from
tonight Thank God. Gene October (clean shaven) stood around
trying so very hard to avoid attention as he balanced himself
on one finger and juggled pint glasses with his toes. Even Sid
Vicious turned up witb the minimum of splintering craniums,
but when he heard the sound of film clicking into position as
the muzzle of a well worn zenith probed through the barrages
of small females being flung about he sprang to life. ‘NO
*5$£7”!’ he remonstrated. A band member of Reverse stormed
about demanding publicity for him and his Ilford-based band, amember of the now ‘legendary’ Scabs n’ Slime’ paper appeared
but attempts to enter into serious conversation with him
proved futile as he insisted on singing along to every disc
except reggae being played, and after an exceedingly long shot
out ‘London’s Burning’ into my unsuspecting ear, he moved
off to plague someone else. Dee Generate hurtled about,
skittling over unwary drinkers. But what about the music? Well
whilst The Ants did their bit I was stuck at the bar attempting
to enlist the help of some Southern Comfort, but occasional
sounds did drift in from afar, but whenever they started getting
going they slowed everything down to a ridiculous extent and
before I forget, how come just about everyone got a stick of
rock except me? (You’re a turd - ED.)
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More drinks later The Slits appeared and a more provocative
bunch of punktresses couldn’t be wished for. I had my head
crammed down the bass amp and at first heard little else but
some very fine bass. Unfortunately the bassist looked like
Charlie Chaplin, the lead singer came on with hair resembling a
haystack compost heap, the pubes of a dead dinosaur etc, and
wore a dirty raincoat. But beneath this shoddy exterior lay a
lithe, lissom body waiting to gyrate its way into our spermaticchords. When the coat finally came off she was in a tight red t-
shirt, tiny striped pants and a string skirt which hid nothing
and could easily have passed for belt. With this particularly
sexy crotch mere inches away it was hard to concentrate on the
music but on the occasion as when I could tear myself away I
did notice the starkly beautiful drummer savagely assaulting
her drums in a manner that I’ve not seen equalled this year. In
short, she’s a natural and rules the show musically, but she
keeps her clothes on. I couldn’t hear the lead guitarist but I
could see her and a very nice ting-a-linger she was too, but
this s the problem with many bands today , the emphasis is
with the bass, drums, vocals, practically to the exclusion of
guitar work, a great shame. Soon they were off, but the singer
cropped up again attempting to rip a ‘private’s sign off the
wall.
After a surprisingly short period of time Siouxsie and the
Banshees came on, and sitting on the stage I was once again
being brutalised by some good bass playing. The rest is a blur,
because of Siouxsie. What body! Amazing. Those thighs!!
That shapely rear (so much for the music eh, smutty reader?)
She’s one hell of a focal attraction. I noticed she sang in a far
clearer manner than the Slits vocalist but her snatch was
cunningly guarded by a near non-existent black mini dress
which was more like a shadow than an item of clothing, but the
memory of those sensuously moving buttocks still pervades
my mind. Needless to say the music could not compare withher, but part from the bass and a few vocals I could hear
nothing else.
After the gig we stood around till closing time and took
endless shots of (not at) Siouxsie. Later in the streets who
should be pacing up and down but Walter Lure, anxiously
awaiting the arrival (or non-arrival as it turned out) of his taxi. I
asked him about The Htbk’s ‘Eviction’. “Oh, we’ve got to get
out by Wednesday but we’ll be back in a couple of weeks,” he
remarked casually. So why all the fuss in the paper? And when
asked about his plans on his return to America his reply was
‘Relax!’
(Panache 4)
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mover, as is ‘Muscle In Plastic’; a description of their
sound, perhaps? The title track takes us out on a cadaver-
ous slither. In some ways it is typical of a band’s second
album, where the band’s ‘sound’ makes emphatic points
and establishes credentials. To anyone who hears it and
has initial doubts I recommend you give it time, and you’ll
end up more than satisfied.
(ZigZag Nov 1981)
BAUHAUS‘Mask’(Beggars Banquet)After about a dozen
listenings and much
reservation this album
has finally become
lodged in that small
organ they call the brain.Their debut, ‘In The Flat
Field’, was my favourite album of last year and I was
somewhat surprised at this one’s smoother touch. My
initial reactions weren’t too keen I will admit, but with
each playing there appear new touches and a greater
involvement with the songs that make up for the missing
wild ingredient. The album sounds carefully organised
and the attack, whilst being diluted, does burn through in
the end.
