22 ARTS WEEKLY NOVEMBER 16, 2016 www.theaquarian.com
PHOTOS BY DOKTOR JOHN

Endless Night Vampire Ball Metropolitan Edition

Sabretooth’s Impresario and fang-maker Fr. Sebastiaan hosted the annual Endless Night Vampire Ball at Slake (formerly The Batcave) on Manhattan’s 30th St on Saturday October 15, 2016. The event was held in the two upstairs lounges of Slake, leaving dark and empty the large, high-ceiling hall where it was previously centered. The downstairs bar was left to straight, non-vampire-ball-attendees.

The long and narrow top-floor so-called Red Room served mainly as an entertainment space, and the smaller side room was entirely used as a dance floor. Both spaces had well-stocked bars and energetic bartenders.

Chief Operations Officer Victor Magnus greeted attendees upon entry to the venue and stamped Sabretooth’s emblematic ankh on the ticket-holder’s wrist after everybody’s favorite and most glamorous gatekeeper, M Banshee checked each in. From thence we were directed upstairs to the Red Room where we hit the bar and were shortly accosted by a tall, handsome and ultra-suave gent who offered to give couples a lesson in dancing the waltz. We gratefully took that lesson to recorded music played on the house PA system, perhaps to the chagrin of attendees who were unsettled to hear the waltz’s ¾ time instead of the customary 4/4 rock beat that usually accompanies gothic, punk and industrial songs.

A few couples took a few lessons, and soon enough the welcome strains of the Sisters of Mercy filled the air, setting the dance floor alive with participation of the crowd at large. Fr. Sebastiaan appeared on a stage situated at the far end of the room and made his warm, welcoming greetings. He announced a moment of silence for those who have passed from the scene as he always does and he led the crowd in the traditional wolf-howl before introducing the entertainment. As at all Fr. Sebastiaan events, the entertainment was thematic, mildly raunchy and fully captivating.

First up were a pair scantily white-clad baroque-wigged performers who enacted a stylized and R-rated, but tastefully-not-explicit ballet decrying the practice of onanism, “The Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution” inspired by a 1724 pamphlet denouncing the “frightful consequences in both sexes.”
There was a breath-taking performance by vocalist Ariel De Menthe who sang the song “Diva,” in the wide-ranging operatic style termed “coloratura” while wearing a witch’s headdress. A fashion show took place featuring more than a dozen beautiful models who passed on stage and posed in original outfits that evoked harem ladies, belly dancers, or barbarian princesses and warriors.

A stunning ecdysiast performed a strip-tease act starting off wearing a black nun’s habit performing pantomime with props of booze, money and symbolic drug-use while undressing and ending up wearing a lot less – a real lot less – though still in black.

The high point always comes with the Halloween costume contest. Because of the particular predilections of this crowd, the outfits are always fabulous, often horrific, and marked by a high level of accomplishment. Gory clowns and gorgeous ladies competed with Gothic warriors and characters from classic horror cinema. The winner (shown here) was a masterful portrayal of the silent movie-era Nosferatu, and he was followed closely by a faithful version of Lon Chaney Sr.’s vampire from the lost film “London After Midnight” (also shown).

Dancing to classic darkwave went on into the wee hours, and was yet going strong in both rooms when we left around 2 a.m. Fr. Sebastiaan had once again provided a night of incomparable entertainment and musical pleasure at one of the iconic venues in the New York goth scene. The only thing that can possibly top it is to attend his similarly-themed but even more spectacular Endless Night Vampire Ball in New Orleans.

Corrado’s Hayride, Haunted House

Mr. Haunt

On Sunday night Oct 16 I was recruited by a group calling itself Haunt Hunters to join them on a visit to Corrado’s Hayride of Horrors and Haunted House in Hackettstown NJ. Owner Joe Corrado transforms his hundred acre farm every Halloween season into one of the state’s great spooky amusements. The hayride, haunted house and haunted corn maze walk are open Oct.1 and then every Friday, Sat and Sunday through the month, ending the weekend of Halloween.The hayride costs $14, the House $14 and a walk through the Haunted Corn Maze $8. Refreshments are for sale at a concession stand.

