"It's like Halloween all year round" - Club Intrusion at the Cellar 10/06/08

Remember that story a month ago in the news? 'Ignorant, chav sons-of-bitches beat to death Goth Girlfriend' - just when you thought Britain was becoming reasonably civilised, white trainers kick your hopes firmly into the cold ground. Then, as if to make a side, the Daily Mail produces an article about Emo culture and its apparent push of suicide and dark arts. It all particularly depressed me, how was this kind of close-minded thing still occurring? Britain is jammed with so many different types of people with so many pockets of culture dotted around. "Dare to be different"; evidently the word 'dare' is now underlined. In any sense, why Goths and Emos specifically? I myself have been guilty of similar dislike of the culture in the past. They always seemed to me as immature, self absorbed over-romantics with whiny poetry. Interesting how much appearance dictates our views of people. I have my own experiences in this. Why, a few nights ago I managed to piss off numerous morons in a Reading drum and bass night, simply by looking like some geeky hippy. The time had come to transverse the Goth culture, move among them. Observe and see how the culture opporates(in it's long and continuing run of 25 years). I enlisted the aid of an associate for the evening; we'll call him Robby, after Robert Smith. Shit! Robby's brought out the eyeliner. Still unpredictable after all these years...

'Going Goth' - The Undercover Plan:
Pull every item of black clothing out of the wardrobe... put on "Cheer up Emo Kid" T-shirt, baggy black trousers and remove all beads and brightly coloured accessories... better leave on the studded wristband. Concert Tails? No no no, something less dramatic... eyeliner, of course... ill like a heroin addict or struggling theatre performer. Smeer wax into the hair... always put in much more than is necessary... spike it tall... now you're set! Looking... good? Maybe that's not the idea? Like punk, dress to offend... or at least dress to weird-out... the general public... they make sure they get a good look at you. You become "that kind of person"... a freak, a weirdo, a fuck-up... everyone is behind their social wall of normality... they fear what they do not understand.

And so off we went. Two sunken eyed night dwellers on the 'dignified' Oxford town. We stopped at the park for a pre-drink spliff to find a snobby, collar and tie, raaahhh party situated by the river bank. They'd gone through the trouble of erecting a tea-and-cakes tent and placing burning torches around it, virgins will be sacrificed. Some terrible glances in our direction, just ignore them and keep writing. "So this is what they spend their money on" I mention to Robby getting even more scrutinising looks - stub out that spliff I think, we're on the streets now. After gurgling down pints of cider at The White Horse, a tiny pub opposite the Sheldonian Theatre, we made our way to the Cellar for a smoke outside and to observe the various characters entering. Ahh, there's Edward Sissorhands, Tim Burton would be pleased. A green faced girl wearing a bed sheet and a lengthy jet-black wig approaches us. "I assume you're supposed to be the ghostly, lady person from 'Jane Eyre' by Charlotte Bronte?" I ask her.
"Who?" she replies, and pushes her long wig over her face immediately making her character known to us.
"The girl from the Ring!" she shouts. "Who needs books when you come out of a TV!" Quite literally, yes.
Edgar Allen Poe gets a brief mention from a sickly looking Coleridge Taylor called Andy, a guy Robby works with. Another well built, bearded gentlemen with a red devil face strolls past, he is to be confronted by a drunken Robby later in the evening - "You're spiderman! You're spiderman!" to which the bearded one replies: "No! I'm Not! I'm not Spiderman!" No alternate was given to us however. It's true Robby, Spiderman did go a bit "Emo" in the last film.
There is the traditional selection of Goth individuals with monstrously huge black boots, white painted faces and dominatrix, sadomasochistic leather... but also some interesting Venetian masks, 18th Century Romatic Literature attire. Of course, this is Oxford. No prizes for originality. Things are beginning to cook up now, the crowd we hoped for is steadily growing. We chuck our rollies against the wall and descend into the dungeon.
One girl with a blonde crew-cut (whome I later find out models in an online Goth/Cyber clothing range promotion) is finding it difficult to navigate down the steep steps into the club.
"It's hard to make it down in these boots" she laughs, unintentionally giving her own excessive attire a put-down. I give her a hand.
"Trust in the Converse" I say wiggling my right purple shoe and receiving a shush from Robby... we can't give away our cover you see.
Marylyn Manson pounds over the sound waves, some lumbering Lurch-sized dude in a riding coat is swinging alone on the stage. I've not yet seen Charles Manson. There's enough black to make a funeral director weep joyfully, or enough to make the void of space jealous. It turns out that it's the 7th Anniversary of Club Intrusion, hence the crowd, so a raffle is planned. It also later turns out that I win a bottle of wine and upon discovering this I approach the DJ box to collect it, grinning like the hidden hippy I am. I put the bottle aside foolishly thinking that, being a Goth Night, it would remain untouched. The bottle is eventually smashed and my sunglasses stolen - it's a typical club evening after all. Aha! There's Charles Manson, and his friend, Brian Molko from Placebo. A couple with bondage gear are tugging at each other playfully. And over there, jesus! Isn't that the crooning jazz singer from Twin Peaks?

