'80s gothic rock

Hey, mister DJ - Cruel Britannia

2013-08-25T19:02:00.001+03:00

Long time, no hear eh?

It’s a burnin’ summer here folks and heatwaves make me lazier on the writing front…

Here, I gotta talk about this chap who calls himself Cruel Britannia and is, (you’ve guessed it, if you don’t know him yet) an internet radio show presenter, DJ at actual events & gigs when asked, occasionally remixes stuff for bands and invented the foundations for something called World Goth Day.

He started at The Giffard Arms in Wolverhampton as resident DJ of Seven Deadly Hertz (7DHz) and Hex In The City spinning goth, deathrock, alternative '80's and industrial from 2003 to 2007 and also running an '80's night at the Giffard Arms called 'I Wanna F*ck Debbie Harry' & 'Pandemonium' at The Haygate in Telford.

His DJ sessions usually revolve around 80's & 90's goth and alternative 80's genres, but can include (where appropriate) goth from 2000+ onwards, deathrock, guitar-based industrial and synthpop (not hard electro or 'oontz-oontz' EBM). He is mostly addressing to the ones who were 'getting their goth on' in the '80's & '90's.

He is currently a resident DJ in Second Life at Club Gothika, a virtual club owned by the awesome DJ Bronxelf who was behind the World Goth Day event in Second Life and raised quite a lump of money for the Sophie Lancaster Foundation in doing so.

Catch him live on the waves at:

http://aqua.neostreams.info:8036/listen.pls.

or on his famous Fadeout series here:

http://fadeout.podomatic.com

or even at

http://theotherfadeout.blogspot.gr

on the famous Radio Nightbreed

and listen to proper music, you obnoxious little pretenders!

The way they use to promote stuff...(Play Dead)

2013-07-17T01:01:00.001+03:00

At the time gothic rock flourished back in the early 80's, there was of course no internet and thus no fuckin' FB and the lot... Bands, to a larger or smaller extent, tried to promote merchandise with means like the following A4 photocopied page. "Xeroxed" we use to say...
I've already published one such by Asylym (see rel. page) and this one, I recently found by chance in an old Play Dead vinyl I played.

To date this flyer, the vinyl in which it was found is not relevant. The video which is mentioned was released in 1985 and this should be the proper date of the flyer too.

Play Dead was a british band from Oxford who made a handful of excellent releases (LP's and 12") before they sank into oblivion. They found amusing, like a few notorious others (...) to deny their gothic rock tag. They often had a very melodic vocal line amidst a maelstrom of sharp guitar sounds. They must have been Killing Joke fans I believe... A very underrated band which I adore and I think are worth to be rediscovered...
There is still an unofficial page with lots of info about them if you care:
http://www.companyofjustice.com

How I love to discover accidentally such little treasures...

Ghost dances and Alchemy!

2013-05-21T17:53:00.001+03:00

In 1985 right after quitting The Sisters of Mercy, Gary Marx joined forces with Anne-Marie from Skeletal Family and formed, short lived Ghost Dance as every decent old goth on the planet knows...
Their third release was "The Grip of Love" on Karbon Records 31 October 1986 (hey that's Halloween and... my B-day!)
The 12" version of this release was adorned with this sleeve:

The illustration used on it depicts an hermaphrodite and was the cover of a famous 14th century publication, now entitled Aurora Consurgens.

Aurora Consurgens is an illuminated manuscript of the 15th century which can now be found in the Zürich Zentralbibliothek.

The Aurora Consurgens is one of the earliest emblematic alchemical manuscripts. It is dated to the early 1400's. It has become well known for its thirty-eight miniatures in watercolour, a strange series of engaging allegorical images all representations of alchemical elements depicted in human or animal form, which the contemporary mind sees as surrealistic and enigmatic. In fact it was a sort of code addressed to mystics e.g. mercury is depicted as a serpent; gold as the sun, silver as the moon etc.

The work became known towards the end of the 20th century through the work of a Jungian psychologist, Marie-Louise von Franz, who issued an edition of it which was translated into English as Aurora Consurgens : a document attributed to Thomas Aquinas on the problem of opposites in alchemy (now attributed to a writer called the "Pseudo-Aquinas" if you care...)

Except for "our" Ghost Dance, brazilian symphonic power metal act ANGRA released in 2006 a cd entitled Aurora Consurgens...

That's all for now my little alchemists!

