Would you believe it's been 30 years?

[mbarrick]

Cross-posted from my blog on Gothic BC

What you see here is my now thirty year old original 1978 Polydor U.K. pressing of Siouxsie and the Banshee's "The Scream," arguably the first "Gothic" album, though the word was yet to be applied. There are apocryphal stories (including the alt.gothic FAQ) that Siouxsie Sioux first used the term herself in describing the direction of the band, but it would be at least another year before the word "Gothic" would be used in print to describe any band, and several more years before the term really started to stick.

At the time, though, this would have been called punk and punk is how I came to it. Already a fan of the Sex Pistols, I'd read that Sid Vicious played once as drummer for band called "Siouxsie and the Banshees" and I was curious to hear them. Of course no one in Duncan knew who the Sex Pistols were, let alone Siouxsie and the Banshees. And there was no public Internet, period. I was still a few years away from trading mixed tapes with pen-pals. "Brave New Waves" on the CBC was also years away. The only recourse was pilgrimage to the "big city" - Victoria. 

I purchased this used sometime in late 1979 from "Lyle's Place" (the price tag is still on the front, $5.95) on Yates Street in Victoria, most likely while out with my dad to see some awful movie at the Odeon that would never play in the cinema in Duncan. I would have been 12.

This is it. This is the beginning. This is the undifferentiated stem cell from which all goth music split. And what's most remarkable is even now, thirty years later there is nary a song on this album that wouldn't fly on the dancefloor at Sanctuary right now in 2008. 

Comments

[sebastian6.livejournal.com]

If I give credit/link, can I post this wonderful in my blog?

[sebastian6.livejournal.com]

err. wonderful entry in my blog?

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

Go right ahead. As long as I've got credit and a backlink, I'm happy as a clam.

[sebastian6.livejournal.com]

While the Cure was my first real exposure to Goth (Boys Don't Cry and 17 Seconds) and then Bauhaus and later Siouxsie, I've not taken the time to listen to this album. I just listened to Nicotine Stain. I like. They almost have more in common with X and the Sex Pistols than what would become Goth. I love love love it.

Do you consider Joy Division a Goth band? Tangentially?

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

> They almost have more in common with X and the Sex Pistols than what would become Goth.

Well, really that's it in a nutshell. There is the old refrain that "Goth evolved from punk", but this is the "missing link" of that evolution - and it is pretty closely tied in. As I mentioned, when Siouxie and the Banshees first formed, Sid Vicious was the drummer (albeit for one and only one performance). In 1979 Robert Smith was the guitarist for Siouxsie and the Banshees. You couldn't ask for a more obvious bridge than that.

And, yes, I always thought of Joy Division as Gothic.