‘Passion Of Lovers’ (one that got away, if ever there was
one!) and ‘Kick In The Eye’ you probably already know.The rest was new to me as I keep missing their recent
gigs, and at present I can find no complaints even if it
does verge on perverted disco sometimes. The distinctive
guitar and singing is there, but the rhythms sound solid
yet unbruising. ‘Hair Of The Dog’ makes a convincing
entry, slashing its way in, a greeting with no teeth. ‘Of
Lillies And Remains’ features a nice high pitched guitar
sound, and the Murphy tones bounce along like a
subsiding ‘God In An Alcove’. But my favourite on the
opening side has to be the devilish ‘Hollow Hills’. Slow,
with submarine atmospheres, the chiming lets the vocals
slip in and around. This is eerie Bauhaus at its best. On
the perverted disco theme, ‘In Fear Of Fear’ is a sublime
Bauhaus - Moonlight, 1980
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BEAU (Michael J. Sheehy) Bull & Gate 13.4.1995
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CHRISTIAN DEATHONLY THEATRE OF PAINSuicide Differe No. 1
“SOMETIMES, on a stormy night, while the legions of
winged
octopuses, which from afar look like crows…
Well of course! And that’s only the sleeve notes. This isthe Gothic album to out-Gothic all others. After a fairly
lively debut album, Christian Death have really raided the
crypt and come up with a drooling, vicarious thrill. It’s
brilliant.
In true accordance with anyone over here that’s touted
doomy imagery, lofty deserted castles, forbidden
demonic ceremonies and much slitting of throats, what is
remarkable about Christian Death is that they are
American, where the subject is rarely found, and that
they’ve tried to do the subject matter justice; tying it
round a rather loose theme (‘The Songs Of Moldoror’),At first hearing the link is unnoticeable; but when the
lyrics become digested and the accompanying booklet
comprehensively scanned, the world of horror begins to
make some sense after all.
Like-minded people over here, I would imagine, come
open-mouthed from Sex Gang and Decay territory, even
(gasp!) The Dancing Did, not because of the underworld
tastes but the music, a doubt-banishing zephyr of
unbridled thrust. Take the opening track, which naturally
enough begins with bells chiming hairily in the air,
‘Cavity First Communion’. A crisp drum sets itself and
the song in motion, razor guitars poke their noses in,hustling the song along and then the Master himself,
Rozz Williams, with his unusual pleading voice, takes
over. A tormented man and no mistake. The emotional
sounds halt, regroup and attack once more and this
lively interaction of music and words continues all the
way through to the final ‘Prayer’.
‘Burnt Offerings’ mixes distant chimes with a fraudulent
bass that thrashes wildly in the mix and Rozz again
bursts into action. It wouldn’t matter what the subject
was, this man would still demand attention. In fact, think
not that the music matches the imbecilic notions of Gothic. It’s rarely slow, never repetitive, never less than
intoxicating. A barren wasteland becomes fertile in the
throat of the man that makes Pete Burns look like Jimmy
Pursey.
I wouldn’t like to pick out any particular track, except one
(keep reading) because the whole is so enticing and
rewarding. ‘Mysterium Iniauitatis’ slashes through your
defences, ‘Stairs-Uncertain Journey’ owes a lot, it would
seem, to the early John
Foxx Ultravox, which is no bad thing, and ‘Spiritual
Cramp’ almost reflects the title by sticking out like a sore
thumb, a libellous Pistols base being hacked to pieces by
Rozz and his mouth....
But among all this wide-ranging lyrical imagery of bodies
laid waste and forbidden Satanic debauchery comes a
song called ‘Romeo’s Distress’, and this is something
special because it puts everything into a Williams
context. Ostensibly, an anti-Ku Klux Klan song, it uses
the “white sheet” imagery to include both racist scum
and anyone’s dark thoughts that litter their dreams,
merging all unnatural thoughts and desires into one.