Stay tuned for more Goth-an-Roll!

Contact...

2013-05-15T23:38:00.000+03:00

Hi there,
As I am preparing my new update about... No, I won't say it yet, patience is a gift!
I thought it was my obligation to let all of you who leave comments or have done so in the past, that I'm facing problems of technical order, in contacting you back.
So, you can of course leave any comment you please on the blog, but if you'd like me to contact you back, please contact me though the blog's facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/80sGothicRock

Stay tuned!

Gothic Rock forefathers pt.II (Blue Oyster Cult)

2013-05-01T13:19:00.000+03:00

Here’s one that will probably be my most controversial article so far…

Last summer I started the "Gothic Rock Forefathers series” where we spotted and remembered all those, essentially ‘60s and '70s bands, that "prepared" mostly aesthetically the ground for the original gothic rock era of the '80s. We started with Black Sabbath and now I’ll claim that Blue Oyster Cult had an important and significant amount of elements that justifies a Forefathers of Goth title.

An obscure little band by the name of Soft White Underbelly evolved into BOC (I’ll use the abbreviation ) in NY city in 1971. They went down music history as a “clever hard rock” outfit and were one of the first to use the term “heavy metal” when it was still hip and cool and deprived of too much nonsense…

From their early days and in all their releases they displayed a strange symbol along with the (in some cases Gothic) band lettering, whose origin and meaning remained unexplained by the band for several years. They later on revealed that it was a modified version of the astrological and alchemical symbol for Saturn (Cronus).

Several of their sleeve covers had references to occult elements and images that conveyed a sense of mystery. See a sample...

An outlandish mood and a galore of symbols for "Fire of Unknown Origin" LP in 1981...

Note the appearance of this odd circle on the back of this same album. That was years before a certain Mc Coy made magic circles trendy and, nowadays, a must for similarly sounding young bands…

Check the use of dry black backgrounds and typographically styled lyrics excerpts in 1973...

Cathedrals and arches in 1975...

Black and white and oh, so many symbols in 1983...

If this ain't goth... 1988

Most important though it's their music and sound. That’s what it (should be) all about. BOC played a very particular and sometimes weird version of early metal that often used dissonant parts and sudden changes. Their sound was alternating straight strong chords and riffs with dark and moody parts. Diversity and doing the unexpected was in their agenda all too often. They could at will get miles away from the classic rock sound of their contemporaries.

Just listen to songs like Astronomy (a masterpiece!), The Revenge of Vera Gemini (co-written with Patti Smith who collaborated with them for a period), Don’t Fear The Reaper (the ultra classic covered much later by HIM), Unknown Tongue, Veteran of the Psychic Wars ( co-written with legendary sci-fi writer Michael Moorcock), Joan Crawford (who has risen from her grave!) and tell me if the mood we seek in goth rock isn’t already there…

To conclude let’s check some of their lyrics too…

"Workshop Of The Telescopes"- Blue Oyster Cult, 1972

By silverfish imperetrix, whose incorrupted eye

Sees through the charms of doctors and their wives

By salamander, drake, and the power that was undine

Rise to claim Saturn, ring and sky

By those who see with their eyes close

They know me by my black telescope

"Subhuman"- Secret Treaties,1974

I am becalmed, lost to nothing

Warm weather and a holocaust

Left to die by two good friends

Abandoned me and put to sleep

Left to die by two good friends

Tears of god flow as I bleed

"Flaming Telepaths"- Secret Treaties,1974

Experiments that failed too many times

Transformations that were too hard to find

Poison's in my bloodstream, poison's in my pride

I'm after rebellion, I'll settle for lies

Yes I know the secrets of the iron and mind

They're trinity acts a mineral fire

Yes I know the secrets of the circuitry mind

It's a flaming wonder telepath

"Divine winds"- Cultosaurus Erectus, 1980

Anxious lovers, bums in the street

Jackals in waistcoats, men in sheets

Purple mountains, waves of grain

Grace of God, thy will be done

If he really thinks we're the devil, then let's send 'em to hell

"Lips In The Hills"- Cultosaurus Erectus, 1980

Up in the sky, beyond the chasm

My eyes behold, a rare phantasm

The godless night, the night that I saw [repeat as above]

I am gripped, by what I cannot tell

Have I slipped or have I merely fell

I've been tricked, my senses telling lies

I've been (stiffened?) by serpent's soundless cries

"The Siege And Investiture Of Baron Von Frankenstein's Castle At Weisseria"- Imaginos, 1988

On the terminal point

Of the cul-de-sac

Patients are dying

The horses are dazed

From the glare of stars

The starry wisdom

Owned by the Baron

And he's got the cure

A drug by the name of World Without End

Carved in Rosetta Stone

2013-04-21T00:50:00.002+03:00

Ok, Ladies and Gentlemen it seems I'm back, after feverous nights and everything that comes along...

