Oh My Goth! ~ Then & Now

Image by ME!

Back in January, I blogged about some ideas I'd had for Some Dark Romantic. I'd built it as a platform for my author persona, as a way to connect with folks who might get a kick out of the kooky romances I like to write. In my first year of blogging I made loads of great connections with other bloggers, which is le awesome, but I felt perhaps I was drifting from my bloggy purpose, just a wee bit. So I considered who I am, as a writer and as a person. I strongly identify with being a Goth Mom (Lite!) and decided I should expand on the Goth part of this self-conferred title.


I got into the alt rock back in the early 80s, when more traditional rock was being tsunamied by the "new wave/post-punk" movement in music. Beginning with the New Romantics, Duran Duran, with whom I fell in love, I grew to dig Depeche Mode, Blondie, Ministry, New Order, Yaz, Love and Rockets, B-52s, Sisters of Mercy, Siouxsie Sioux and the Banshees, The Smiths, and The Cure, to name just a very few. I eschewed the bright, bubblegum pop of the day for the synthy, bassy, often dark and spooky vibes I caught from the above, as well as other bands I heard on my favorite New York radio station, WLIR (the station that DARED to be different).

Oh, to go back in time and even out those bangs!

My closest friends, who were all about the Doc Martens and black eyeliner, could take the train into Manhattan to hang out in Greenwich village. Those chicks got the cool stuff from thrift shops and whatnot, and really got properly into the Goth lifestyle. Not I. I was very, very, very sheltered. I couldn't go anywhere that wasn't school or family related, so I never got to hang in the village and kick it Goth style, as I'd have liked. I did the best with what little I had. I wore dark colors and vivid red lipstick. I strove to spike my hair but wound up less Siouxsie Sioux and more Generic Big 80s Hair (as evidenced by this pic from my senior year of high school). I wrote songs and short stories about sex. (This hasn't changed.)

Anyway, my Goth sensibilities were more about the music and fantasies than about a particular look, though I was so well known in my family for wearing mostly black that a cousin once remarked of me, "There she goes...always appropriately dressed for a funeral." Like I said, I didn't have the opportunities (or freedom) to experiment, so I did what I could and shrugged off the rest. I stuck with the black, mixed it up with blood red accents, and pressed on with long, sweeping skirts and dark, smutty thoughts.

Goth Mom Lite today...my, what an unfortunate nose...

Then I had my kid and life changed. A lot. I went from marriage to separation to single-motherhood to having to settle-the-fuck-down, put-aside-my-dreams, and provide-for-my-child, in what now seems a heartbeat. I suppressed a lot; in fact, I still do. But the wanna-be Goth Chick within yearns to break free. I continue to don the dark garb and paint my lips red, but in a manner which might now be termed "Corp Goth," or Corporate Goth. I'm not as nattily attired as some Corp Goths, though (money's tight with The Kid at college and I've got loads of single-mom debt). But, again, I do what I can with what I've got. I look forward to the day when I can let my inner Morticia cut loose. (I look forward to this like you just wouldn't believe...) I console myself with the thought that she's in there, just biding her time, and that she's always been with me, even if only in the deepest, darkest recess of my heart.

Dark Romance #7 ~ "Be With You" by The Jack Rubies

Image info below.

I dunno what I was reading online the other day, but as my eyes took in the words, "...hung, drawn, and quartered," the gears of my brain cranked to life. That'd tickled the memory of some long-forgotten song, one I could have heard only on my most beloved alternative radio station, WLIR (the station that dared to be different!). And in a rush it all came back to me—those words were used in the opening line of Be With You by The Jack Rubies, back in 1987.

I immediately scrambled to the Interwebs to see what I could dig up but, apart from a fan-made video with unpleasantly distorted audio, a fan-made vid with better audio but cut short just after a couple of minutes, and this myspace page which I think must also be fan-made, I got bupkis. There's no official band Web site or page and, alas, it seems the poor lads have faded into obscurity, though the warm words of fellow fans of the tune, devilhoppin and Dan Seeger, and this hater's backhanded praise, have given them some little presence online.

Apparently taking their name from the guy who murdered the assassin of JFK, the British band (::swoons::), led by chocolatey-voiced (woof) singer Ian Wright, melted my heart with Be With You, back in the day. Check out the lyrics:

To be hung, drawn, and quartered
would be uncomfortable and awkward
but a fate I would endure to be with you.

You see, my idea of torture
is not a beating of the harshest order,
but the day when I'll no longer be with you.