Haunt Hunters is headed by Mr. Chuck Mound and his partner Mr. Haunt, both dedicated investigators. Mr. Haunt, a prodigious consumer of all things macabre, but especially Halloween-themed amusements, is an imposing figure whose six and a half foot height is further amplified by his goggle-adorned top-hat. Together, he and Mound travel the Northeast and beyond in search of horror-themed attractions to experience and evaluate. Their mission is to seek out haunted theme parks, houses and yard decorations, and to evaluate all their aspects: granting awards for best actors, best costumes, best sets & scenery, best scream queens and – the crowning award – The Annabelle Trophy for best haunted attraction.

Riding on the back of a tractor-drawn hay-strewn trailer alongside a twenty or so passengers, mostly, but not all teenagers, we got to view eerily illuminated displays of grisly scenes, guillotines, graveyards, creepy shacks and vehicle wrecks situated along the roadside.

Costumed and masked or made-up actors jumped out of the dark to menace us with threats, fake weapons and loud noisemakers, startling us each time they popped out of the gloom.

Marching in a line through the dimly lit maze of paths through a field of eight-foot tall corn, we were assailed by similar horrific characters. This walk goes rather quickly because the terrified kids in back of the line keep pushing and urging those at the front of the line to move faster to escape the villains.

A flatbed truck shuttles patrons to a horribly decorated haunted house, the interior of which is furnished with grisly displays and manned by shrieking, wall-climbing and frighteningly-costumed monster-actors, male and female. The tour ends when one of the tormentor-actors chases the visitors, with a loudly buzzing chainsaw, out of the building and into the front walk where a full moon shone comforting light on to the scene and we all breathed a sigh of relief. We served ourselves consolation in the form of hotdogs, cider and doughnuts before making the long car ride back to civilization.

Halloween fell on a Monday this year, so celebrations and events started early, creating a four-day Halloweekend.

New York City

Night Gallery at Lovecraft bar

NY-based gothic rock mega-ensemble Night Gallery stormed the stage at Lovecraft Bar at 11:30 on the Friday before Halloween, where a sleepy crowd of beatnik seniors had gathered to hear soothing hippy jazz-fusion bands from the 60s. Accompanied by no less than five gifted musicians, including recently added keyboardist Jennifer Bobbe, vocalists Mark Demon and singer-songwriter Kitty Hawk quickly turned the mood around with their brooding, yet bombastic repertoire. Although most of the Grateful Dead-leaning crowd made a quick exit, the few who stayed seemed genuinely impressed by the change of pace that Night Gallery provided. The management, however, wasn’t thrilled, and they cut NG’s set to four songs and whisked them off stage, replacing them with a sleep-inducing Jimmy Buffet-style duo, which was our cue to leave.

Memento Mori Halloween Party

From there it was an easy walk across Alphabet City to Bedlam Bar, where Mike Stalagmike, Bela Lugosi Alex and Valefar Malefic were spinning a deathrock-based mix that had black-clad dancers gyrating and careening into the early morning hours in the Halloween edition of Memento Mori.
this side of the local graveyard.

Friday, Oct. 28

Madame X hosted “Lifting the Veil – A Sexy Halloween Bash” at QXT’s in Newark, attended by costume contestants from the greater NY/NJ area and beyond.

Saturday, Oct. 29

Fr. Jeff hosted the Halloween edition of Ward 6 at Windfall, a dance night complete with costume contest featuring a $100 first prize and $50 Gothic Renaissance store certificate second prize.

Amityville Horror All Hallow’s Eve

Club Revolution and Music Hall on Long Island hosted a musical extravaganza on Sunday night before Halloween with a variety of bands and musicians covering a spectrum of appropriately themed goth-industrial performers. Sandwiched between openers Night Gallery who reprised their act to a more receptive crowd (see above) and headliners, Disorder, whose tribute to Joy Division has become a staple of the NY/NJ goth scene, was star of the dark stage, Baron Misuraca who performed an impeccable cover of the Rammstein mega-hit “Du Hast” and also served as emcee.

Oklahoma-based Esoterik featured a darkwave , but less than melodious set with a gorgeous female vocalist and a single multi-instrumentalist on guitar, drums and keyboardist. Espermachine, hailing from Little Rock, AR looked and sounded a lot like Laeatherstrip.

