I was a teenage goth but now I wear my eyeliner on the inside...

[shadowplay]

So through work I've been asked to make up playlists but I didn't realise that they were for fucking Spotify which I don't do and in any case I looked and they didn't even have the first song so I gave up right there and therefore I'll just post them here for you to all laugh at as ye olde fashioned youtube playlists.

Anyway was supposed to be a 2 part series of PL's that reclaim the G word and essentially meant to create a sort of synesthesia of burnt Elnett, kohl pencil shavings, budget foundation, snakebite and black, amphetamine sulphate and Boots 17 lipstick...gilded with the ever present threat of Old Man Shadowplay forcing the door open with a priest in tow to check if it was time for my exorcism.

I was indeed a teenage goth...essentially before the word was even in everyday use and while I'd still stand by my man on all of these, they were a corner of my listening and DJing to 6 people and a vicar back in the early 80's (a few post 85 escapees excepted) and a bit later on when I was let loose playing records in a real club but all the minimal wave and industrial stuff is still in the metaphorical black box for another day, as is 'air quotes' more traditionally filed post punk.

When I set out to do this I decided to go pure and not be revisionist and try to essentially put together what you'd have heard preloading in my bedroom or what I'd have put on a couple of C90's if you had the misfortune of being my girlfriend in my early to mid teens, so I've kept the dumbness sealed within, as Coil nearly put it.


I was a teenage goth but now I wear my eyeliner on the inside.

The Danse Society - There Is No Shame In Death
Bauhaus - Bela Lugosi's dead 12"
Pink Industry - Is This The End
Cindytalk - The Spirit Behind the Circus Dream
Dalis Car - Cornwall Stone
And Also the Trees - Shantell
Virgin Prunes - Decline and fall
Sex Gang Children - Dieche
Bourbonese Qualk - Born Left Hearted
Bunnydrums -Too Much Time
The Cure - Siamese Twins
Schleimer k - Cold Sounds
Siouxsie and The Banshees -Red over White
The Lines - The Landing
Dead Can Dance - Threshold
Cocteau Twins - All But and Ark Lark
Xmal Deutschland - Geheimnis
Red Lorry Yellow Lorry - Talk About The Weather
Ausgang - Head On
UK Decay - Werewolf
Skeletal Family - Trees
Modern English - Mesh and Lace
Christian Death - Sleepwalk
Flesh For Lulu - Roman Candle
The March Violets - Snake Dance Extended
In Two a Circle - Rise
Play Dead - Shine
The Cassandra Complex - One Millionth Happy Customer
Tones On Tail - Performance
Death In June - The Calling (Mk II)
This Mortal Coil - Sixteen Days/Gathering Dust
Killing Joke - follow the leaders
The Flowerpot Men - Jo's So Mean (to Josephine)
Dormannu - Degenerate 12"
Cranes - Focus Breathe
Clock DVA - Buried Dreams
The Sisters Of Mercy - Afterhours
James Ray & The Performance - Edie Sedgwick
Solid Space - A Darkness in My Soul
Danielle Dax - Pariah


I was a teenage goth but now I wear my eyeliner on the inside; Eurorail Edition


Self explanatory...it's the sort of stuff Nigel Farage warned you about...

Fra Lippo Lippi - Sense Of Doubt
La Bambola Del Dr Caligari - Deep Skanner
Winter Light - Always Unique
Clan Of Xymox - A Day
Jeunesse D'Ivoire - A Gift Of Tears
Trisomie 21 - The Last Song
The Asylum Party - Julia
Moral - Whispering Sons
Siglo XX - La Vie Dans La Nuit
Grauzone - Raum
Flesh And Fell - Hunger
Secret Life - Witches
Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft ‎ - Kebap Träume
Malaria! - l'll Be Your Only One
Cortex - Animals Looking at me
The Leather Nun - Slow Death
The Neon Judgement - TV treated
Isolation Ward - Illusions
Xmal Deutschland - Autumn
The Names - This is Harmony
Victrola - Game of Despair
Poésie Noire - Love Is Colder Than Death
Kirlian Camera - No One Notice Them
Berntholer - My Suitor
The Schmutz Sisters - La Folle
Bel Canto - White-Out Conditions

So...thoughts, criticisms and answers on a postcard of a bat...to....I was a teenage goth but now I wear my eyeliner on the inside

mild edit because the lady of the house was listening to the first one on her ipod as she worked and told me 'take that song off I don't like it'... normally I'd thumb my nose at Maleficent but in this case she was probably right.

D

[Ceylon]

Thank you kindly. Goth is a genre I only ever skimmed, there's like 5 of these songs I've heard before, and this is (I take it) a great sampler/primer to gain a deeper understanding of what it really was.

Also welcome back, for however brief a time you're here.

[Jaguar018]

I am fascinated by the whole goth thing. It was all completely over my head at the time, as I was slightly younger, insulated, and fairly clueless; neither of my older siblings picked up on it as they were 'too old' for that ideal goth window. I remember 'the older kids' were into it at my high school; it's interesting to see it all now with slightly better understanding.

[tade]

Good selection, there are a few bands there I hadn't listened for years and some others I had never heard about, it's always great to discover new (old) bands from that era.

