Punk & Post-Punk - Goth Histories, Jun 2024

When Goth emerged as a post-punk music genre and subcultural style in the late 1970s and early 1980s, its references to the past included nineteenth-century Gothic literature and classic Hollywood ‘monster movies’ such as 1931’s Dracula starring Bela Lugosi. Less discussed, however, is Goth’s inclusion of 1960s culture into its repertoire. While the 1960s are often synonymous with the Mod joys of ‘Swinging London’ and the cheerful flower power of San Francisco, it was also a period marked by the popular Hammer Horror films and the real-life terrors of the Moors and Manson Murders. As children of the 1960s, Goth’s originators could not help but reference the sights and sounds that shaped their childhoods. In this light, the music produced by bands such as Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Cure, Bauhaus, The Sisters of Mercy conjure a darker side of that decade. This article assesses how the original wave of Goth musicians drew upon the 1960s to invent a dark psychedelia for a new generation of youth.

1980s post-punk and Goth promised a break from traditional, male-dominated band structures. However, even subcultures that trumpeted alternative roots struggled to embrace diversity. Where I hoped to transcend boundaries and find space to be different, I was disbelieved, overlooked, uncredited and not taken seriously – by both lesbians, Goths and feminists. (‘You can’t be a feminist if you dress like that’ and ‘you’re too sexy to be a lesbian.’). How does one forge resistance and persist when an outsider amongst outsiders? This reflective article focuses on issues of being queer/other in the alternative musical culture of the 1980s and beyond.

This article addresses the subcultural imagery deployed in the neo-burlesque communities, through the ways UK performers access the costume, iconography and spectacle of Goth, Gothic and horror. Taking several performances from recent events as case studies (Joe Black, Rosie Lugosi), I maintain that a critical intersection of burlesque and Goth(ic) allows for a reconsideration of both genres. I also suggest that the cabaret and burlesque scene complicates ideas of belonging in subculture, despite the popular narrative that subcultures such as Goth are overwhelmingly welcoming to minorities. Given how both Goth and Gothic are traditionally located in the realm of the unconscious, or the taboo, I also maintain that gender performance is central to any discussion of these artists, with onstage scenes including gender non-conformity, monstrous beauty, and fetish. I maintain that the use of music and costume choice (with especial reference to the films of Tim Burton), suggest a homage to Goth(ic) culture, whilst also satirising the practices and iconographies popularly associated with that community. Finally, addressing the post-COVID-19 climate and the precarity of live performance and health/well-being, I address how far the apocalyptic Gothic has influenced the content of neo-burlesque shows.

A sign which regularly appears on the door of St Mary’s Church in Whitby, North Yorkshire, alerts visitors that Dracula is not buried in the churchyard. Dracula arrives in Whitby in Bram Stoker’s fiction, exits the stage and finally turns to dust near his Transylvanian castle. The sign, however, underscores Dracula’s enduring association with Whitby, forged by Stoker’s visit to the town in the summer of 1890. Just over one hundred years after Stoker’s visit, Jo Hampshire, a Goth from Barnsley, West Yorkshire, inspired by Dracula’s association with the town, arranged a Goth visit to Whitby, after posting an advertisement in NME magazine. The gathering launched what would become Whitby Goth Weekend (WGW). Thirty years after Hampshire’s visit, Whitby attracts a range of Goth/ic tourists, a term which here denotes Goths, the subcultural movement dating from the 1970s, and those who are attracted to the Gothic from literary tourists to Instagrammers. The article explores how Whitby, particularly its East Cliff, inspired by Stoker’s vision, operates as Goth/ic tourist space and, in particular, how it presents and is experienced as Goth/ic theatre. It reads the Whitby passages from Dracula in the context of Stoker’s experience of Gothic and melodramatic performance at London’s Lyceum theatre where Stoker worked as business manager. It traces the establishment of WGW in 1994, its evolution and adaptation in the age of social media, and how Whitby has developed to become a place of Goth/ic experience, performance and cultural contestation.

Feminist musicology has studied and questioned the dynamics of power, privilege and discrimination that have developed in the history of popular music due to gender. In line with these contributions, there is an intention of recovering the memory and value of the first Goth group formed entirely of women in Vigo (Galicia, Spain): Voces de Ultratumba. The quality of their music, performance, lyrics and activism is not referenced as it should be in the collective imagination, which is unaware of its existence. The documented record is very scarce since its formation in 1984, as opposed to the amount of information about mixed groups or male bands of that time. Thus, after digitizing newspaper articles and live material, data collection was also performed by biographical-narrative methodology of life history. Its three original members – Chus Taboada, Marisé Izquierdo and Eva Izquierdo – were interviewed and their discourse was analysed through grounded theory (GT). Historical press was also consulted. The details of this analysis are presented in this article. The results of it indicate that, despite the political, musical and social openness that Spain was going through after the death of the Dictator Francisco Franco on 20 November 1975, gender roles continued to operate even in the underground scene, where the political–musical experiences of dissident identities were left out of official Goth history.

Review of: Nefarious Artists: The Evolution and Art of the Punk Rock, Post-Punk, New Wave, Hardcore Punk and Alternative Rock Compilation Record, 1976–1989, Welly Artcore (2023)

Ticehurst: Earth Island Books, 414 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-91686-412-2, p/bk, £24.99

Review of: Zerox Machine: Punk, Post-Punk and Fanzines in Britain, 1976–88, Matthew Worley (2024)

London: Reaktion Books, 360 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-78914-859-6, p/bk, £20

Review of: Darker with the Dawn: Nick Cave’s Songs of Love and Death, Adam Steiner (2023)

Edinburgh: Rowman & Littlefield, 327 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-53816-035-0, h/bk, £25

Review of: Throbbing Gristle: An Endless Discontent, Ian Trowell (2023)

Bristol: Intellect, 284 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-78938-829-9, p/bk, £29.95