Is Goth dead?

Aquí estamos un día más, como cada semana. Actualizo hoy porque es fiesta en mi tierra y tengo más tiempo libre. Acabo de darme cuenta también de que hoy es el último día de febrero, así que damos este mes por terminado en el blog y volvemos ya en marzo. Se acerca la primavera y el sol, pero a nosotros, en la Guarida, eso no nos importa mucho ;)

Bueno pues hoy, en lugar de escribir mi propia entrada, como suelo hacer casi siempre, he decidido dejaros un pequeño artículo sobre el estado actual de la música y cultura góticas. Está escrito en inglés, así que mucho me temo que debéis poseer cierto manejo en esta lengua.
En cualquier caso, es muy bueno para reflexionar y plantearse ciertas cosas. ¿De qué modo ha cambiado la música en estos treinta años? ¿Ha muerto, realmente como muchos afirman, la música gótica? Leedlo y juzgad por vosotros mismos. En mi opinión, algo no morirá nunca mientras haya personas que lo apoyen y difundan. Y precisamente esa es nuestra tarea en este blog. Podéis leerlo también en la fuente original: http://louderthanwar.com/blogs/is-goth-dead-state-of-the-goth-nation-2011-by-martin-old-goth


So what music do you listen to then?

It’s usually one of the first things people ask, sadly often followed by, ‘Do you like…’ and the name of a random metal band or Marilyn Manson, to which the answer ‘No’ seems to do nothing but confuse and you’re forced to say that you like The Cure as some kind of meeting point between the underground culture you’re a part of and the media led music industry of today. Sad really, but I wouldn’t have it any other way, I like being a part of something small, something almost intimate, and for me the worst years of goth was when it went mainstream, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

For years goth was an underground scene born from the ashes of punk as part of the whole ‘post punk’ era, often labelled as ‘positive punk’. That’s when I got into it, the punk scene 1979/ 1980 was starting to fade away as I knew it, the new generation of bands didn’t interest me, the likes of The Exploited or Angelic Upstarts often pulled a high percentage of skinheads in, and once you’d had a good kick in from that bunch they were the last people you wanted to spend too long near. I found myself preferring the more ‘tuneful’ bands, maybe I grew up a little, but that’s debatable, I was still only 19 after all.

I can date my earliest interest in the scene from the first time I saw Bauhaus perform “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” on Top of the Pops, then still a programme that gave you a small chance of seeing at least one ‘alternative’ act each week. This was 1979, the year when things started to change for me, and this new movement started to take shape. There are arguments that will undoubtedly rage for years as to when goth began, but for me 1979 will always be where I chart my beginnings. It was the year that as well as seeing The Damned release “Love Song” and “Smash It Up” also saw a shift for me to the likes of Echo and the Bunnymen, The Psychedelic Furs, The Cure, Joy Division, and a darker edged form of rebellion. A more subtle twist to the bands I’d previously listen to.

25 years ago, before its popularity at the end of the late eighties it still carried with it that spark of rebellion from its punk roots, and in some respect that was still evident into the start of the nineties, I know plenty of people from those early days that stood up against poll tax for example. These days that rebellious streak is not so evident, today’s generation have all but forgotten that we were once like that, and what you wear is almost more important that what you think.

Sadly the ‘idea’ of goth seems lost; the music in the nineties was largely dire, possibly due to the scenes popularity at the end of the eighties bringing in a lot of people without those punk roots, who brought with them their own set of influences which largely diluted things. These days its deemed acceptable to play bands like Rammstein in a lot of goth clubs, something that never would have happened 25 years ago, can you imagine what would have happened if a goth DJ played, say, Iron Maiden in 1985, they have been lynched, and yet we tolerate the equivalent of that these days, and worse. Don’t start me on EBM.

It’s high time the scene looked back and reinvented itself again; the opportunities are there in the newer post punk style bands breaking through, and with the assistance of some of the deathrock bands and a small handful of goth rock bands we can make the scene great again, bring back the tribalism that made it special. Of course there will be casualties, but hey, this is war. Its time to reclaim the name of goth, and make it great again.

Who’s with me?