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My Inner Goth

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has been largely neglected all these years. Sure, I love spiders, and in my time I have hung around in crepuscular churchyards, moped about morbidly on misty moors, slept sulkily in sepulchres ( ok – I made that last one up), and I have a thing for witches, as you may or may not know. Anyway, it is time to unleash my inner goth, so any musical tips and recommendations would be most welcome. I may know a few, but not many.

Bat’s Sneeze When The Owl Breaks Wind.

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Comments

  23. Thankyou Kid, Wheldude, Salbaby and Rubyblue – wonderful stuff. I’ll book mark them all for a listen. I’m familiar with some Nick Cave and DCD, TMC, Swans but the rest of your suggestions are new to me 🙂

    I’d like to offer these to you:

  24. Also, this stunning Traffic cover from the same Swans album. (Apparently Michael Giro now hates the ‘Burning World’ album. I think it’s marvelous).

  28. I have a goth playlist on iTunes which has 238 songs in it (yes I am a middle-aged male, why do you ask?). In addition to Kid D’s posts I’d suggest;

    – the first few Sex Gang Children singles* – Beasts, Deiche, Into The Abyss etc
    – X-Mal Deutschland – a bit of a one-trick pony (you can only take so much Teutonic wailing) but Tocsin is a good album
    – Cocteau Twins first few – Garlands is drenched in spiky gloom
    – Clan of Xymox first album – threatens to get a bit emo, but in a good way
    – Tones On Tail – when the rest of Bauhaus decided to leave Peter behind and show him how’s it properly done

    And an argument can be made that The Cure’s Pornography was just as much a protoype for goth as Ms Sioux – a greater depth, darkness and emotion than the Banshees usually managed (even though Juju is a fine album).

    *as I know James Blast of this parish will agree … or not.

  29. Cheers Douglas. There’s a lot to check out but I’ll certainly make the effort.
    Ah, The Cocteaus. Garlands is great. Treasure is my personal fave. I had spikey hair, cardy and bangles and used to sit on the roof at night with a jazz gasper listening to it on my Walkman, whilst feeling doomed and lovesick. (True)

  30. She was half Persian and lived in Weybridge. Looked a bit like Carolyn Jones, but shorter and plumper. I was bewitched. Utterly. She preferred older chaps eg. 18 year old art school goths. No amount of my impassioned busking in Woking shopping centre could sway her affections towards me, alas.

    • Nice one Rigidhead. Rather appropriate too. I spend many an evening perched upon the steeple, thumb aloft, shining a torch into the firmament, trying to hitch a ride on a spaceship crewed by lonely Sexy Foxy Witchy Type Boho Alien Chicks on their way to back Planet Nympho.

      Yours

      Extra Terrestrial Curious of Nether Snurtle.

  32. She worked at in WH Smith. A kohl eyed porcelain raven haired goddess, resplendent in amethyst, with rosary beads and crucifix dangling above the record counter. Oh how I longed to whisk her away to somewhere more miserable.

    • I hung around under the bridge that was on her beat one summers evening with my guitar and a purple silk scarf tied around my belt as I she knew she liked that fella from The Cult. I was swigging a bottle of cherry brandy, trying to impress by getting into Jim Morrison mode.

      It didn’t work

  36. The last time I ever met her was when a group of us missed the last train and where stranded with no money. We were walking down the road when we were offered overnight sanctuary in a nearby mental hospital, kipping on the floor of a trainee anaesthetist who lived/worked there. Spooky guy, and even spookier was what sounded like a metal fence being furiously rattled in the night. I was not alone in getting The Fear. We had a nervous cup of tea and a slice of toast in the communal canteen the following morning. I hitched back to Woking, hid under a seat on the train until Worplesdon. I could see the angry guard’s legs as walked up and down looking for me as I’d fled the first carriage I’d got in when I was unable to show him a ticket as I was skint. When the train stopped at Worplesdon, I jumped out of the carriage on to the platform, timing it until the train was just starting to pull out. He saw me through a train door window and shouted angrily at me. I gave him a cheery sweeping bow and then walked home.

  46. I’ve always had a fondness for the Banshees/Cure end of Goth especially Siouxsie and the Banshee’s take on Ben E. King’s Supernatural thing. Some of my own drum machine and chorus pedal driven efforts back in the day fell broadly into the “Goth Funk – music for people who wear black to dance to”, movement that never existed. Anyway, by way of introducing to this thread a band who don’t usually feature in the roll call of Goth bands, here is a tune from Hunters & Collectors, a band who eventually became the epitome of Aussie crowd-pleasing lad-rock but whose first two albums; Hunters &Collectors and The Fireman’s Curse were definitely stabs at some form of Aussie-Goth… See what you think Afterworders…

    • I got one of their albums out the record library back in the early 80s, can’t remember what it was called but it had some epic tunes like Tow Truck, Talking to a Stranger and Drop Tank on it. I really enjoyed it and would love to hear it again, Closest band I can relate it to is ToH/SoD.

  51. back in the day there was a lot of crossover between the goth and industrial scenes. Here are some belters with a more cybernetic bent:

    Front 242 – Headhunter
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BFtvw2XlyA

    Skinny Puppy – Assimilate
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYC5VFuiblU

    Front Line Assembly – Mindphaser

    Ministry – Stigmata
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBi8U9hJy-E
    (a Ministry gig around 1993 is still (and, let’s face it, will probably now always be) the most violent show I’ve ever attended)

  52. Where it all started ? He arguably created the first psych pop sing with Telstar, and pre-dated ambient prog by almost a decade with I Hear A New World:

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