Or, if its dark music, does that make it goth? Beethoven was pretty damn dark. Does that make him Goth? The Afghan WHigs are also dark, as are Nick Cave and teh bad seeds, selected Julian Cope/Teardrop explodes, Killing Joke (ok, there is a gothic element to KJ), Love spit Love, Bob Mould, Primus' "pork Soda", Radiohead, Lou Reed, Soundgarden ( nevermind their early audience was mainly goth chicks drolling over Cornell), Tool, Tricky, VoiVod, and various metal bands. i am not certain that music can be unintentionally Goth music (with the capital G). Hence, I side with waffleboy on the whoel VU debate. I still don't think TO- is goth because of the music. Too much distored guitars playing palm muted riffs. Of course, i'm not quite certain that black tape for a blue girl is goth music either, i thikn it's more art music. Definitely stuff I would play for an art reception for works produced by broody Goth chicks though. Let me make myself clear: I lIke goth chicks as much as the next freak. But not the ones that take themselves so damn seriously.

yeah, goth seems to imply a cerain image and the music seems to fit the image. VUs image was more or less of an artsy fartsy heroin chic type of thing. Yeah they certainyl had some very dark and bleak lyrics but junkies are often like that (despite lou's denials of ever being one......liar) Goth i think simply implies dark music along with a dark outlook on life, usually accompanied by some sort of fascination with death, melodramatics,the occult and stupid looking eyeliner , oh yeah and those $7 papa-san/kung fu shoes (i swear i have fallen arches because of years of wearing those damn things) I agree with sem in the sense that some people take it way to seriously in which case it's rather silly. What i think of as "goth" (and where is wisper to help out ion this type of thing): Christian Death is the most profound example (their lyrics were dramatic, dark, often about the occult, god, the devil etc..... Nick Cave in alot of ways and some of his writings back up the drama aspect, The Ass and The Fallen Angel anyone.....? Killing Joke-defintely Ministry---perhaps in ther early years, but I think ther were pushing another envelope, and that was the "techno" music thing....goth kids liked it regardless same for Front 242 Joy Divison in the sense their albums were very meloncholy, they seemed obssesed with some sort of classical-god-occult stigma type thing...these guys still remain my fav , there music is tops! How bout that band Red Lorry Yello Lorry? they were rather goth as well........as far aas the sound of their music and the persona they attached to it..... Bauhaus again the fascniation with the occult, classical religious references, dark imagery....shit Peter Murphy IS the king of goth and still is..... i am sure there is plenty that i have overlooked but this is what has come to mind, and also based on my experiences....... i group bands like type o negative with the likes of Rob Zombie, Kyuss, Karp, and later Ministry....sort of a metal but minus the glam aspect of it....

my friend told me he couldn't put pirated software on my computer wednesday night because he was going to the christian death show to go pick up goth chicks. have yet to hear whether he was successful.

speaking of goth, did anyone ever see that movie Gothic? aboyt Lord Byron, Mary & Percy Shelly? What good flic that was...the Victorian era kinda fascinates me with their opiate consumption and desire for intellectual and sexual perversity

god those guys are still around....jeeeeeze,

I watched that movie over and over again in high school. natasha richardson is a babe. and julian sands was kinda cute back then too.

my wife digs Julian Sands...........

The defintion springs from "Gothic Type Literature", ala Shelley, Stoker, and penny-dime novels like Nosfuratu. Generally has to do with death, fear of death, the occult, Vampirism etc. So a lot of bands take something from that image. I think shat just like any other musical style, Goth has evolved over time. You can't look at Jazz from the 20's compare it to Jazz from the 90's and say its not jazz because it isn't bebop. Some of it is very silly, some people go way to far (ala the peole who think they are vampyres in New Orleans, live a vampiric lifestyle). Personally, I like the feeling of darkeness, I have at time dyed my hair black, and have smoked a bone or two in a graveyard. Sem, me and you were in a band, albiet a very bad band, that was an accidental gothic band, and that was because we sucked. Anyways the debate rages on. I personally see there being a difference between stoner rock, like Kyuss and Black Sabbath, monster rock like the Misfits, alice Cooper, Manson,Rob Zombie and goth, which i still think type o is. P.S I am a heterosexual, and I do not ever act like Nik enright, just in case someone wants to know.