Don’t think that means he’s letting one off the hook bysaying ‘you’re not so bad, I mean look at these guys!’,
he’s busily nailing everyone to the door. In a
Twinkling, all criticism that might have been aimed at the
infatuations prevalent on the album are suddenly seen to
take shape. It’s a rare knack, but Williams obviously has
it.
Funnily enough you know that this ‘Prayer’ is coming at
the very end of the album, but while the closing track,
‘Resurrection-Sixth Communion’, degenerates into
madness with cacophonous drums until a reassuring
synth appears the final prayer gives no clue whatsoever.The bastards have recorded it backwards!
This album succeeds through its music alone, but its
thematic ideas help it stay with you. Most of all there’s
this Rozz Williams: “I sit and hold hands with myself, I sit
and make love to myself, I’ve got blood on my hands,
I’ve got blood on your hands...”
When he dies he’s going to make an unbearable ghost!
(Melody Maker)
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let them talk. Even when they say ‘Oh, I like..that...’
ssssh,sssh, shhhh. Then I hate it I’ve played it so much.
I heard ‘Headrush’ for the first time two days ago since
we first recorded that. When was that?”
Andy: “Two years ago.”
Tally: “Thought, this is fucking brilliant! There’s
also always new songs queueing up to come up. I’mreally bored doing the new album now, just wanna do the
next one. “
Naturally there are still problems. This album is
so majestically different to what people, particularly the
press, would expect, that it would be nice to imagine
people heaping praise upon it, but will people bother
reviewing it in the first place?
Tally: “Bill Friedman and Rhys, this 27 year old
millionaire who owns the studio, they think this is
fucking brilliant and it’s hard to explain to them thatrecord companies don’t want our music because the
profile we’ve got, or the name or whatever, it’s not a very
commercial direction for them to go, because there’s
millions of bands where there’s easier routes for them to
take.
“These people who get signed to Sony and get
all the money - I’d be frightened every time we made an
album in case that was the end of it. I don’t think many
of the big indie labels would touch us as well.
“The band itself, apart from the financial
burdens we’ve got, are fucking happy as fuck.”
That’s obviously a technical term. Did where
you recorded feel like real serial killer territory?
Tally: “Ed Gein country. In the town of Argyle
there was just one mall and we’d walk in every day and
get our food and everyone completely stopped. We’d
load our own bags, which you don’t do in America and
that really freaked them out.
“One night we went to the only restaurant in the
village, walked in and...everything stopped - waiters,plates... staring at us standing in the doorway. Obviously
they were full up that night, we weren’t allowed in.”
What did the average American youth make of
you?
Andy: “Stayed away from us. The only problem
we had was that bat flying round the studio that we
thought was rabid.”
They got quite a buzz from New York, although
feel London’s more violent, but musically?
Tally: “Crap! You’d pack in being a music
journalist if you went there. There’s hundreds of bars in
Greenwich Village. A bit like Camden, every bar is next to
another bar and every bar has got five bands on, and
they’re really really fucking crap.”
Enough of that. Let us root about amidst the
squalor of Andy’s lyrics. He stares at the CD sleeve at
my goading.
Andy: “They’re all pretty negative, looking at them, and
I don’t feel like that all the time! ‘Take A Look Around’was just one person I was so ashamed to be stood next
to, people thinking well you must be like him because
you know him and these are his attitudes and it was
really grating on me so I had to get it out somehow.
“‘River Techa’ is quite a poignant one, about a
nuclear waste dump in the Ural mountains, they just
chuck untreated waste in the river. There’s a sign on this
river saying, ‘Don’t stand on this bridge, you’ll get
radiation’!
Which is the set of the lyrics nobody will everget?
“’Transcendental Maggot’? That’s based upon
that book ‘Geek Love’. Have you read the book? It’s a
circus family and the mother when pregnant takes loads
of drugs to guarantee the children will be deformed, so
they can be circus freaks and they’ll always have a job.
She thinks it’s more of a gift.
Giving them a start in life?
Tally: “My wife has a baby in November and
she’s reading it in the moment and one night shewatched Alien and woke me up, screaming. In Aliens 2,
when she’s laying all the eggs...well there’s Sue, on the
ceiling, laying all these eggs but she’s laying all these
deformed kids in the room!”