UK goth band Rosetta Stone (formed in 1988) was a fabulous and important '90s goth band with a strong cult following back then. The "Quarriers" know...
It also happens to be the name of the most visited object at the British Museum, the one visitors see first as the enter the mighty building...
Let's see...

The real Rosetta Stone is an ancient Egyptian black granite monumental stele (flat vertical stone monument or column) inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V.
This fragment of a larger stele, was rediscovered near the town of Rashid (Rosetta) in the Nile Delta in 1799 by a soldier, Pierre-François Bouchard, of the Napoleonic French expedition to Egypt, who was checking building material for the construction of military fortification!
It is considered as one of the main findings that has enabled scientists, decode ancient egyptian hieroglyphs. This is mostly due to the fact that the inscribed decree appears in three scripts: the upper text is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion Demotic (late egyptian) script, and the lowest Ancient Greek. Because it presents essentially the same text in all three scripts (with some minor differences between them), it provided the key to the modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The text was written by a group of high-priests in Egypt to honour pharaoh Ptolemy V and lists all of the things that the pharaoh has done that were good for the priests cast and the people of Egypt.

British troops defeated the French in Egypt in 1801, and the stone came into British possession. Transported to London, it has been on public display at the British Museum since 1802!

One of the first to announce the complete deciphering of these inscriptions was french teacher and orientalist Jean-Francois Champollion in 1822. He happened to know Greek and Coptic at the time -Coptic being a Demotic related language- a fact that was important in finding out that all three texts were the same...

All those who have seen it know it's an impressive black piece of mystery...

Oh, by the way, the first word that Champollion was able to identify was "Cleopatra"...

Rosetta Stone today is also used in other contexts as the name for the essential clue to a new field of knowledge.

That's all for today folks!

Keep "an eye for the main chance"...

Southern Death Cult, Trager and a tragedy

2013-03-25T20:37:00.001+02:00

On December 29, 1890, near Wounded Knee Creek, in the Lakota (Sioux) Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, USA the last act of the American Indian Wars took part.

On the day before, a detachment of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment (the one that was defeated by indians on the famous Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876) commanded by Major S. M. Whitside intercepted a bunch of Sioux camped

in Wounded Knee Creek.

The Cavalry Regiment surrounded the encampment supported by four heavy machine guns.

On the morning of December 29, the troops went into the camp to supposedly disarm the Lakota. On pretext of denial of surrender by an elder indian, the 7th Cavalry opened fire indiscriminately from all sides, killing men, women, and children, as well as some of their own fellow troopers.

By the time it was over, at least 150 men, women, and children of the Lakota Sioux had been killed and 51 wounded (4 men, 47 women and children, some of whom died later); some estimates placed the number of dead at 300. Twenty-five troopers also died It is believed that many were the victims of friendly fire...

It was officially named a battle when it was obviously a massacre...

This is the story that lies behind the-at first weird-photo that Southern Death Cult used on the back cover of their firat 7"single Fatman/Moya in 1982 on Situation Two records (SIT19). Mind you that the same 12" that contained one more song had a completely different sleeve.

To complete the story, George Trager was the first photographer on the scene after the massacre. He took a number of images on January 3, 1891, as U.S. troops began collecting and burying bodies left on the field. This iconic image was entitled "Chief Big Foot Killed in the Battle at/ Wounded Knee/ with his Full Band by the/ 7th Cav. Dec. 28th, 1890/ Copyrighted Jun 1st 1891/ N.W. Photo Co., Chadron/ Neb."

Another still from this event displays, the also frozen corpses, of medecine-man Yellow Bird and -possibly- family. Remember that at he time photos like these served as means of anti -indian propaganda so note how the odd posture of the frozen corpses betrays the fact that they were turned over to cover the fact that many of them were shot at the back...

Peter revamps Bauhaus?

2013-03-09T01:21:00.000+02:00

Hello everyone!!!

