{"id":3920,"date":"2010-09-30T13:42:03","date_gmt":"2010-09-30T12:42:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uncarved.org\/blog\/?p=3920"},"modified":"2012-03-08T23:20:10","modified_gmt":"2012-03-08T23:20:10","slug":"the-historification-of-goth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uncarved.org\/blog\/2010\/09\/the-historification-of-goth\/","title":{"rendered":"the historification of “goth”"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I’ve previously written about<\/a> my teenage years hanging around with goths in St Albans:<\/p>\n

In mid eighties suburban Hertfordshire, goth was pretty good lowest common denominator \u201calternative\u201d fodder. Black clothes were de rigeur anyway and we tended to huddle together with the other weirdos to avoid violence from people who took exception to our appearance.<\/em><\/p>\n

Plus, let\u2019s be completely honest, hanging around in a pub for some underage drinking with some impossibly foxy goth girls was a lot more interesting than sitting alone in your bedroom again listening to Foetus and reading William Burroughs.<\/em><\/p>\n

So I was interested to see Kiran Sande’s 20 Best Goth feature\u00a0over at\u00a0FACT Magazine<\/a>. The inevitable, and planned, reaction to these lists is to get people up in arms about what has been left out – this was as true of Droid’s fantastic\u00a020 Best Ragga feature<\/a> as of the\u00a0current one.<\/p>\n

But what differentiates goth from other genres is its high level of fuzziness. There are relatively few arguments about what is or isn’t reggae, or who is or is not a reggae fan. But whilst everyone knows what a goth is, very few people in its eighties heydey admitted to being one, least of all the people in the bands. This game of goth accusation and denial even afflicts middle aged men who are succesful dubstep producers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This adds a certain complexity to the historification process, which is already fraught with issues such as the tension between recording what was popular at the time<\/em> and what went on to be influential<\/em>. And of course the personal credibility of the author.<\/p>\n

The FACT piece is clear from the outset that it cannot be a history of what was popular with goths (not least because of the author’s youthfulness). Comrade Stagger Lee’s response<\/a> to the FACT article includes some great personal history, a mix and some good examples of omissions.<\/p>\n

That isn’t a bad dialectic right there, which is a fancy way of saying that these two have done most of the work. All that remains\u00a0is for me to introduce some wildcards and argue the toss!<\/p>\n

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I carried on hanging around with goths when I moved to London in 1988. Indeed, I lived with someone who had been in a very early incarnation of goth thrashers Creaming Jesus<\/a>. There were a few clubs a bunch of us went to like KitKat, Friday nights at the Electric Ballroom (was that called “Full Tilt”?), Tuesdays at the Camden Palace (Feet First)\u00a0and even a Saturday night bash in the club above the Manor House pub, by the tube station of the same name. There was also the Slimelight, but I think that came later when my interest had properly waned.<\/p>\n

These nights\u00a0all had the advantage of being really cheap to get into and filled with attractive goth girls. They were also a right good laugh <\/a>– something that people with no first hand knowledge of gothdom may not realise.<\/p>\n