Goth subculture
What we mean by goth subculture is a subculture emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the United Kingdom. It grew out of punk music movement, post-punk and new wave inspired and original German expressionist film, fantasy and gothic romance. Its original form was subsequently lost vitality, while persisting in Europe, while the aesthetic movement and its continued spread in slightly different forms in the world. It is characterized by a major worries aestheticization and theatricality of everyday life, with a strong attraction for the dark elements, macabre, sometimes provocative. There is thus a dress code, gothic fashion, mainly based on black and dark colors, sometimes accessorized with items considered mystics.
The Gothic movement should not be confused with the Gothic revival, which is an architectural movement "Gothic Revival" of the nineteenth century.
Glam roots
Lou Reed with his group the Velvet Underground breathes a dark side to their music. When he began his solo career, the glam-rock movement is on the rise in England in 1972 with leading figures like Marc Bolan and David Bowie. These last two singers crepent hair, already anticipating the punk look of four years. Parallel to this trend and glam in a very different approach, the German-born singer Nico gets faster by the adjective Gothic Press?
Punk roots (1976-1983)
After the explosion of punk in 1976 and 1977 occurred in the United Kingdom a multitude of bands clearly influenced by this movement but mixing diverse influences and musical experimentation pushing in directions nouvelles.Ces very disparate groups were categorized as very vague New Wave. Within this movement, some groups adopted a style, look and similar topics, which much later would be called "Gothic" with their blackness and their theatricality.
Among these groups, there are Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, Birthday Party, The Cure, UK Decay, Killing Joke, Virgin Prunes, sharing an audience, slowly, he will adopt the same style of these groups . Their respective singers all begin to fly fast black outfits: the recurring themes of their lyrics revolve around death, despair and alienation? Apart from their punk origins, these groups also share this characteristic for the most common influences such as rock tormented by the late 1960s in this music of Velvet Underground and The Doors.
We do not yet speak of "gothic," although this term has been occasionally used by journalists to describe the music of Joy Division and Siouxsie and the Banshees, but "positive punk" or even "Cold Wave", a term only used in France to describe the look that, at the time, takes classics like the punk Mohawk (peak), but only in black and white (predominantly black).
Between 1982 and 1985, with the emergence of parties Batcave in London (with familiar faces like Nick Cave and Marc Almond) and evenings in Paris sebal (Night at the Opera on Thursday evening), a second wave of groups begins to emerge with Danse Society, Play Dead, Southern Death Cult and The Sisters of Mercy who drop their new wave of early for something darker.
The majority of these groups will play without original drummer, but to use a drum machine. This is particularly the case for March Violets, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, Skeletal Family, and especially the flagship band of this generation: Cocteau Twins. Their Label 4AD Records is also one of the best of its kind? with bands like Dead Can Dance, Clan of Xymox, This Mortal Coil, Pale Saints or Ultra Vivid Scene.
By the same date range, California, death rock scene during the American British gothic rock, with the lead as Christian Death.
The opening in 1982 of the London club the "Batcave" marks a new stage in the visibility of the movement in the media and the public, and introduces a degree of sensitivity Glam movement.
The term "new wave", "batcave", "therapy client" and "crows" are then the terms most used to describe the followers of the movement.
Emergence as a movement
Having been first applied to describe the music, then to describe groups that practice the term "Gothic" came to be given to persons following these groups and sub-culture they represent.
At the end of 1983, the Gothic subculture has its own existence. It became independent punk it could be considered as a multiple common in previous years.
On the name "Gothic" at this stage will have a considerable influence on its future development. Indeed, the population constituting the beginnings of the movement was agglomerated by cultural affinity - mainly about bands then. Since the movement is called "goth" It will attract all those who identify with that term. Having had little or no prior contact with the movement itself, these "newcomers" do not share little in common with the original gothic scene. This phenomenon is amplified by the emergence of the goth movement in the media and via Internet, will result in a tremendous enrichment - and sometimes even dispersion - of what will be considered, often to the chagrin of purists, as part of Gothic culture.
Evolution
The year 1985 marked a turning point in the Gothic scene in the UK, with the separation of several major groups like Bauhaus, UK Decay, Sex Gang Children and Southern Death Cult, and the arrival on the front of the stage groups more rock (where the founders were more punk) like The Sisters of Mercy, The Mission UK and Fields of the Nephilim.
Other groups of first time changing directions towards more pop or new wave, like Siouxsie & the Banshees and The Cure. The group separated Birthday Party, their singer Nick Cave are now moving towards a more blues side and performs under the name Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds.
Also emerge in this period groups producing a lyrical, melancholy music, often inspired by world music and romantic poetry? Very influential on the scene without really part of the spearheads of this new genus are Dead Can Dance, This Mortal Coil and Cocteau Twins.
See also Culture
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