Yes, I know I've been lost for a month...
Life, you see...
Peter Murphy's website http://www.petermurphy.info on the 3rd March uploaded the following exciting piece of info:

"PETER MURPHY ANNOUNCES THE MR. MOONLIGHT TOUR CELEBRATING 35 YEARS OF BAUHAUS

Murphy to tour North America and Europe performing only Bauhaus material."!!!

Check out for yourselves if you think I've been on acid for a month!

As also published on http://louderthanwar.com/peter-murphy-celebrates-35-years-of-bauhaus-uk-and-us-tour/, Peter Murphy has declared that: “Since 2006, I have included my Bauhaus work into my solo work as a way of tipping my hat to my own audience…those who discovered my early work as well as new and old fans of those years strong wishes to hear the music of my band crackle and spark in the live arena. Being the foremost advocate of this Bauhaus work, I decided the time was ripe to at last give a pure Bauhaus experience in one Mr. Moonlight world tour. Mr. Moonlight is alive and well, don’t doubt it.”

Check out tour dates and pick your destination!

I'll be following the silent hedges...

We can't afford to miss that, can we?...

Temptations, Love and Rockets

2013-02-09T00:47:00.002+02:00

In 1970 soul music legends, The Temptations released a psychedelia influenced, political song entitled "Ball of Confusion (That's what the world is today)" and reached no. 3 in the US charts ...

Several years later, in 1982 while goth was in full bloom (!) another soul music mega artist-turned top selling pop star did a cover of this. Tina Turner had this cover on a compilation album and from it's success, she relaunched her career and became who she became...

Our lot, got to know this track by the mighty Love and Rockets of course in their 1985 single 7" and 12" version! Oddly enough it became one of their more air played hits.

10 years later, in 1995, once neo-Romantics, pop superstars Duran Duran, also covered this track!
The most surprising version though, was by trash metal gods, Anthrax! It was released as a single to promote their Return of the Killer A's LP in 1999.

"and the band played on..."

New Zero God

2013-01-27T21:15:00.001+02:00

Hi Goths!

Greece's goth scene is to be followed closely as since the mid 2000's new things seem to happen and they are interesting.

I've recently posted an article on Remain in Light -which is a new act- and today it's about New Zero God.

NZG is the offspring of one of the oldest and most reknown Greek goth bands, Flowers of Romance and have recently released a new CD on UK's label Secret Sin records, entitled "MMXIII".

Here's the story in brief:

NZG was formed in 2006 in Athens, Greece, by MIKE POUGOUNAS on vocals and drummer DIMITRIS “Sidheog” STEVES.

As a four piece band, New Zero God released their debut album, “FUN IS A FOUR LETTER WORD”, after supporting The Legendary Pink Dots and Christian Death on stage.

In December, 2010, HARRIS STAVRAKAS joined the band as New Zero God's bassist. Many remember Harris from his days with Pougounas' original band, THE FLOWERS OF ROMANCE, and were thrilled when the announcement was made. Known for his unique bass techniques, the group exploded on stage during their new line-up premier in January 2011.

June and July of 2011 brought New Zero God onto the UK radio charts with their song, “KISS THE WITCH”, as cited by the UK’s Dominion Magazine. The band stayed on the UK radio charts for two months, and had a number of interviews and reviews in English, American, German, Italian, and Spanish magazines such as MUEN [USA], CARPE NOCTURNE [USA], DOMINION [UK], and TERRORIZER [UK], to name but a few.

On July 4, 2012, New Zero God saw the release of "Club Bizarre" [Secret Sin Records, UK]. This 7-track Limited-Edition Collector's EP was released with hand-made packaging, was hand-numbered, and production was limited to 100 copies. The CD sold out In less than two weeks.

Following on the heels of their UK release, on August 1, 2012, it was announced that Lao had joined New Zero God on guitars. Lao was a Flowers Of Romance member from 1985 to 1990, having been the original guitar player of the songs “Kashmir” and “Autumn Kids”. This new line-up is almost identical to The Flowers Of Romance line-up during their 1987 era. The only exception is for New Zero God's original drummer and co-founding member, Dimitris "Sidheog" Steves, who continues to be part of the backbone of the band's powerhouse status.