[FrankRay]

Good list.
Although Leather Nun are strictly verboten in this house.

I vaguely remember dancing to Nag Nag Nag, There is no love between Us 12" and Sex Dwarf at my local batcave, all of which sound pretty goth to me, although perhaps not. Anyway, I'll be checking some of these out when I get the time. Still love Shantell. Great band.

[dinosaurkale->]

this is a bit up my alley...

"Calling MK II" is my jam.

lotta bangers on this list

[elektrovac]

Wonderful lists. The soundtrack to my teenage years - plus some new gems for me :-)

Can I suggest adding 'Marble Station' by Danish band Sort Sol to the Nigel Farage list? It was out on 4AD in 1980 and it's great

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAxecpFBT_M

[shadowplay]

Good list.
Although Leather Nun are strictly verboten in this house.

I vaguely remember dancing to Nag Nag Nag, There is no love between Us 12" and Sex Dwarf at my local batcave, all of which sound pretty goth to me, although perhaps not. Anyway, I'll be checking some of these out when I get the time. Still love Shantell. Great band.

I danced to the same songs and Cabaret Voltaire are one of my absolute favourite bands but when I was asked to do this I had it at the back of my mind that I'd do an electronic/industrial one and attendant Euro into EBM one. By the time I was kicked out the house at 16 stuff like Cabaret Voltaire, Hula and Portion Control was more the sort of stuff I wanted to play at the two goth nights I was playing records at. Sadly management and the punters had other ideas and I was sentenced to playing stuff I hated multiple times due to requests right up until I refused, was sacked and started my own night where I'd look down my nose at requests for even some of the records I'd chosen above and also refuse to be called the G word but ive mellowed.

I kinda reconciled with early and mid teen me a few years back when friends of mine who dated in the 80's got together again after thirty years apart and begged me to play a wedding set they'd have heard back in 1984. Sounds horrendous but it was an amazing night and a reminder that I met Lady S in a goth club when she requested a song and took the hump when I refused and played something else. Was really weird recreating something and these seeing your kids and even more weirdly Old Man Shadowplay up dancing to Body Electric through a fug of strobed dry ice.

Wonderful lists. The soundtrack to my teenage years - plus some new gems for me :-)

Can I suggest adding 'Marble Station' by Danish band Sort Sol to the Nigel Farage list? It was out on 4AD in 1980 and it's great

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAxecpFBT_M

Marble Station is on my paper list, somehow it drank too much snakebite and missed the taxi. I'll add it later.

As is the way with these this I've forget loads, I was looking at at least two Artery tracks and Message from a Dead man by Flight Commander Solitude and the Snake which is one of my secret tunes.

Btw I should really explain the second list. My family did not take foreign holidays, preferring to torture me with holidays to (Hell adjacent) Butlins up until I refused to go. However I craved the European experience and found the only way I could travel then was through the order book at the record shop I worked in and I blind bought a lot of Eurogoth and paid foreign traveling friends to bring me something back, revelling in the perceived chicness of some of it as well as the bonkers surprises like The tape by Secret Life (which was one of the holiday buys).

D

[shadowplay]

btw part deux; The Revenge

I learned to play guitar to this shit much like some blooze daddy hears Page or Clappo in his minds eye when he picks up a guitar and thinks what it should sound like, I hear Xmal, or early DCD, Cocteaus or Joy Division or fucking Clan of Xymox when I think what an electric guitar or bass sounds like (same with me liking drum machine over drums most of the time).

I think the guitarist in Second Still (possibly named after a Modern Eon song) totally fucking nails it, the bass player too. When I listen to them, even as someone wary of nostalgia, I'm back in my early 80's drum machine and flanger set to kill goth band with female singer. Take ]Try not to Hide for example, it's just got 'it' or Strangers which is a portmanteau of all the right stuff. Derivative but somehow totally kicking through the wall and out the other side.

Some cool live stuff;

older material;Second Still live on PressureDrop.tv

newer more synth and less 'canon' material; Second Still - Full session | Highway Holidays TV

As I said earlier I've kinda reconciled myself with my teen gothdom, even to point where me and the youngest Shadowplay kids mess about playing Snake Dance or whatever as an ensemble, purely for a laugh, something I'd never have considered in the past. Same with revisiting the music in a club as a block and not just the odd song, I've been asked to do it quite a lot and always turned it down by I might even say yes next time.

You know one of the things I've noticed about new goth/post punk bands is that the ones that do a lot of dressing up in a distantly related but worse style than I did in the early 80's are always shite, while the backcomb free likes of Tropic of Cancer rise like cream to the top. Back then it seemed you could spend a lot of time on your hair and makeup and still get shit done but these days...not so much and unlike the old days I'm able to swim out the fishnet uncaught. I'd also say that more often than not the fully begothed ones aren't even goth like I'd understand it but fucking heavy metal...which really won't do.

D

[FrankRay]

Personally I find the older i get the less difference I can hear between metal punk goth and rock. I mean, Communication Breakdown could easily be a Ramones song, whilst Shadowplay could (almost) be a Black Sabbath track.
I think I.m virtually reconciled to it all just being music.
Sort of.