The Art of Daftness

 I've been reading John Robb's history of goth music and culture, "The Art of Darkness". I was never a goth, but you can't trust me on that because nobody in this book, apart from Fields of the Nephilim's Carl McCoy, is a goth either. If The Sisters of Mercy are telling you they're not goths then frankly no one is. Apart from Carl McCoy. 

I was never a goth, but I was goth adjacent. I wore a lot of black and had sticky up hair. I was thin and pale, and would dearly liked to have cultivated a sense of mystery, though my personality precluded this. I listened to post-punk records, which were doomy and maudlin and aspired to literacy. I read a lot. If I could have decorated my bedroom with leather-bound first editions, drinking-skulls and velvet drapes spattered with candle-wax, I probably would have done. Though it's hard to get a single duvet cover in red velvet. 

But I also produced a drawing for the sixth form Yearbook of a skinny-limbed, shock-headed, charcoal smear of a man*, which I entitled "We Hate You Cure Head Bastards". This was projection - I'd been a fan of The Cure since "Japanese Whispers". I was putting away childish things. I was in denial. 

On Mondays in Martine's, Basingstoke's premier nite-spot (built into a multi-storey carpark) the indie kids were obliged to share their alternative night with heavy metal fans, resulting in absolutely no trouble ever, but barely any cross over either. The trenches were deep in the 80's. You knew your tribe by sight. It was surprisingly democratic: while we danced to "Sidewalking" by the Jesus and Mary Chain, the metallers would stand to one side, supping the venue's brackish lager, some of them dressed as US Admirals for some reason, waiting for us to troupe off when the DJ dropped Def Leppard's "Animal", so they could all stand in a circle playing air guitar. 

The DJ would play "Temple of Love" and five goths would peel themselves from the shadows and do that dropping-confetti-on-my-own-head dance they all did. I didn't dare join them, even though I secretly liked "Temple of Love" and "No New Tale To Tell" and "Away" by The Bolshoi. "She Sells Sanctuary" by The Cult was safe, for some reason. As was "Happy House" by the Banshees, perhaps because those records were genuinely irresistible. You'd dance, sure. But you didn't make eye contact. There was shame, reproach. The trenches, as I say, were deep. 

This level of sophisticated bigotry seems lost on John Robb in "The Art of Darkness", mainly because he throws it all out. For him, practically everything ever was goth. The Doors? Sure. Des Esseintes from A Rebours? Quintessentially goth. Johnny Marr? Why not? Any band from the 70's and 80's who had cheekbones and ideas? They're all swirling about in goth's gumbo. Which is why we get the extensive testimony of Marco from the Ants (he admittedly played with the Banshees in their first show). Robb's not really that interested in goth, per se. This is a book about post punk, where the author is smart enough to realise that goth is both a sexier genre name and a moveable feast. Practically anything can be said to be either goth or an enabler of goth, if you just wish really, really hard. 

This is a really big, sprawling book, and Robb seems to have talked to everyone still standing from the punk and post punk era. But there's no thesis here beyond "if they wore black and listened to Bowie they were goth." Anything goes. Its a road map of (mainly) the North of England, and the various bands that were playing those cities around that time. New Model Army get a chapter, as do Dead or Alive. There's a lot about Adam and the Ants and Joy Division. Bowie's name is dropped on every other page. It's just a big rambling mess of stuff, loosely tied together. If you're interested in listening to a lot of men in theirs 60's telling you how revolutionary they were because they played guitar at the F Club in Leeds, well, this book has got hundreds. 

I was initially annoyed with "The Art of Darkness". Perhaps I'm being reductive, but I was expecting more of an examination of goth as a cultural phenomenon. I'm less interested in bands like The March Violets than fans of The March Violets. Who are they? How did they spring up like midnight mushrooms, in clumps and in secret, all over the country. What did they dye their hair with? Where did they get their clothes? Who decided Snakebite and Black was the way to go? Where did that dance come from? And why is goth not going away? All the other tribes have dwindled to nothing, but goth manages to command major European festivals. This is only one of three books being published on goth this year. Why is it so endlessly resilient? There are no books about "shambling bands" coming out. They don't even have a proper name. Maybe it is the name. Goth is a proper thing: you know it when you see it. So why isn't it here in this book? Where are these people? 

I say I was initially annoyed with the book but that fell away in time, because this is one of the funniest books I've ever read. Once you acclimatise yourself  to Robb's prose-style, you can just strap yourself in, safe in the knowledge that you'll probably pass out before he really starts to accelerate. His writing is all relentless, slapdash forward motion, vague, puppyish hyperbole is the order of the day. You can imagine him asking after each sentence "You know what I mean though, yeah?" 

It's very funny. He spatters the page in the same adjectives over and over again: everything is "dark" "intense" and "iconic". The descriptions have the reasonably accurate grouping of words dictated but not read back. You get the gist, and as long as it sounds fast, dramatic and punk, job done. 

Sentences like: "They combined the riotous intensity of punk with a heavy groove undertow and wild-eyed apocalyptic vocals, splicing the two with a chainsaw guitar," appear on every page.        

Then there are these three lines on Siouxsie and the Banshees: "Siouxsie would remain the fledgling scene's most iconic presence while treating it with a lofty disdain. It was an uncomfortable relationship for the unwitting icon. Despite this disparity and the band's refusal to to be trapped, Siouxsie remained the number one style icon for the new scene."

Or this, on obvious goths, Manic Street Preachers: "By now the band's iconic guitar player Richey Edwards was in a fragile mental state with dark clouds gathering over his head. His intensity and darkness affected the music, and his often obtuse and impassioned lyrics and worldview hung over the album."

There's this perfect description of All About Eve: "Like Fleetwood Mac with a twist of Kate Bush and a romantic twist of the gothic shackled to a rockier chassis, they found their own successful space."

Or "One thing's for sure; Pete Burns would never be boring!"

It's Alan Partridge doing his own PR, changing "the best of my output" to "the cream of my discharge". 

It's the level of a fanzine, but a fanzine that costs twenty five quid in paperback! Bad enough there are typos and dropped words on every page, but some of it's just wrong. Alan Moore is referred to as an (of course) "iconic comic book artist". There are four listed editors for this book. Were they unpaid interns? Were they fictional constructs? Is this whole book a post modern conceit? Have I been shilled like the rube I am? 

I've rarely been so annoyed by a book which has something to make me laugh on every page. If it were a film it would be "so bad it's good". As a book, it's something I want to lend to all my friends. You have to read this. It's AMAZING. **

There's a great book to be written about goth, and this one has an abundance of interviews with people who were there and often people who were just passing by. There is a wealth of information, personal recollections, local pubs and clubs, route roads out of Bradford. This is a mass observation of goth. It's a tremendous achievement of information gathering. This is an archive. But its not the great book. Maybe Lol Tolhurst's will be. He, at least, was a goth. 

Though he'll deny it. 

*It was a total Ralph Steadman rip off too

** This back-fired. They all thought it was amazing.