DISCOGRAPHY:

STUDIO ALBUMS

- Fun Is A Four Letter Word [Greece - 2010]

- Club Bizarre [UK - 2012] (Limited-Edition Collector's EP)

- MMXIII (UK - 2013)

SINGLES

- Second Chance [Digital - 2011] (Special Edition under New Zero God & Friends. ALL proceeds to benefit "H.A.W.C.", a Massachusetts charity organization).

During May '13 a special release came out under New Zero God (feat. Maxi Nil) titled “THE NIGHT CALLS YOUR NAME” with all proceeds to benefit "S.O.P.H.I.E.", a UK charity organization.

A new lineup quickly brought renewed creativity to the band and in October, 2013, they released the digital single version of "DESTINATION UNKNOWN".

Current line-up:

MIKE POUGOUNAS - Vocals, Keyboards, Tambourine DIMITRI "Sidheog" STEVES - Drums, Loops HARRIS STAVRAKAS - Bass APOSTOLOS TAKOS - Guitars

Check' em here:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/New-Zero-God

and see them here:

http://www.youtube.com/newZEROgodGR

Gothic rock bands and art Vol. 6 - (Red Lorry Yellow Lorry)

2013-01-14T18:15:00.002+02:00

Welcome to the 2013 new set of uploads...
Shall we proceed?

Once upon a time in 1988 the Lorries released the album “Nothing Wrong” out of which came a 7” and 12” single of the track “Nothing Wrong” on the now legendary Situation Two label.

On the back side of the sleeve one could read that the image displayed on the cover is a painting of born-German, turned-American painter George Grosz, entitled “L’hommage a Oskar Panizza”(1917-1918).

George Grosz was a very influential artist who witnessed first hand the first W.W. in 1914, the changes that the German Revolution of 1918 brought and the rise of Nazism.
In his drawings we can feel the violent social attack he launched against militarism, the clergy and the middle class in post WWI Germany. In many of his caricatural drawings he shows war battle grounds in all their atrocity displaying death parades, wounded soldiers and prisoners.

In 1916 in an act of refusal towards German nationalism he changed his name’s spelling from Georg Gross to the more english name under wwhich we now know him and spoke in English publicly just to provoke his countrymen!
His influences range from Jugendstil to Italian Futurism and later on he experimented with photomontages, Dada and Expressionism. After 1924, he was qualified as a New Objectivity artist.

"L’ hommage à Oskar Panizza" (1917-1918) was done using the technique of collage and using as blood red as the dominant colour.

It represents a hallucinatory disfigured madding crowd. In the left bottom corner the three sinister figures represent syphilis, alcooholism and pestilence while death triumphs at the middle of the composition.

The depicted human madness may bring in mind to some of you artists like Bosch or Bruegel.

Actually the paintings title comes from Oskar Panizza who was a psychiatrist and a -damned at his time- writer who himself was put behind bars for blasphemy, insubordination and defiance to the established order...

As you see things have not change really that much after a century!

Have a great day!

Caslon Antique fetish

2012-12-28T19:39:00.001+02:00

OK, gang, here's the last for 2012...

Among so many others, Leonard Cohen used it in 1974,

Bob Dylan used it in 1979,

The Clash in 1980,

Bauhaus used it for just one release in 1983,

Tones on Tail used it too for almost all their releases,

Rosetta Stone used it shamelessly!

But we all know it and became associated with goth due to the heavy and succesful use it found in the hands of the Sisters and Merciful Release label. Since then all true Goths (sic!) make a connection upon its sight.

Caslon Antique was designed by Bernie Nadal in 1894 as a tribute to prominent type founder William Caslon who designed fonts around the1720s.
Mr. Caslon was a gunsmith who used to engrave gun locks and barrels and was incouraged to create a type foundry in London in which he designed, now famous, for their legibility, fonts.

The most famous print using his font is of course the "United States Declaration of Independence" in 1776 (part of it!)
Nadal designed Caslon Antique to emulate the look observed on prints when consecutive printing, chipped and damaged metal type in the 18th century American print houses.

Other famous uses of it, include Lemony Snicket's book series "A Series of Unfortunate Events"

And the logo of the famed musical "Les Miserables"!

Have a great New Year's Eve folks!

See you next year...

A writer and the Nephilim

2012-12-15T00:36:00.003+02:00

It was around 1986 when a new great goth band emerged ...
A handsome post-apocalypric cowboy growled through amazing music, smoke and flour ; supported back then by a fantastic band...
The band's name was equally mysterious and you had to try to remember it...
Fields of the ... errr, something hebrew sounding, ending with -im...
We only later figured out that mr. McCoy was into something biblical and grim...
Where did he got this Nephilim idea, though?