virgin prunes sex gang children alien sex fiend, in a tongue in cheek way 45 grave birthday party flesh for lulu (lame) this mortal coil

Did I miss this, or did no one mention Siouxsie or the Cure? Lycia, there's a good Goth band. Anything on the Projekt label, really. Except Thanatos (despite the name) isn't Goth. Some people call Swans Goth, but I don't agree with that label. I had a few Goth friends in high school, but they all listened to whole bunches of music...like Operation Ivy and the Pixies...so my knowledge of the dark scene is limited. They all really liked The Sandman comics, though. That was their unifying feature.

tear garden chris and cosey diamanda galas sisters of mercy harry crews that's all i can remember from those days. they are all a blur.

harry crews the writer? i used to have this big stack of playboys from the 60's and 70's, and in one of them was an article/story by harry crews. it was called "carny" or "carnival" or something like that. something about his ending up working at a traveling carnival during his wanderings across america. the only part of the story i can really remember is when harry lets the guy who runs the carnival (who i think was an old friend of crews) use his van to have sex with some waitress or something. "when i got back into my van, it smelled like all the salmon in the world had been tortured on my red carpeting." never liked goth. but i do like nick cave and vu.

borbetomagus? (tic)

droopy, read "and the ass saw the angel" by nick cave and get his album "the boatman calls". they are both classics.

I thought we were more aof a bad nu-metal industrial band than a bad goth band. We had songs that were definitely bad goth songs but overall i don't think that was the intention. Unless we were so bad at it I totally missed that that was what we were aiming for. Which is likely. anyway, we discussed this once over a few bowls and decided that our music wasn't gothic but Slavic, circa either the napoleonic wars or WWII. I had the burst of inspiration that if there was to be ine visual to totally capture that band's whole sound, it would be that of a grim, wounded russian soldier in a tattered grey uniform, endlessly trudging acros a smoky, muddy grey landscape.

goth? I dunno..... what is goth? ya know, I just saw type o negative. They suck. I mean, they are REALLY bad. It's all the same song, damnit. "Let's drink red wine n' I'll drink your blood...blaaaah bllaaaah black black black clothes, drink my blood and fuck me..." I think they're a joke 1/2 the time. but I still fucking love them. I sure as hell hope they're not goth, cause if that's goth, I don't want to be a part of this anymore.

yes, harry crews the writer. kim gordon and lydia lunch and a couple of other dames formed a band called harry crews, and the songs were all based on harry crews stories/books. it was great. i love harry crews. i just finished "the mulching of america." it was surreal, as usual for harry's books.

Ugh, Lydia Lunch. She's got some nice (and kind of goth-y) poetry, but her spoken word stuff makes my skin crawl. And that awful little girl voice is just unbearable. Sorry, Lydia. She did do some really funny collaborations with Glyn Styler, though. They wrote a neat song called "Coffin Made for Two."

you might like the harry crews stuff. i always loved the song "death valley 69" that she did with sonic youth.

there's a links page at defective.net that links to my personal web site under the category of "goth". i'm not entirely sure what that means, but i'm almost certain that there is nothing goth about me or my web site(s). though i do tend to be a night owl. maybe if i wore black lipstick...

I've done some time in the Baltimore/DC and San Francisco Goth scenes and I just missed the Sisters of Mercy show (Yeargh! got my ticket and everything, just didn't get there in time... stupid shit happening on the way there, just a run of bad luck) Anyway, I would like to mention, on the ambient end of things: Switchblade Synphony (which I don't even much like), Delirium (which I like), Dead Can Dance (which I really like) I think people have pretty much covered the industrial end of the spectrum, although I would suggest that interested parties look into the stuff coming out of Germany (Rammstein doesn't count). Oh, yeah, and Godhead, which is, I think, a DC band. They're quite good... nice show, too. Also, to those of you in the Bay Area, check out Winter Chapter, they're this local band that I really like (I am not in any way affiliated with the band, unless I know someone who knows them, which is entirely possible, but in which case I am not aware of it, I just dig their music and think they put on a good show.) All things considered, however, *if* I had to choose I would agree with Waffles (yes, I am agreeing with Waffles) Bauhaus would have to be the ne plus ultra of goth bands. Funny thing: Bauhaus is, of course, very surf influenced, and my boyfriend surfs, so that is how I introduced him to goth music... I played it for him and he absolutely loved it. It was kinda trippy. Damn. Too much coffee.

