change and decay all around i see...

Nice piece on ageing goths:

If it occasionally sounds faintly tragic – it's a hard heart that doesn't break a little at Hodkinson's stories of goths adapting their appearances to symptoms of ageing such as balding or becoming larger – it is more often a heartwarming tale of strong bonds and lasting companionship. "People have long-term friendships as part of the subculture and their patterns of behaviour were dominated by the subculture," says Hodkinson. "Some people would say to me, you're asking why I stay involved, but really it would be odd not to be involved. If you're so attached to the music and style and it's something that has got you a good sense of belonging and community and practical friendships, why would you break off with that?"

Maybe there's a bit less to this than meets the eye: ageing hippies have been around for long enough for me to notice that they were getting old, which is a long time. Still, gothiness has a dress code which in turn means that you have to make some positive adaptations as time takes its toll. Amateur researches in Whitby, for instance, reveal that there' is a certain age when men throw away the crimpers and go with the full Richard O'Brien effect; and that exo-corsets can impart a nice dignified-but-sexy look to the stouter lady. Anyway, the whole ethos is crepusculartastic doom and decay, so ageing fits right in. I look forward to proper hags.

I do disagree with the idea that Goths are essentially middle class. I always figured the ur-goth as working in a garage in Leeds, though maybe he or she now owns it. As I recall, there was a Polish goth band called Garage in Leeds back in the eighties, or maybe that's just a succubus inserted into my mind by the ghost of John Peel.

Comments

[CMcM]

disagree with the idea that Goths are essentially middle class.

Well, not middle class as such, but certainly a pretty common reaction to aspirational parents (in the Worcester Woman/Basildon Man New Lab way) surely?

Doom'n'gloom in response to all those much trumpeted sunny uplands that seem so forever just out of reach has always been my default assumption about Goth motivation.

(Mind, I'm 54 and still wear a Harrington & DMs, so what do I know about youth sub cultures....)

[JamesP]

"It's knowing. I know. I've experienced things that are beyond reality. Many things." This sounds fascinating, but McCoy collects himself. "I don't want to go too far on this," he says hurriedly, "because I don't want to make a twat of meself."

- Surely the archetypal line of the English magician. Like Alan Moore and his made-up serpent god.

[JamesP]

Also - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N1M7Kwl81A

[hellblazer]

I recall a podcast interview where The Bearded One was cheerily upfront, with tongue in cheek, over the snake god being mostly just his idea for something a bit more interesting than your usual mid-life crisis. He also clarified that what magic might call a curse, he views more as "having a word with two blokes, Vince and Maury, down the pub, to go round someone's house later..."

[Tim Worstall]

"Polish goth band called Garage in Leeds"

Maybe goth, might have been punk?

They turn up in PJ O'Rourke's piece on going to Poland.

Think they're the band that a guitarist got fired from because his playing wasn't gloomy enough? Which means that you might be right about goth....

[dsquared]

It still amazes me that if you'd been given the job of trend-forecasting in 1982, and asked to pick which youth culture would still be around in 30 years out of New Romantics, punks, hair metal, two-tone, etc, who the hell would have picked goth?

[Alex]

If you're honest, and you're given the job of trend forecasting, the only thing to do is to resign. Moore's law is pretty much the only counterexample. (Although supposedly somebody predicted the invention of Mod based on demographic forecasts.)

[belle le triste]

The exact day Thatcher fell I was driving home from Shropshire to London, and stopped at a service station on the M1, probably Watford Gap. I was in the shop vaguely ogling the chocolate bars when I realised the entire place was suddenly full of Goths, as if they'd melted into place out of the air itself. On moment none: next, everywhere.

Afterwards I realised two or three coachloads of Sisters of Mercy fans had also pulled in, on the way from Leeds to Wembley. But at the time, this somehow amplified the already cheerful news of the moment: as if the Vampire Lestat had announced "The Witch is dead, come out come out wherever you are..."

That's some time after 1982 obviously, but it was the moment I realised that politicians are, if you will, here today and gone tomorrow, while pop subcultures are forever. The correct trend forecast is: none of them ever go away.

[chris y]

Although supposedly somebody predicted the invention of Mod based on demographic forecasts

How far ahead? In, say, 1960 it wouldn't have taken an anthropology degree to work out that young, affluent working class/LMC kids would use their new found prosperity to bling themselves out with various tribal markers, but actually predicting the specificities of Mod would have been clever.

[ajay]

Good story, belle. Were they happy goths?

(It always amuses me that no one is less like a goth than, well, a Goth: Sisters of Mercy and black clothing and hating the world vs. armour, axes, ale and "On to Rome!")

[ajay]

The correct trend forecast is: none of them ever go away.

My own preference is for a four-stage model: trends progress from "Danger to Society" through "Universal Popularity" to "Bloated Excess" and ultimately "Irony".

Matching this to the careers of, say, Elvis, punk, the Beatles, and even the waltz is left as an exercise for the reader.