I got the strong suspicion that he must have read more than one book by Zecharia Sitchin (July 11, 1920 - October 9, 2010).
Sitchin was an Azerbaijani-born American writer and a scholar who in the '60s and early '70s deciphered ancient Sumerian texts and developed a weird theory according to which men were descendants from ancient astronauts who visited earth, aeons ago in search of gold.

These gigantic creatures came as he claimed from the planet Nibiru (called "the twelfth planet"). They were a technologically advanced human-like extraterrestrial race called the Anunnaki in Sumerian myth, who Sitchin states are called the Nephilim in Genesis. They were also later associated with fallen angels.
Actually the sources told me that they were mentioned only twice in the Scriptures and in quite a confusing way...

According to Sitchin, ancient inscriptions report that the human civilization in Sumer, Mesopotamia, was set up under the guidance of these "gods". Primitive workers (Homo sapiens) were created by genetic engineering as slaves to replace them in the gold mines by crossing extraterrestrial genes with those of Homo Erectus.

Since the release of his first book The 12th Planet in 1976, now in its 45th printing(!), Zecharia Sitchin wrote seven other books as part of his Earth Chronicles series, and six other companion books, all of which are still in print. Sitchin's sold millions of copies worldwide and been published in more than 25 languages and gained a huge following worldwide.
In the mid 2000s though, when Sumerian text were better studied his theory, translations and astronomical calculations were found inaccurate... Mistakes and miscalculations saw the light and his work was credited as pseudoscience...
His fans though remained adamant on his side till today...
The hypothesis was far too good... and he inspired a wonderful band. Didn't he?

Thank you Mr. Sitchin!

Gothic rock bands and art Vo.5 (the March Violets)

2012-11-29T22:45:00.001+02:00

Teresa d'Avila was a 16th century Carmelite nun and a mystic who was canonised as a saint in 1622 by pope Gregory XV. She was famous for her mystic and meditation practices
through her books and also for the reformation she brought to the Carmelite nuns order.

Of her many portraits here's one by french painter Francois Gerard.

Santa Teresa as she became known, had ecstatic visions in which she felt what she referred to as "devotions of ecstasy" a state that she claimed brought her in direct unison with God. Around 1559 she had a strong vision of a seraphim visiting her.

Here's the description in her own words:

" I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it..."

Around 1650, the great Baroque architect and sculptor, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, made a monumental sculpture of the aforementioned episode in Santa Maria della Vittoria church in Rome. It was entitled: "The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa".

The piece was openly criticized from the very beginning since the overall body posture and facial expression of the saint, has strong allusions to sexual intercourse. Rivers of ink have since flown over the debate of Bernini's true intentions.

About 25 years later Bernini repeated the same posture and allusions on another sculpture, titled "Beata (blessed) Ludovica Albertoni" even more amplified !

The statue is in the Chapel of San Fransisco a Ripa also in Rome. Once more religious ecstasy resembles too much sexual climax.

And a detail of this very sculpture was used buy the March Violets to illustrate the cover of the , now highly collectible, 1983 single "Grooving in Green" on Merciful Release...

Remain in Light (new band)

2012-11-18T00:25:00.001+02:00

Let's hear some new music with old references...
I decided, every now and then, to briefly introduce new bands I consider interesting.
Click on grey text to hear tracks from this new gothic rock band Remain in Light I just discovered...
They claim to be from... Somewhere!
http://www.facebook.com/RemainInLightband

Nice logo too!

Gothic bands and art, vol. 4 (Sisters of Mercy) - Bacon Electric!

2012-11-02T12:24:00.001+02:00

I thought this was known stuff, but since you insist, Iet's see it.

The red image that decorates the Sisters 1982, 7" single "Body Electric/Adrenochrome" is a
monochromatic image of a Francis Bacon painting.

This art piece is entitled "Head VI" and was painted by the great Irish-born British existentialist artist in 1948. It is a part of a series named "Heads in a room" and it is a grotesque pictorial comment on Velazquez's portrait of Pope Innocent X made in 1644.

That's it. Interesting...
Stories within stories...
Art was a serious reference point for many traditional goth bands artwork.

The Mission of Calligraphy

2012-10-21T00:08:00.002+03:00

As I can't wait any longer to post it, I complete this while still in Amsterdam, my honorable readers...