Andy: “‘Shape Shifting And Facedancing’,
being brutally honest it’s a list of all the drugs that we
took at Phoenix last year. Superman, penguin and
strawberries, they were all blotters. White Doves was E.”
Tally snorts contemptuously.
“Andy’s into love drugs at the moment, he’s
very loving.”
Andy: “‘Hamburg’...was more of a diary. We
were supposed to be playing Hamburg, went to see Nick
Cave and got back far too late to our gig, did about
fifteen minutes and got stopped by the police. Too noisy,
too late.”
“‘Roadman’ is about...standing next to the road.
‘Blind’...the lyrics mean absolutely nothing. I was pissed
out of my head on vodka in the studio, couldn’t
remember what I was meant to be singing, so I was
slurring. and I think it actually does across. Haven’t got
a clue what ‘Quiet’ is about, Tally wrote the lyrics.”
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“You can’t be inhibited in band like this,” she says. “Ican’t do it properly yet, because I can still laugh too
much at myself, like I’m outside of myself, looking at
someone onstage thinking, ‘Well, that girl’s a bit
pathetic, really’.”
The songs are all short, sharp and strangely conceived,
always within five minutes (and not a second more) of
Dean’s initial outburst.
Brigit: “I never write lyrics down on paper. Never. They
always come into my head and they always stay. I never
change them after.”
During all this they fight ferociously. “It’s good,” Brigit
beams, “because that comes out in the song. They end
up feeling passionate.”
“There’s a lot of arguing,” Dean admits. “It’s quite
pointless, because Brigit always wins anyway. At the
time it feels like the most important thing in the world,
that you want this particular chord. After a week of
playing it 100 times it becomes less important. It’s the
song that’s important.”
“The best thing is when you’ve just made up a newsong,” Brigit decides, “and you listen back to the tape
and that thrill is amazing!
(Melody Maker)
DISKORD DATKORD
“When LL Cool J struts up and down the stage. My
bottom retracts!”
Adam Schmuck, one of two voices behind Diskord
Datkord’s debut single, a savage remodelling of
‘Identity’ by X-Ray Spex speaks for all of us when he
says that. He has been in the maker before, a time when
his bottom was barely formed. As part of the Stupid
babies duo, the 11 year old Adam and his five year old
brother graced Fast Forward’s ‘Earcom 3’ singing
‘babysitters’. These days he shares his mike with Jonny
Slut, previously the only pretty face in Specimen,although he likes top keep that quiet. With good reason,
according to Adam.
“He’s responsible for
all the people we
hate!”
Too rude onstage for
the mainstream, too
gelatinous for the
trendy-trendy
Housey-Housey
crowd (although they
were once mistakenlybooked in for a gig at
a Bingo hall before 14
appreciative
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pensioners), they are easily adjustable firebrands.
‘Identity’ is just one of a half dozen melodic comets up
their sleeves, none of which outdo ‘Fuck Off Rambo’, an
irresistibly funny dance track.
As the final Johnny Morris sample on ‘identity’ testifies,
their technothief third man, Trashmaster T has all the
secrets. Many say he shouldn’t have. (Friends in the Biz,
apparently.) And he thrives on spontaneity.
“I don’t think anyone can call our treatment
retrogressive, it sounds more interesting anyway,” Jonny
says. “We’ve got samples of Anita Harris saying
‘hideous!’ which is pretty impressive. Trashmaster T has
various bits of equipment he can plug press or tweak and
Rolf Harris can appear from nowhere.”
What a frightening thought. Rumours reach Sidelines
that a King’s Cross gig was marred by violence.
“It must have looked mental,” Jonny shrieks, perhaps
now regretting their recently arranged Club 18-30
holiday. “Ten beefcakes and three pansies with ribbons
in their hair fighting, going, ‘Give my skirt back !’ Even
then a couple of people said they were really into the five
minutes they did see. I don’t think people know if we’re
serious or prancing ninnies.”
Big noises. Nice noises, designed to thrill. There’s a dog,
occasionally to be found onstage called Diskord, whose
breasts are currently bigger than ever. Diskord Datkord,
and every other fucking chord, ate the complete opposite
of contemporary indie torpor.
“What are these people scared of?” Jonny sniggers. “All
people want to sound like these days are The Buzzcocks
and Debbie Harry, and you can’t beat Debbie. I don’tthink we have doubts about our commercial probability. I
think we can be quite biog. I’m convinced I’m a star. Full
stop, really.”
