goth or not goth
 

In this wold of ever increasing subcultures I belive GOTH is most defined
By our music; To that end I put before you a poll that contains a number
of artist that I feel blur the lines.
( dont iss sound all educated an stuff)

Would you Please inspect the list and give your infomed opinion as to whether
an artist is or is not goth.
Please do not flame me about how there should not be catigorys and
Geners because if we dont define what Goth is, the same people who
created Brinty will do it for us.
Imagine Britny Spears dected out in a black wig ,black eyeliner, and nets
singing vampire love songs ,you can dance to.
I think we better define our selves.
please explain your choice's
thank you[/list]

Let me consult my two wonderful list of goth music that I have. I can't say the Doors or Tool are goth. They are still awesome though. And KMFDM (industrial right?) isn't really goth either. But aren't most goth bands called that because they are the bands started in the 80s and played a certain type of music that was later called goth? Please correct me if I'm wrong. Besides, I stink at classifying music into lots of little genres.

Some borderlines
 

Traditionally, none of the artists that you listed were gothic. And I also don't think it would be righ to consider them such now, either. However, they were all influential, in some way, to their respective genres.
Tom Waits and The Doors were very influencial in Goth Rock (Andrew Eldrich loved him). The Doors, though I dont think could be considered goth, did have alot of goth themes and undertones (which, of course, weren't goth at the time...just very dark). I once came across an article written in a college newspaper declaring The Doors the first goth band...I should post that someday, if I can ever find it..
Tool just sucks. And Not goth.
KMFDM just sucks. And Industrial-Rock...shitty Industrial Rock to boot.
Nina Hagen really only influenced the punk scene, and definately isn't goth. Though she is headlining a goth/deathrock festival. Strange, isn't it?

~Dax

Great just the sort of post's I was hoping to get.
OW! I really like KMFDM.
Nina Hagen is still performing!?!

*whines* I like Tool, the Doors, and KMFDM. XD

Eh...My age is showing. I'm only really familiar with the Doors. Of course, I don't worry about whether music is of any particular genre anyway. If it's good, it's good.

'Course, right now, I'm going through a Cowboy Bebop OST phase. I r such @ g33k.

Tool is alt. rock,The Doors are old rock,And KMFDM is Fucking Industrial(I love Industrial)

goth is not a genre of music, people.
it is a sub-culture, a state of mind, a way of life.
but it is just not a music genre.

only the people behind the music can be goth, just not the music itself.
thanks for the britny spears quote EZRA, that prooves my point perfectly.
anyone can be painted up to look and pretend to be goth just to sell a few albums. and people are so gullable now days they will believe what they see.

this is my opinion anyway, feel free to shoot it down or agree.

With all due respect, Mortalitas, I believe you are somewhat wrong. Yes, it is a sub-culture, state of mind, way of life, etc etc, but it is also a genre of music. It is rooted in the music. The music is predominantly what gave birth to the gothic label.

I grew up in the late 80's - early 90's when bands like the sisters of mercy were still recording new material and the term goth was still relatively new. We didn't call ourselves goth. That was a label that the preps, jocks, yo-boys, skaters and punks placed on us. skaters were a lesser breed of punks/skinheads, and the punks and goths did not mix AT ALL. Many bloody fights in the school parking lots proved that. (I went to a high school with an unusually high mortality rate - primarily due to the rivalry among the various crowds because in a lot of ways it was almost like gangs). We were the rejects that didn't blend in to any crowd. We weren't rich enough to be preps, or athletic enough to be jocks and we couldn't ride a skateboard for shit. We didn't wear black because we thought it was cool, or because we had some kind of style or class to live up to, or because we wanted to blow up our school, (tho i'm sure some of us did want to from time to time). It was just what felt right. We had no friends. We were the freaks among the freaks. And over time we just gravitated toward one another and formed our own circles. And it is people like that in similar environments who created the music to reflect what they felt inside. We never deliberately called ourselves goth back then, as it was almost looked at like an insult in some ways to place a label on ourselves. So those that did claim to be goth were treated like outcasts even by us. Over the years other things have blended in to what makes up the whole gothic culture, and now punks, skaters and goths have almost become the same thing. (Which I still find ironic when I think back on countless times I had to push my way through gathering crowds around the punk-goth steet fights. Goths always lost cause they never - or rarely ever - carried weapons, and weren't nearly as brutal).

But the music was very much a part of what made us bond. Friendships were built around it because of how we related to certain songs and thus to each other. We discovered new bands/artists by sharing our cd collections and sneaking out to see some obscure band playing at some place we had no business being in at that age.

There's always going to be those that disagree with what bands are and aren't goth tho. My list of Goth Bands will probably be anywhere from slightly to extremely different than any number of other members of these boards. Traditionally, the bands listed in the above poll are in no way considered goth, but they did help to influence some of the bands that came along after them. KMFDM is largely early industrial, but the dark vibes in some of their material helped inspire the gothic scene. Tool I don't think has ever been considered goth, but A Perfect Circle (which has the same frontman as Tool - Maynard James Keenan) has been considered goth by many. I never liked Tool much, but I like APC. Frontline Assembly (not part of the poll, I know), is another industrial-pioneer band that has always had - at least as far as I've seen - a gothic following.

I gave up on trying to keep track of who are truly goth bands when everyone around me started claiming Prodigy was/is goth. WTF??

My personal solid list of (a few more predominant), traditional goth bands/Artists: (for anyone that cares)

Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus, Peter Murphy, The Cure, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Echo & The Bunnymen, (Clan of) Xymox, Shriekback, Fields of The Nephilim, Camouflage, Concrete Blonde, The Mission UK, Soft Cell, Joy Division, (SOME) Depeche Mode, (SOME) New Order, The Church, Smashing Pumpkins, a few others that won't come to me now cause i'm sleepy....

And with that I'll close this excruciatingly long post. sorry 'bout that.

~E.D.

Who the hell even came up with the IDEA that the Doors are goth? Did goth even EXIST in the form and understanding (or lack there of) in the 60's/early 70's that is has today? I don't believe it did, but I could be wrong.
Anywho, any music that fits my mood is good to me. It doesn't neccesarily have to be Goth.

I agree, the doors are about as Goth as the bee-gees are industrial. Have the people that voted actually listened to the doors? the doors are freaking lounge music with an electric guitar. Now if you were to ask me if Jim Morrison was goth, I would say he does fit the mental profile of a goth but he was about a decade or so too early.

Trying to help a little:
AC/DC made heavy metal; Metallica made trash; Venom made speed, Slayer combined speed and trash, Sepultura came with a more sophisticated style of trash, Kreator took the speed part from trash and went further and actually now they sing totally different. The next evolution was in 1992 with the Paradise Lost album "Gothic". Was something new and something old, but in that year the "gothic" metal was born. These days the evolution is continuing with Die Krupps at the basement of today Rammstein group, nu-metal bands arive day after day, and others. What is interesting for me is that in the moment we think that nothing new can happend in music , a new style is rising, thats the why music is our first sign of civilisation among others. We are living now listening Evanescence, Nightwish, Within Teptation, name it, all of them with deep roots in past. What will be next? Who knows...

I think this would have been pretty cool. I could've possibly dug it, regardless of its honesty. Instead, they gave us Baby Goth... Got nothing against her, mind you, but she's just not my cup of absinthe.