Ooh, Dead Can Dance. Love them. You really think they're Goth, though? I mean, they do appeal to Goth people, but their sound is too diverse, too ethnic at times and too medieval at others, and all the while not being all that gloomy or morbid, to really call them Goth, I think. Some of their stuff is incredibly depressing (i.e. Goth-esque), but in weird unexplainable ways. "Spleen and Ideal" (which is my favorite of their albums) has the song "In the Kingdom of the Blind, the One-Eyed Are Kings"...easily one of the most depressing songs I've ever heard. But on the surface, it's almost cheery (if I remember correctly -- I haven't heard it in a while). Not something that would easily appeal to the average self-identified Goth 15-year-old.

Damn, wrong again! That song's off of "The Serpent's Egg." "Spleen and Ideal" is still my favorite album, though. I was right about that, at least.

legendary pink dots... that's all i have to say

"Goth" is just some record execs name. They make these names then put a bunch of similar sounding stuff under that heading so that there is some order to the huge catolouges of sound that are produced yearly. If they (you know the ambiguous THEY) put a group/singer into a catagory and you don't think they really fit there, well, so what. They have to be classed as something. And yes Bauhaus is the best ever. By the way why is there NO music that comes out of France? I mean theres lots of music in north america (that gets air play) from tons of other countries, but never France, hhmmm. F$&* the French.

Well, you can get some pretty good French techno.

aren't spk french?

Les thugs are fench, and they're pretty good. I love their cover of "Moon over marin". I 've heard some real atrocious metal come out of France though. However, one of the best metal bands ever is French-Canadien, Voivod. I would figure that France would be a better source of dance music thatn anything else, although there are some pretty hot Breton artists emerging into the world music scene.

i think zap mama, united future organization, and african head charge are all produced out of france. zap mama is half french, half kenyan (i think) U.F.O. has two japanese and one french member (i think) and african head charge are all ethiopians who reside in france. but i could be completely wrong. for all i know they all share a two-bedroom flophouse in newark and pray to the ghost of fela kuti for inspiration. anyway.

isn't "voivod" that band that did a cover of pink floyd's "interstellar overdrive" about ten years ago?

French? Goth? Gothe? Now is the time on sprokets we ve danse!

i think so swine.....there have been some sporadically amusing french avante garde artists that i have been exposed too....couldn't give youy any names, more soundtracky type stuff.....same for italian........otherwise they love their bubblegum pop

FUCK GOTH we need more of this http://home.dti.net/ianc/nitro/nite.html

Ugh...Italian music. Don't get me started. A couple of summers ago, we had an Italian girl stay with us for a few weeks, and the dreck she listened to was just appalling. Her taste in American music was even worse. Smash Mouth? Excuse me??

I love serge gainsbourg.

smash mouth is a canadian band.

That explains a lot.

Don't make me take my belt off, girlie.

that sounds kinda fun.........

i have a couple serge gainsbourg albums. he's not goth, is he?