Finally, who was responsible for the fantastic calligraphy on the Mission's "Carved in Sand" (+ singles) and "Grains of Sand" LP's, both out on 1990?

If you carefully look at the inner sleeve notes, it is accredited to DKB.
Behind this company name hides british graphic designer and now painter, Keith Breedan, born 1956.
Breeden along with Malcom Garret started working together in 1977 at Assorted Images design studio.
As can be read in his website info, he formed DBK in 1984 which is also responsible for sleeves for other 80's bands and artists like ABC, Talk Talk, Duran Duran, Cockney Rejects, Spear of Destiny, Bryan Ferry e.a.

The -now turned painter- designer is actually a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in Britain.
The particular script font that was used for the Mission purposes only, back then, was all exclusively handwritten with italian ink on paper.

There is no digital stock font version as far as I know yet and this endeavor remains to my eyes the finest typographic effort that gothic rock sleeves of the era, have ever provided us with. Fantastic stuff that the Mission have fortunately started using again!

Worth checking his website: http://www.keithbreeden.com
He is surprisingly enough, also responsible for the sculptures seen on Pink Floyd's "The Division Bell" cover and inlays in 1994.

Off to XXX...

2012-10-13T13:33:00.001+03:00

Hi everyone!
I'm still in Amsterdam for business and I 'll be back on the 20th...
Till then take a vintage picture to remember...

Gothic clubs of the 80's / The Joint

2012-10-01T11:58:00.001+03:00

A new series has begun here!
Old original gothic clubs of the 80's from around the globe (well, back then they weren't everywhere...)
If you wish to send material and pics from such clubs please, be my guest!
We start with a clipping I found in an old Zig-Zag issue from 1984!
The Joint in Milton Keynes. Imagine or remember!
Interesting playlist too...

Dead Can Dance's Resurrection

2012-09-25T00:33:00.000+03:00

DCD came back this year with an excellent LP titled "Anastasis"
Anastasis means "resurrection" in greek. It is quite striking how many things in this new LP
refer to Greece. Brendan plays bouzouki on the record and on stage and they cover an old greek "Rembetiko" song when live ("Ime prezakias" = "I'm a junkie").
Also "Kiko" is purely based on a "Zeibekiko" (greek traditional male dance) rhythm.
Additionally 3 more tracks from the LP bear greek words as titles.
Agape = "Love"
Anabasis = "Ascension"
Amnesia

Greece is on the charts again...!

Here's a shot from their recent concert in North Greece...

photo by Stef Diakaki

... and here's a handmade A4 poster from the summer of 1984 and a flyer for the same event...

Check the funny and enthusiastic comments for the upcoming Cabaret Voltaire gig on the poster's lower part...

Stay tuned!

The Southern/Death/Cult family tree

2012-09-16T21:05:00.000+03:00

A very big thanks to you all my dear readers, as we've now passed the 10.000 hits threshold...
Cheers to that!

OK back to business!
We all know that gothic rock sprang from people who were into '77 punk or related to it.
While digging in my collection I fell upon a Cult promo-cd, in which I discovered this
family tree folio.
It was compiled by a certain Pete Frame on the behalf of Beggars Banquet.
It is of great interest as one can see -beyond Cult fans-, details about other artists past lives!
(double click on it to read better)

Yes it's him! A certain mr. Morrissey was a punk singing for awhile, for the Nosebleeds in 1978 along with Billy Duffy!!! The legend goes that he was also one of the founding members of the legendary british Cramps fan club "Legions of the Cramped" !

Factory's -less known- solo artist Vini Reilly was also a Nosebleed punk guitarist!
He is the one in the scarlet dot...

Now for more hardcore S.D.Cult afficionados here's Theatre of Hate 's roster while it still
comprised Billy Duffy (far right) and Nigel Preston who after a short year in Sex Gang Children joined the Cult in 1983.

Ritual was the band that provided the Cult their first bassist (while a guitarist!)
photo by (probably!) Paul Rab John - am I right?

This is In Excelsis. Check the chart to see what they were about!

Here's Getting The Fear = S.D.Cult - Ian Astbury!
The main offspring of S.D.C. except for the obvious Cult.
Handsome aren't they here on the front cover of the notorious Zig-Zag mag back in May '84?
Thanks to Cactus Mouth Informer crew for that one!

That's for all for now!
Stay tuned...