And I hope the hour never comes
when you leave the table and I pick up the crumbs.
And I hope I never see the day
when you leave the table and I put your plate away.

To be drowned in murky water
would, of course, make my life shorter
but I would gladly sink below to be with you.

And then it just basically lathers, rinses, and repeats.

The dark romance of it all:

1. Yes, those lyrics are melodramatic (and, to me, adorably goofy), but being hung, drawn, and quartered ain't no walk in the park, y'all. And I'm damned if I don't want the right fella to feel this way about me.*
2. Did I mention the velvety vocal stylings of Ian Wright? (OK, from time to time he dances around the melodic line like it's got the cooties, but still...) ::shudders with dark delight::
3. The band's British—that automatically makes them sexaaaaay. (Don't question me on this; just learn it, live it, and love it!)
4. Hearing Be With You again inspired a dramatic, dark, and romantic series of "scenes" for one of my WIPs, currently titled There Are Monsters.
5. This groovalicious tune took me back to the "me" who spiked her hair, spritzed Poison on her wrists, and dreamed of a future in which she made magic. Given my recent batches of crises, this was a much-needed reminder.

*Even though I'm romantic enough to want to reclaim my long-shelved dreams, I'm pragmatic enough to understand that folks aren't guaranteed soul-mates. I don't believe I've been called by God/fate/the Universe to experience a true, enduring, passionate romantic love, which makes it all the more imperative for me to get on with realizing my creative visions, wouldn't y'all agree?

Because the video I'd found on YouTube had such badly distorted sound, I decided to buy a used copy of the CD (which is out of print, le suck) and see if I could make my own vid (a first for me!). Unfortunately, the audio on the CD, for this song at least, is also distorted. It sounds perhaps marginally better than the one on the 'Tube, so I'm uploading it here. Raspy audio notwithstanding, hope you can enjoy the jangly goodness as much as I do:

Image info: Eternal Spring by Rodin, chillin' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, pic inexpertly snapped by me.

The Dark Romance of N...

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Need You Tonight ~ INXS
This is another song I absolutely fell in love with in late 1987. It froze me in place the first time I heard it, and I remember thinking then, at that very moment of immobility, that a) the thing that first attracts me to a man is his voice, and b) it would be a spectacular hit. And it was.

Natural One ~ Folk Implosion
Now, this tune came off the soundtrack for an incredibly disturbing film called Kids, which I haven't watched in its entirety because I simply can't make myself do it - not because it's bad, but because I can't stomach the subject matter. Nonetheless, the song's lush, insistent bass line works its mojo on me (as any sultry bass line will) and I can't help digging this tune. Curiously, whenever I hear it I think of British actor Jeremy Northam, who, I am sure, would disavow any connection to the song and, perhaps, carefully back away from me whilst discreetly reaching for his mobile phone and dialing 911 (or 999, if this were to go down in the UK). There's no reasonable explanation for this association, so you'll have to make do with an unreasonable one - I believe that this song was getting a lot of airplay on my beloved local alt rock radio station, WLIR (now defunct but still available online, thank GOD!), around the time Emma came out (which starred the very man himself as the dreamy Mr. Knightley). Anyway, I'm linking a trippy fan video, below, because the official one's kinda gross and I want nothing to detract from the woof! factor of the song.

Nothing Lasts Forever ~ Specimen
A horrifying realization struck me over the weekend: namely that, for a self-proclaimed Goth Mom, I'd included precious little in the way of proper Goth Rock in these Blogging from A to Z Challenge posts. Next came an existential crisis in which I questioned whether I was more Goth or Rock Mom and how, if I'd been wrong about my Goth-nicity, I could carry on living. I took a bad turn and, a few shots of Godiva Chocolate Liqueur later, resolved my cognitive dissonance with the conclusion that, though my taste in music runs more toward the Rock, my sensibilities are more Goth, so I'm good. Mental breakdown averted, I fished through my memory banks for a Goth tune, so as to even out the scales a bit, that would be in keeping with my A to Z theme. Unfortunately, the ones that came to mind were for letters already done - HOWEVER, this song growled at me from the depths of my poor tortured psyche. I'm not 100% sure what it's about (and I can't find lyrics for it anywheres), though it's got a line about "...flying like a moth into the flame...", so that's hot, right? (Like, literally?) Plus, the guitar and bass are all le rawr rawr, which satisfies me.

The song itself does not run as long as the video clip.