New Year, New House!

Apologies all around, to the few people who read this blog for the hiatus in postings.  I've been wrapped up in moving to a new house, and remodeling it.  A time consuming task, for sure.  Unseasonably warm weather has set in here, in Western North Carolina.  Sunny and 60 degrees in December?  Believe it or not, I'm not so into it.  One can't help but wonder, what is going on with mother earth, that she's acting like this.  Winter is supposed to be cold, goddamnit, at least here in the mountains, it is.

Don't get me wrong, some mornings in this house, when the temperature outside drops, and the temperature inside drops even further, it's hard to not feel a little doom and gloom squalor.  When it's cold I can see my breath, and just can't seem to get out of bed, and even the roaches scurrying for cover when I go to the kitchen to make my tea, and scramble my eggs seem like the cold has them a little sluggish. 

I tell myself that tribulation just makes me more of a badass. 

What has been the soundtrack to all of this?  Black Metal and Deathrock.  Astute readers, or those who know me would observe that I can make those two genres of music my soundtrack to almost any situation.  It is of course, partially true, but making this cold house home has called for some of my favorite, dark and romantic tunes.

One of my favorite parts of 2011, has been that the goth and death rock culture have been becoming punk again.  Goth and Deathrock started out as an offshoot from punk in the late seventies/early eighties.  The music was slower, prettier, more romantic, but still filled with the same hopelessness, and alienation that found voice in punk.  The scene was a safe haven for the artistic, sensitive, misfits who were being driven out of punk with the advent of hardcore.  (Don't get me wrong, I love hardcore too, but I think few people can argue some of it's detrimental effects on punk, the upswing in violence being one of the biggest.)  Goth, deathrock, and post-punk, were a perhaps a little more marketable for corporate labels looking to cash in on youthful alienation and despair, but there was still a vibrant D.I.Y., underground scene full of dour, yet passionate, black clad misfits.

Then the early nineties changed all that.  It's hard to say what happened.  First Nirvana became huge, then bands like The Cure, and Nine Inch Nails, and then Marilyn Manson  broke into the mainstream,  While they may be entirely dissimilar musically, they all had their roots in D.I.Y. scenes.  Suddenly angst, alienation, and rebellion,  were cool and marketable and could be made into so many commodities to be marketed and sold to a willing public.  Stores like the dreaded Hot Topic were soon in every shopping mall in America, providing you a one stop shop for your "alternative" consumer driven needs.  You could buy complete ready made outfits, be they "punk", "gothic", or some other form of alternative subculture, along with cookiecutter bands who often copied, and then watered down the innovative, and creative individuals that came before them, taking from the scenes that created them, and gave them vision and voice, and giving little back.  This isn't to say that every band who has flirted with signing to a major label, or gotten bigger is a soulless, greedy, backstabber, but one cannot deny the impact (in this writer's opinion, negative) that corporate influence has had on D.I.Y. Punk, Metal, and Gothic subcultures. 

So, all that said.  Let's take it back to the beginning of American Deathrock. 

Los Angeles:  1982.  Hardcore is rearing it's ugly head, violence is ever prevalent, and meatheads and jocks are cutting their hair and invading the scene.  Los Angeles is till a hellish, crowded, metropolis with plenty to feel alienated about.  There is still a seedy, sleazy underbelly to it all, and this record is part of that underbelly:

Christian Death - Only Theatre Of Pain - I somehow missed out on this one in the early nineties when I was getting into Gothic, and death rock.  That's a shame, because this record is really good.  It's been written about countless times over the last thirty(!) years.  This record more or less is the beginning of gothic rock in the united states.  Rozz Williams had a gift for disturbing imagery in lyrics, that were arguably him trying as hard as he could to exorcise some serious demons before they would bring about his end, which they ultimately, sadly, did.  I think that's what speaks so strongly to me about this record.  the genuineness of the angst, grief, and despondency.  It may be at times overwrought, or dramatic, but it's not fake.  Just look at the lives in individuals in this band led.  This is utter the utter self annihilation suburban Southern California in the 1980's. It's chipped black nail polish, it's self injury, locked in your bedroom at your parents house, it's waking up day after day to the dry, sunny heat, and having nothing to smile about, it's knowing you come from a city that people around the world come to looking for success or a new life, and that could be full of potential, but still having nothing to look forward to.  It's trying as hard as you can to escape from the constraints of a life not of your choosing, and creating something tragic and beautiful in the process. 

Here.