Serge Gainsbourg was the dirty old man of popular music; a French singer/songwriter and provocateur notorious for his voracious appetite for alcohol, cigarettes and women, his scandalous, taboo-shattering output made him a legend in Europe but only a cult figure in America, where his lone hit "Je T'Aime...Moi Non Plus" stalled on the pop charts -- fittingly enough -- at number 69. Born Lucien Ginzberg in Paris on April 2, 1928, his parents were Russian Jews who fled to France following the events of the 1917 Bolshevik uprising. After studying art and teaching, he turned to painting before working as a bar pianist on the local cabaret circuit. Soon he was tapped to join the cast of the musical Milord L'Arsoille, where he reluctantly assumed a singing role; self-conscious about his rather homely appearance, Gainsbourg initially wanted only to carve out a niche as a composer and producer, not as a performer. ... In the late 1960s, he befriended the actress Brigitte Bardot, and later became her lover; with Bardot as his muse, Gainsbourg's lushly-arranged music suddenly became erotic and delirious, and together, they performed a series of duets -- including "Bonnie and Clyde," "Harley Davidson" and "Comic Strip" -- celebrating pop culture icons. Gainsbourg's affair with Bardot was brief, but its effects were irrevocable: after he became involved with constant companion Jane Birkin, they recorded the 1969 duet "Je T'Aime...Moi Non Plus," a song he originally penned for Bardot complete with steamy lyrics and explicit heavy breathing. Although banned in many corners of the globe, it reached the top of the charts throughout Europe, and grew in stature to become an underground classic later covered by performers ranging from Donna Summer to Ray Conniff. Gainsbourg returned in 1971 with Histoire de Melody Nelson , a dark, complex song cycle which signalled his increasing alienation from modern culture: drugs, disease, suicide and misanthropy became thematic fixtures of his work, which grew more esoteric, inflammatory and outrageous with each passing release. ... Gainsbourg also created a furor with the single "Lemon Incest," a duet with his daughter, the actress Charlotte Gainsbourg. In addition, he posed in drag for the cover of 1984's Love on the Beat , a collection of songs about male hustlers, and made sexual advances towards Whitney Houston on a live TV broadcast. ... He died on March 2, 1991.

dead is as goth as can be, isn't it?

i assume so. i like the song where he seems to be naming off fixtures in the manhattan skyline.

Fuck it,this guy does it more than one time for me http://www.soundscene.com/edgefest/rhh/rhh.h tml

lets hear it for Frankie.......

Fuck,I hate that when that happens,the link worked before I posted it.The Reverand Horton Heat,he,s the bomb.

when i was a teenager the reverend horton heat used to play at this bar right down the street from me every so often. my friend and i would get some beer from the vietnamese store and sit outside the bar and listen. psychobilly live, even from the other side of a wall, is a blast. this is j's link. j - you had put a / where a . should have been. try testing out your links in the preview before you post them.

I did I swear and it worked,but thanks, Horton is great.

The Reverend is great live. but not goth.

I was trying to change the subject.

That's fine, J. perfectly acceptable sorabjiite behavior. last time i saw the reverend was at the Mystic in Petaluma, CA. i drank too many boiler makers and ended up in the pit. it was fun(ny).

they have pits at his shows? sheeeeeeeeeeeeshhhh!!!!!!

Of course.....2 pits per person....

there are pits at any show these days.

Not most local goth bands at Maritime.... A buncha goths sitting on the floor in the (dancing room?) listening raptly, and the rest (most) of the goths are in the main bar dishing on, or making fun of, the band. Unless the band is really good, I find the goth cattiness to be far more entertaining. Goths are silly. I like them.

I'll have to say the most gentle pit I was ever in was teh one for Killing Joke on the "Pandemonium" tour. A lot of folks swaying back and forth and some headbangers. I remember one guy who would slam dance in slow motion by kind of brushing up against other people, instead of leaping into them. One short leather clad punk/goth kid (i couldn't determine the gender) was in front of me for most of the show and never really moved until the encore, when they played "Eighties" and he started dancing like made, kicking his boots way out behind him and nearly kneecapping me a few times until I gave him a good shove further into the pit.

you know what I really hate? these little chicks that get up on the front edge of the pit by the stage, and then their boyfriends are there behind them & protecting them. what the fuck. I swear to god if a boyfriend ever tried to protect me in a mosh pit..... if you're not willing to get the living crap beat out of you DONT STAND THERE! grrrr! and uhm, that's my concert report.

One statement: Woodstock '99. Bet those girls wished someone would have protected them...

Hello, Gothic is cool I dress all black. Only other color on me are my Blue eyes and white skin. hope you all understand I German so I know little english I love you all

hey, you sound pretty awesome!!!! a/s/l ?!? U want 2B my freind?

i'd rather be a crying little pussy than a faggy goth kid.

you know theres not much of a difference

you catch the last south park ("raisins") ?

we can't find a good download of it yet. However, the one before that, "Butt Out" was perfection.

drinking zima is totally goth.

Operation Ivy!!

my ex-boss drank zima. He wasn't goth in the slightest. That was several unattainable levels of cool above him, that bastard.