Gothic bands and art vol.3 (Christian Death)

2012-09-02T20:18:00.001+03:00

We have talked about the great impression the Pre-raphaelites had on gothic rock imagery in previous posts.
Here's another example again on the same theme of Ophelia.
In 1985 Christian Death released an EP titled "The Wind Kissed Pictures".
On the cover a John Everett Millais painting against a dull red background. At least that's for the early vinyl pressings on the italian label Supporti Fonografici, as later the cover was changed...

The painting in question is indeed titled "Ophelia" and was painted between 1851-52 by one of the great artists of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, John Everett Millais. It's subject was taken by a description in the Shakespearean play "Hamlet". Ophelia's death has been praised as one of the most poetically written death scenes in literature.
As a model for the unfortunate daughter of Polonius, a girl named Elizabeth Siddal was used. The myth goes that another artist of the movement Dante Gabriel Rossetti was present when she posed in a hot bath at Millais studio for the purposes of this painting, and fell in love with her. She later became his muse and wife but her ill-health betrayed her soon...

The Pre-Raphaelites took their name due to their denial of the mature phase of Raphael works and their desire to depict nature in a more accurate way. That is obvious in this painting if you take a closer look at the vegetation details that surrounds the poor lady.
Some suggest that through the plants a careful eye can discern a hidden skull...

In 1995 Nick Cave w/ Kylie Minogue were inspired by the painting also as it's so obvious in the video of "Where the Wild Roses Grow"...
Check video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDpnjE1LUvE

Aleister, Mercury and Mephisto Walz

2012-08-24T23:34:00.000+03:00

Mephisto Walz are/were (?) an interesting US band formed by Barry Galvin, a former Christian Death member, in 1985. We 'll talk extensively on them some other time.
In 2003 they released a single "Nightingale" as a forerunner of their 2004 album "Insidious" on Fossil Dungeon records.
The cd version of this release had printed in the inlay and on the cd itself this symbol.

This very one is a mixture of two well known glyphs in the world of symbolism.
The first is of course the symbol of planet Mercury but also of the element, an ancient symbol for what the alchemists refer to as First Matter. It has been very often been used in goth band imagery. See it here along other planetary glyphs.

The second is the unicursal hexagram, a symbol that represents "a high level of self-confidence and belief that one can achieve the highest of goals and become a divine figure".

It is one of the most used glyphs by Thelema, the spiritual philosophy -now turned official religion- that occult magician and philosopher Aleister Crowley, a very controversial personality indeed, created in the early 20th century...

To complete for today see the inlay spreads of Mephisto Walz's maxi cd and note the wonderful cover...

Stay tuned for more!

Press material and gig ads (part 4)

2012-08-17T14:25:00.000+03:00

Here's some more clippings that may appeal to you:

Lets start with this 1981 two days festival in... Leeds of course!
Interesting to see less known gothic bands like Altered States figure here.
Note the presence of US bands like the mighty Wall of Voodoo.
Quite a mixture on this bill!

Same year and an odd bill with Talisman, psychobilly kings The Meteors and Jaz's gang...

This festival -associated with Amnesty International- remained to some peoples
memories as one of the finest Killing Joke live moments...

And to close with for now get some color - a funny add for a Play Dead live in 1984.
It looks bizzare and awkward I think, how Peter Saville's unmistakable style
for Manchester's Hacienda is used to promote a gothic band's concert...

The Danse Society logo (part VII)

2012-08-04T00:36:00.000+03:00

Danse Society was curiously an underrated act. They started as a Bauhaus influenced band only to display soon an array of great, dreamy sound-scapes that turned into great and haunting songs....
I repeat - they were great, they should have been BIG!
They formed in Barnsley, England around 1980 and through their short spanned early life (as they' ve reformed lately), they bore a strange symbol, that of a crown of thorns.

The crown of thorns was worn by Jesus on his final moments and in christian iconography it is often represented with the three nails of the cross.
Danse Society used it from 1982 to 1985. The members of the band who reformed around 2010 decided apparently that this symbol represents them so it is again to be seen in their current websites, shows and releases.

Their first release to bear it was the 12" of "Somewhere" in 1983.
It was also the main motif on the cover of their splendid LP "Heaven is Waiting in 1984.

I recently discovered an a christian children's colorbook with this very similar depiction of the crown!

See how it's used today by the band on their website: http://www.thedansesociety.co.uk/