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ENRAPTUREB&G 31.1994
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Exhuming the Greatsby Robert Hedengren and Mick Mercer
(Robert did this for Gothic.net and I thought I’d use all of
it rather than just my own opinions.)
Musical styles come and go one after another. The truly
great styles that return every few years in waves are the
most innovative. From the first wave of ska to the latest
of the third wave (for example), things are constantly
changing and being improved, re-adapted to modern day
standards, while trying their best to stay true to the
genre’s defining musical moments.
The same ebb and flow has occurred within the Gothic
Rock scene since its inception as post-punk in the late
seventies. Goth Rock has been around (depending on
where you put your compass) for coming on 25 years; it
has had its heyday, its low-points, and its rebirth — and
these changes still happen today.
When I first got into bands that many today call Gothic
staples — The Cure, The Sisters, Joy Division — I had
never heard the term “Gothic” before in my life to
describe music. In my youth, late ‘89 - ‘90, my friends and
I discovered many of these bands in used bins in dusty
record stores, we were being told in many music reviews
of the Cure’s “Disintegration” that the term was Progres-
sive, the musical equivalent of liberalism. Not in the
sense of Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd or modern day Tool, but
in a sense where there were no strict boundaries as to
what was okay to listen to, new bands were instantly
soaked up and nothing was rehashed. We would jumpbetween the moodiness of these bands: hop on over to
some danceteria Sigue Sigue Sputnik, the early violence
of Public Enemy, and then back round to the Smiths.
So, the early 90’s was a virtual wasteland to suburban
Americans interested in Goth music. In England, Sisters
were moving metal, the Fields of the Nephilim were on
their last cloven hooves and Peter Murphy and Siousxie
were moving into their Adult Contemporary directions.
Press (in the U.S.) was almost a total blackout when it
came to these bands as well, pausing only to mention the
Cure after they conquered MTV.
Then, with the advent of Cleopatra records, it was high
tide again. Many would like to downplay the importance
of Cleopatra Records in the resurgence of the American
Goth scene, but they singlehandedly brought many
classic goth acts into music superstores across the
country. It was with their tireless compiling of Goth Rock
greatest hit collections that many of first us heard what
were the pioneers of a new scene. Alternative Music
became huge in the mid-nineties, allowing people to
branch out and listen to new things, and Cleopatra was
there to hand it to them.
In the last five years Gothic Music has slowly faded back
into the distance. One reason, because, accept it or not,
Marilyn Manson brought his version to the masses, and
Goth Rock was never about the masses. Many long-time
scenesters have abandoned the scene in favor of the
more electronic direction of industrial dance, EBM and
the new generation of Synth-Pop clones. Goth clubs are
slowly rephrasing their musical playlists to remove the
word Goth and replace it with Industrial/Synth-Pop nights
and really, it seems, once again, that Goth is dead. There
are a few bands playing around and releasing albums, but
it seems to me that they spend more time on their make-upand hair to pay close attention to making good songs. It’s
times like these that you are forced to go back to the
beginning and start over from scratch.
I was speaking with Mick Mercer about this one day and
it occured to me that many new initiates into the Goth
Scene have no idea about the pioneers of the genre. Sure,
they may own a Christian Death CD or a Cleopatra
compilation, but there is so much out there that they are
missing. Pick up an Industrial-Gothic magazine, or read
the online ‘zines, and you will only get reviews of what’s
new, dropping names of bands from the past to up theirword count. I thought it would be an interesting idea to
re-evaluate some classic CD’s, review them fresh from
todays musical climate and see if they stand the test of
time.
Mick Mercer is definitely old-school, he was there at the
get-go and actually wrote the book on Goth (The Gothic
Rock Black Book, Gothic Rock, Hex Files: The Goth Bible,
and others.) I am no-school. I believe all “new-school
Goth” began with the birth of the Internet and net.goths. I
am just a long-time fan with an ear for excellence and
patience to sit through a lot of bad music.
So, we sat down, separately, and reviewed some classic
Goth albums. If you like what’s out now, check these out.
To many people, these are still their favorite albums, not
because they are great Goth records, but because they
are just damned good albums.