Oh, I like to kid the goths. Someone has to 'cause, well, they're goths. Although it is probably a defense mechanism, some sub-conscious fear born of my own latent goth desires. I guess I should just admit it: I am a gothophobe.
But before you point and laugh at me, take a look at yourself. People in glass houses shouldn't throw velvet creepers.
Admit it, back in high school, you secretly envied all those black-clad, taciturn outcasts. Like me, you were jealous of the goths. For goths, Halloween was every day of the year. Adults didn't seem to nag them as much. They gave those quiet, introspective ones their "space."
We all had a hidden part of us that wanted to be a goth. Ergo, we tried to make fun of them. Told them that they were "freaks of nature," that their heroes were "asexual dorks "(even though we didn't know what "asexual" meant), and that the only thing goths do on weekends is play Dungeons and Dragons with a bunch of other loser artfucks.
Duh, they must have thought, tell us something we don't know.
But every underdog has his day, and right now it is Goth Day. Hell, why not? Every other subgenre from the musical past enjoys a revival -- even unlikely ones like swing and disco. Inevitably, the circle of pop life returns to its vomit.
If Black Sabbath was gothrock's cultural ground zero (although arguments for Jim Morrison's Doors are compelling), then its current resurgence was at least five years overdue, since fifteen years has become the average gestation period. Look at the already moribund punk, ska and oldschool rap trends.
Make no mistake: Gothic black is back. Trent Reznor and Marilyn Manson sell millions of records. Bauhaus is selling out reunion gigs around the country. Celebrations of born-again paganism like Burning Man and the bondage club and rave cultures are virtually mainstream. The hottest buzz clip on MTV is an atavistic, sex&death-techno anthem ("Du Hast") sung by a gang of uberkrauts called Rammstein. Even pubescent-targeted TV sitcoms have a wiccan seductress in Sabrina The Teenage Witch.
And the usual media watchdogs(lapdogs?) of the Christian Right, so quick to vilify any such dark youth culture currents in the past, are strangely absent now. Even Bob Dole is nowhere to be found. Two years back, Dole could be found crusading against the evil influence of Trent Reznor lyrics. But recent sightings placed him outside of a rave in the Mojave desert, in a black limo full of pierced and tattooed teenagers doing tweek and bad ecstasy.
You could blame it on the millennium. Or maybe El Nino's Santeria-laced influence. Whatever. Gothrock is finally vindicated, and what better way to celebrate a resurrection than with some desecration? Dye your hair, cake on the black eyeliner and check out the local band that Bad Religion's Greg Hetson called "post-mortem pyro[s]...a convoy of Jack-knifed big rigs careening down Interstate 666..."
That band, of course, is the South Bay's own unholy offspring, Rosemary's Billygoat. Led by the fire-spitting corpse jester Mike Odd, this foursome revels in taking both the sacred and profane in vain, or, in vein, if you will. All of our culture's sacred cows are fair game for Odd's satirical lyrics. Scientology ("L. Ron's Army"), Americana ("GI Joe Raped Barbie"), unsanitary personal habits ("Pic'n'Scabs"), even our most hallowed fairy tales ("Mother Goose"). Even on a musically "off" night at Toe's Tavern, nothing escaped the singer's voracious appetite for deconstruction.
Bum rushing the stage like a messianic crack addict, Odd agit-propped himself up with a fuzzy seven-foot crucifix, half-howling "L. Ron" repeatedly at the bemused and bewildered crowd, until the chant dissolved into the guttural noises of an otherworldly creature. Like a shaman with attention-deficit disorder, Odd proceeded to distract the crowd, and even his bandmates it seemed, from that evening's sound and cohesion problems. He simply employed one twisted performance-art-project-from-hell after another.
Among the gimmicks in Odd's repertoire that night: playing bones on a flaming oilcan drum, spitting fire from a candle-tipped pentagram cap, donning leprechaun and cattle-faced grotesques, a smoke-filled electric chair and the torching of what I assume was a Rosemary's Baby doll.
Fire was a theme, you see.
Listening to Rosemary's debut, Cheeses Of Nazareth, while amusing, comes nowhere near the rewards of catching the band's joyously perverse live show. As a studio entity, their marriage of avant-rock arrangements and quasi-celtic mysticisms sounds too much like a "Stonehenge"-era Spinal Tap. But onstage, Rosemary's Billygoat mixes the best of postmodern irony (Zappa, Devo) and gothic rock iconography (Cramps, Bauhaus).
It's fun best experienced in the flesh.
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(This article originally appeared in ShadowLand
magazine,
October, 1998.)
© Will K. Shilling, 1998.