TV news report on teen "goths, Cure-heads, and psychobillies" in Dublin (1989)

i never wanted these interviews to end (but i was wishing for subtitles on the second one) – so good! all the women were so cute and smartly dressed, and there were a couple of the boys who were so puckish and charming. i’d love to know what happened to all these people.

5 Likes

I must officially be old – kids just strike me as having been infinitely cooler back in the day (if I do say so myself), than they have been for maybe 20 years or so.

While yes, subcultures have been getting commodified by internal and external forces from the beginning, it just seems like there was still so much new ground to be tread back then.

I don’t personally think much new has happened for a couple decades, aside from tech and social media.

somehow the late 1990s found me in a cult, and i remember a young person who had sort of grown up within the confines of the community asking me if i’d ever heard of this crazy thing called industrial music. when i told him that i was familiar, and even had enjoyed it on occasion, he expressed incredulity that anyone could listen to recordings of factory machinery and find it pleasant. i tried to explain that he was a bit misinformed, but he would not budge. and that is what it’s like to be in a cult, i suppose.

4 Likes

Can pretty much guarantee they all emigrated. So you’ve a better chance of meeting them in the US than Dublin.

1 Like

To be fair, there is an avant-garde music that predates the industrial genre that was actually that… plus, that was sort of the thinking of Gen P-O, mimicking industrial type noises… And then there is Merzbow, which is pretty much straight up noise, sort of like early EN.

Maybe that person didn’t mean like electro-industrial, but the early avant-garde composers?

5 Likes

That was extremely informative!

Bravo on the thorough explanation. I learned several things today from you.

3 Likes

I raise you some Hanatarash.

The so called “bulldozer gig” in tokyo is the single most infamous noise event in history, They drove an actual bulldozer through the wall of the venue, and played it as an instrument, ending the show with molotov coktails thrown at the audience if I remember right.

This is the peak of noise insanity

5 Likes

They are so cute! As a goth who also loves the B-52’s, hard relate.

The interviewers seem so desperate to put these kids into a narrow box, it’s tiring. They appear to be music fans who also happen to be creative and aware in terms of style and self-presentation, as well as class, race and gender. Why all the prodding and painting them as kind of slavish.

4 Likes

The “Goth Mona Lisa” girl was pretty great.

2 Likes

unfortunately, it had to do with a larger misunderstanding and fear of anything that was “of the world.”

3 Likes

I’d say there’s every chance you could meet them at a Bartley Dunne’s Reunion.

Bartley Dunne’s got knocked down and McGonagles is gone, but Bruxelles and the Foggy Dew are largely unchanged since the '80s.

And The Thomas House attracts an alternative clientele about the age that those goths would be now.

This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.