Gothic History - Volume One

8/14/2019 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



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



Hampstead, 1980

abbo - uk decay- Grandfather of UK Goth -



‘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?’



“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.



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.”



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.



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.)



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)



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



BEAU (Michael J. Sheehy) Bull & Gate 13.4.1995



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)







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.”



“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



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.”



ENRAPTUREB&G 31.1994



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.

Documents

Gothic History - Volume One