(Er. Operation Ivy is not goth, but I saw that I had mentioned them, lo, so long ago upthread, and I still remember the canvas patch my friend Kelly had safety-pinned to her bookbag.) Back to Sem's original post, I totally disagree on Type O- not being Goth. As Skooter so wisely posted at one time or another, anyone who says, "I'd kill myself but I'm waiting for the punchline" is goth. QED. Plus, exhibit B: "Christian Woman." Come on!

Come On! By that definition, how can Type O be goth and Swans NOT goth? Anyway, now I think anyone who consciously wants to be goth is pretty silly and uninteresting, and its the ones we have to argue about whether or not they are goth that are the truly interesting bands.

You are very right....and I don't remember what I was thinking about back then that would make me think Swans aren't goth. Because they are. They're scarier than most goth bands, though. It's like everybody else whines and mopes and might half-heartedly slash at their wrists, but Swans would fucking kill you, themselves, and everyone within city limits if they had the means.

they would. that was the heaviest band on the planet, hands down.

Whats Zima?

i had to put coffee whitener in my tea just now. it was that, or egg nog. i hope i made the right choice. and so the new South Park finally downloaded. The little goth kids are so cute! i hope they make plush toys of them one day. That would be sweet. p.s. sweeet p.s.s. make yourself a South Park character!

Zima is all the unsold stock of Pepsi Clear, fermented, or perhaps distilled. as i recall at one time it was the official sorabji beverage.

Zima was the alcohol of choice for my ex-boss, who kept trying to convince us it was better then beer (the "us" in question being a pack of scroungy archaeologists). We ceaselessly made fun of his diet in the field, which consisted of slimfasts, fast food value meals, and zima. He probably drank zima because he was too afraid to drink wine coolers in front of us. The only time I saw him drink beer was when someone he worked with on a different project came on board for a little while in South Carolina, and he suddenly started drinking beer again, probably so he wouldn't look like such a wusslord to his old buddy. This is also the same guy who spent a lot of time trying to convince everyone he was very heterosexual. Like he would go out of his way to emphasize how heterosexual he was, meanwhile chugging down the slimfasts and zimas. then about a year after he, ahem, became no longer employed by the company, we found a CD-rom with his handwriting on it, with about 1360 PDFp ages of gay porn inside, downloaded from the net. We always wondered why our office internet connection slowed down when he got to work in the morning...

wispy dear you must put my SP character up there as well

he called me "dear". that's so gay.

surprise him with a zima.

This thread is very funny. I can't believe I was weighing on goth all that time ago. I forgot about that band Harry Crews. I should dig them out again. Also, I still miss Droopy.

led zepplin is goth. no, really!

Whaaa-? I grant you that Led Zeppelin could be considered goth because of their subject matters, but on a whole they are not goth. No, really! They are too happy and earthy to be goth. Plus, their song "In the Light" could be considered flat-out anti-goth.

perky goth ;)

ARGH, no.

she's got ya there, Spidey. didn't count on the perky goth, did ya!

But...but...no, that's just wrong! I deny that there is even such a label. Led Zep has goth interests -- Satanism, the occult, ummm...the hermit on the cover of IV.... but they lack, utterly, the goth spirit.

I don't think such a spirit exists, or nothing we could define. it's a very fluid sort of thing. It depends what sort of 'goth' you're talking about. There are many kinds, and music for each kind. Must every song that a band has be dark for them to be goth, until they become joke-like, a'la Cradle of Filth? Are we talking about Rob Zombie style cheesy halloween irony goth here? all industrial music? the Smiths? the Doors? You never can tell.

i'd say that the first part of the 'song remains the same' movie proves without a doubt that led zepplin are goth. or, at least, dorks.