Stars die as iron: trends die in irony.

[CMcM]

none of them ever go away.

Teds are dying out though, aren't they? (despite the heroic pyschorockability revivalist haircut of Manchester United's current goalkeeper).

& New Romantics are fairly conspicuous by their absence, at least from my High Street.

[CMcM]

Ahem: pyschorockabilly

(*Slinks off, probably to hide in corner*)

[Alex]

New Romantics are fairly conspicuous by their absence, at least from my High Street

That's been re-instantiated as high fashion, though, or rather quite a lot of the tropes have been rediscovered. Shoreditch High Street is quite a lot more New Romantic than you might think (and has been for a while). But the difference is that it came back as a box o'tropes, not a unified aesthetic.

Also, as well as irony, there's also the option of tribal endurance (like goth, mod, northern soul, metal, old-skool hip hop). KTF!

[belle le triste]

I live a stone's throw from Hoxton, and one reason actually to be throwing the stones is that it is currently full of arty young fellows in braces and tweeds with elaborate 20s mustaches and such. Irony too dies in irony: whatever the self-amused anti-pop intent when this trend began -- two or three years ago I guess -- it is now simply another subcultural uniform, donned as unthinkingly as any other. Nothing goes away: it just hides betimes. I predict a yokel smocks, chewing straws and wood-crafted pitchforks revival -- PsychoWurzel -- in [mumble mumble] years' time. The trick is to disguise the fact that [mumble mumble] could mean 18 months or 45 years. You read it here first.

[ajay]

No no, CMcM: his haircut is psychorockabilly, therefore it possesses the property of psychorockability.
Or possibly psychorockabilitude.

[Chris Williams]

_The Chap_'s been around for years. Billy Childish has sported that Hoxton style for decades. Just another revival, I'm afraid.

[Alex]

It's not a revival if it didn't go away.

PsychoWurzel

Check flannel shirts, distressed denim jackets, flat 'ats, we've had all that some time ago. You'll have to hang on for the Bush administration revival, and aren't we all looking forward to that one with churning nausea...

[belle le triste]

There was only one of Billy Childish for quite a long time -- I looked and checked this time* -- but (by eye) his acolytes only reached critical mass fairly recently. Perhaps a better way of saying "nothing goes away" is "everything is revivable, and will be"

*I am at the age where I often find myself talking about something that happened 15 years ago as if it was three years ago. This will happen to you.

[belle le triste]

Re Goths: the "original" Gothic Revival began in the 1840s, with Pugin and such. Except that this was kind of a revival of a revival that started in the 1740s, with Walpole, The Castle of Otranto and Strawberry Hill.

The "Gothic" that these fellows were reviving was belated, also: since it was architecture and castles and the like. The ur-Goths were the nomadic invaders from the East: Alaric who sacked Rome; or the ones who rode right across Europe heading for the Portuguese beaches.

Goth is old.

[redpesto]

& New Romantics are fairly conspicuous by their absence, at least from my High Street.

Well, there was the Romo scene, but maybe you were away that weekend.

[belle le triste]

New Romantics today: cf Visual Kei in Japan.

(Obviously Japan is always a free throw in this game...)

[Alex]

No there wasn't. Simon Price made it up.

[CMcM]

came back as a box o'tropes, not a unified aesthetic

Young people today, huh? It's a lazy, cut and paste attitude to annoying your parents if you ask me.

[belle le triste]

I love the idea that New Romantics had a "unified aesthetic": is it too late to tell Adam Ant?

[Barry Freed]

and ultimately "Irony".

Goth requires too much of a commitment to do ironically. Never say never I guess but it's the doom & gloom mood that unifies its particular aesthetic, I just can't see it being mulletized and handlebarred by the hipster coterie.

[sf reader]

Ironic waltzing - Take This Waltz, L. Cohen?

Was once in a hipster coffee joint in Seattle and realized with a start they were playing a Leonard Cohen album from so early in his career that you could hear the peach fuzz on his voice. It was disorienting.

They were probably playing an LP, as well.

[ejh]

The long-lasting trend that baffles me is people wearing baseball caps back to front.

[belle le triste]

Perhaps the true mystery was the shortlasting trend for wearing them peak forward?

[alle]

I think a general 90s revival cycle should be just around the corner. We've done all the others now, in the past ten-fifteen years or so, and the total lack of self-distance of late 80s/early 90s subcultures should be the perfect ironic response to hipster irony itself.

So I predict neon-colored rave gear, Brit Pop and flared jeans (itself a 2nd gen 60s revival). Grunge is already starting to re-happen, and I guess the folk/hippie/prog metal spectrum is up for a third run soon. And somewhere in there, late era Goth. Let me note that I saw a new synth band go on stage in corpse paint and black hoods as late as December.

[Alex]

neon-colored rave gear

oh hai, 2009.

[Jakob]

Yeah, I've got extended family members in their first year at university, and the early-90s revival seems to be in full swing there.