We find ourselves on the edge of a group of dancing shadows after drinking and then smoking, drinking and then smoking. "Let's get right into it!" I yell to Robby. "Right into the nucleus of the thing!" Why not, imbibe the atmosphere and let ourselves be taken into it. We make our way into the centre past a girl wearing a fucked-up Alice-skirt throwing shapes with neon multi-coloured glow sticks - the light fantastic. The music took a bad direction on a change of DJ's, only pop and tacky electronica, and The Cure and Placebo from this point on. Finding unknown gothic music was too much to hope for at this stage.
As I start to feel the dirty electronic groove of Rob Zombie, I accidentally career into a wedding dress manga-angel, but she apologises herself - her wings flutter. "Crazy" I think, but I must stop smiling, I'm a goth, I'm a goth. But then I look about me and there are smiles everywhere. It's not an average club night after all. In fact, it's better, with a more enthusiastic, friendly atmosphere. I've never been to a club that had so many people approach me, just to chat and giggle and I've never been served chocolate cream cake with a drink at any bar before. What is the consciousness behind Goth? Perhaps a chance to access and grapple with the darker half of the human condition. Perhaps to play around with unsettling appearance and test the personal waters. It's like all culture really, a plateau of expression and creativity; or, like what Spiderman Goth said earlier, it's "like Halloween all year round!" It seems as if the general attitude is to bring everyone closer: "See, I'm a freak, I'm a looser like you. We all share the same suppressed emotions and problems. We can express ourselves together, write poetry, music and art. Celebrate being alive." What, to quote the Daily Mail, is so "evil cult" about that?

Viva la album; or how I stopped worrying and learned to love the electric generation

About four years ago I felt as though the popular album was under threat. With the rise of itunes and the ever greater use of torrent sites or downloads by the public it seemed that more ephesis was being placed on the individial track rather than the album as a whole. The structure of the album, a musical form that survived for so long appeared to be loosing its grip, and its respect along with it. For a while, this really bothered me. I noticed that people were ignoring entire albums in their addictive search for maybe some gooey ballad they heard on the O.C. I even feared that it would affect my own views of the classic flow. Thankfully, this was not to be the case. In fact, the internet would give birth too many things that carried it on, simultaniously allowing the form to evolve in provoking ways.

You cannot understand my joy when itunes introduced a zero second track change in an update. No one wants an irritating gap inbetween tracks on The Darkside of the Moon or Another Green World or Francis the Mute or F# A# Infinity or any other god damn album for that matter. Freedom has a strange affect on music, but always a good one. Communication and expression should always be free, as long as we hope to all be human. We all grew up having the album forced on us by medium and the internet had always promoted a sort of communist attitude; power to the people and all that. Over the last few years we could collecively say "fuck off" to the oppressive nature of record companies and embrace the loving lips of free music. Smooooch, free music, a concept that every ethical artist stands by. I don't need to tell you that everything has become much more expensive (maybe someone could tell Brown for me). Well, the internet single handedly saved our ability to keep collecting music of any variety despite our class or income level. And the album kept up. If you got ahold of a single track, whether it be by legal/illegal downloads, from a friends hard-drive or some pirate website, you might have been tempted to locate where the track came from. Perhaps occationally buying an actual CD from an actual shop if you loved it enough, although that was generally a last choice. Musicians, bands and web creators heard your cry and responded with some excellent answers. Last.fm is an enormously populated music website allowing the member to see graphically what music he or she had been listening to. You can go to bands profiles and view their releases, see which album people prefer. The cover art of each is accessable and the download-able programme that burrows itself into your toolbar gives you information about where the track you are enjoying originates from. Sweet Jesus! Look to the right of my blog, THERE'S MUSIC EVERYWHERE!!! Honestly, its adictive.

Radiohead have been called musical innovators for some time and, with the release of In Rainbows, were crowned internet lords over its early and complete release on the internet. Although they were certainly in the position to do so, they made it also possible to get it all for free, if that's what you thought it was worth (there-by posing a difficult question of morals). It's a shorter total time than many other albums, perhaps to make it easier to download, but the structure is still alive and pulsing. Each track compliments each other and the after-taste sticks around. Bands are still using the album structure; maybe more than ever as the apparent ease is making the expression from the music and artwork more instant and genuine. The only problem is keeping up with it all, and that is much more of a worry. No no no, I just need to chill the fuck out. Besides, music now seems to find you before you can find it.