But....nooooo.. Led Zeppelin were far too focused on life and the pleasures thereof (Sex, Drugs, and RocknRoll, duh!) to truly be goth. Goth = fixated on death and/or suffering. Now, whether you're into zombies, vampires, or Inquisition-era architecture, or making yourself cry on purpose, or whether you just like to say things like "I wear black on the outside because black is how I feel on the inside" is up to individual taste. Oh, but now, see, this brings up the whole question of the really gory forms of Catholicism that are especially found in Latin America. And those people in the Philipines who crucify themselves on Easter. Are they goth? There's a PhD dissertation here.

i thought macabre was fixated on death, etc. and goth was those pale clove smoking kids who wear all black except when the ren faire is in town.

i think it's more like porn. You can't define it, but you know it when you see/hear it.

wisper did you notice how the one southpark goth kept flipping his hair? that little detail made it all the better. cause. like. *flips hair* that reminds me of someone. mmkay.

oh yes, the hair flipping. gotta have the hair flipping. i also like how Butters won in the end. I love Butters. He's my favorite.

"It depends what sort of 'goth' you're talking about. There are many kinds, and music for each kind." OK, I am less confused now. I have family that is goth, and I have been called a goth A LOT lately, but I didn't know any of the bands above, and felt like an oddball. But it is funny, I dress like I normally do and dye my hair back to it's natural color and all of the sudden I start hearing "You look gorgeous my little gothic queen" and laugh. But my family and I would fit into the Door's listening category of music, I guess.

Michael Gira is certainly scarier than most goths. I'd love to see him face to face with the idiots from Cinema Strange or Fear Cult.

"Pass me another Zima." "Why are we drinking Zima? It's beyond irony. It's not funny or anything. It's just gross. Why not just serve us jugs of Hitler's piss instead?" "Drinking Zima is something Douglas Coupland would make a character do." "To what end?" "It'd be a device that would allow him to locate the characters in time and a specific sort of culture." "Is that all we are - Zima drinkers? Zima is so nineties." ... Greg walked in with Kam. "Zima for all!" He threw everybody a bottle, and since Kam can sometimes get snarky towards people who don't appreciate his generosity, bottles were listlessly accepted and opened. "Isn't this stuff great?" Kam insisted. Evil Mark led the chorus. "Whoohoo!" John Doe surprised us. "I actually know a few facts about Zima." "Why on earth would you?" "From my efforts to figure out what normal guys ate and drank. I thought Zima was it for a while, so I researched it. Zima was developed in the early 1990s, during our culture's love affair with clear products. Remember Crystal Pepsi? And Ivory Liquid Clear? I'm glad I was around for that craze, which was my first exposure to mass consumer culture. Anyway, the Coors Brewing Company developed Zima as a beer alternative. The word means 'winter' in Russian. It was supposed to be cool and fresh, lacking the bitterness of hops, or vodka's high-alcohol punch. It went national in 1994. It's a niche beverage with no real competition, and - this will surprise you - it's drunk mostly by men in their early twenties. Mock it as you will, but Zima is fresh and sassy and here to stay." from the book "JPod" by Douglas Coupland, printed in 2006. that man owes me, and possibly Dougie, intellectual rights.

sue the bastard. they still make zima? not long ago i was at the liquor store (which is never long ago) and i saw a bunch of college kids buying cases of jaegermeister and red bull. one day somebody will combine those two drinks into one and make a fortune killing idiot college kids. and possibly a darwin award.

dougie would say "tequiza for all!"

this thread is funny. i'd submit that the set of dorks encompasses the subset of goths as follows: all goths are dorks but not all dorks are goth following on this and nate's point above "the song remains the same" (film) indicates that led zeppelin are in the greater dork set somewhere along the edge of -- but not within -- the goth subset. i bet john paul jones likes tequiza. i've never gotten the "goth = sexy" thing at all. just don't get it. i think trekkies fit into that venn diagram as well -- within the dork set, in the neighborhood of the goth subset.

One of my old friends dated a guy we called Goth Jim. One day he heard someone refer to him as goth and he became incredibly defensive and said, "Goth is a TREND, Industrial is a LIFESTYLE."

Heh. Awesome. Industrial is a lifestyle? Since when?

Who's going to say "Chelada for All!" Not me.

What is Goth?

search the sorabji boards for Zima and be amazed at its frequency.

Semillama, I remember that one from S.N.L.

having just been required to gain some understanding of the paid dues festival and rock the bells i have come to the conclusion that hip hop is the new, faster, infinitely more hyped goth. this is not a judgment.

hip hop is the new goth. i love it.