Disorder opened with an eerie track of historic newsreel commentary from the early days when Joy Division was first hailed. From there, they performed eight songs in all, including “Isolation,” “She’s Lost Control” and “Shadowplay,” before pushing through a medley including “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” “Transmission” and the tragic-sounding Joy Division/New Order transition piece, “Ceremony.” Each was performed with their now-to-be expected fine mastery of Joy Division’s repertoire. Mike Strollo’s vocals, have a carefully crafted sense of strain in faithful simulation of venerated idol, Ian Curtis, and have become increasingly indistinguishable from the original.

The night ended with a costume contest which was enlivened when the groom of a zombie couple of contestants suddenly produced an engagement ring and real-life proposed to the bride right on stage. Happily, she accepted, and the rest of the night was spent in celebratory dancing to deejay-selected sounds.

Dracula’s Ball at Trocadero, Philadelphia Monday Oct 31, Halloween

This was the first Dracula’s Ball in quite some time. In earlier days,it was held three or four times a year, mostly at the now-gone, multilevel Shampoo mega-nightclub. When impresario Patrick Rodgers was able to put together an entertainment bill featuring reunited industrial rock giants Stabbing Westward and secure the historic Trocadero music venue, Dracula’s Ball arose from the grave. Balancing the bill was an opening tribal/medieval trio, Ashagal whose “songs of myth and legend”reminded us of Quintal or Dead Can Dance, and who warmed the crowd with music of ancient Scandinavia and Ireland.

Indeed, the evening did start early with doors at 9:00, Ashagal at 9:45 and Stabbing Westward at 10:40, so costumed revelers were able to dance the rest of the night to deejay sets by Chas Paris and Rich Russo. Those who preferred the intimacy of the upstairs lounge area had their own full bar and could dance to the spinning of DJ TK-421. Many of thegetups were stunning as well as creative, thus it was a little disappointing to see some attendees in sweatshirts, hoodies, jeans and sneakers. Costumes were “encouraged, but not mandatory.” Segregated areas were available for those of drinking age and those not. Attendees under 21 years of age could not access the bar service areas.

On the negative side, the Trocadero felt a little claustrophobic compared to Shampoo, but that’s nobody’s fault, just the laws of physics. To his credit, Patrick Rodgers limited the sale of tickets to well below the fire regulations specified limit for the venue. On the plus side, there were beautiful, original and creative items for sale in the merchandise area as well as records, posters and tee-shirts for the bands and the event.

Stabbing Westward put on a spectacular show, and lead singer Chris Hall seemed to be over-the-top with actual love and enthusiasm for the crowd as he exchanged jokes with the audience and belted out 10 great hits, ending the first set with “Save Yourself,” before taking a break, then returning with a three-song encore set that concluded with “Shame.”
We can only hope that having met with complete success with this sold-out the event that Patrick Rodgers is able to put another ball together again sooner than next Halloween.

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Nights Out

The Memory Pain at The Famished Frog

Aug 5, 2016
Morristown NJ

We had the good fortune on this Friday night to catch a performance of top-notch cover band The Memory Pain while dining at Morristown’s The Famished Frog. This venue hosts a large, noisy and distracted crowd whose patrons are mostly 20-something imbibers who are there on dates or looking to pick-up or be picked up while ambling around the big rectangular bar in front of which The Memory Pain performed. A nice, recessed space provided adequate room for this 4-piece group to spread out comfortably. That’s important, because frontman Fred Zoeller performs in a remarkably active, excited and physically mobile fashion.

When TMP performs their flawless, live covers of hits from the past 20 or so years, it isn’t just a walk down memory lane, but rather a dynamic, faithful reprise of great music from the past that we all share. The repertoire is drawn largely, but not exclusively from standards from the heyday of MTV in the 90s when most of us acquired and refined our taste in rock. “Talented,” “tight” and “professional” are the words that come to mind in summing up the performance by this well-rehearsed quartet. Veterans Fred Zoeller (lead vocals/guitar) and Dan Esser (bass guitar) are joined by alternate lead vocalist Dan Callas on guitar and multi-talented, multi-instrumentalist Adam Gruss on drums to create a rich, authentic and room-filling sound. This is essential to re-creating faithful reincarnations of well-known and beloved favorites of the audience’s shared musical history.

Despite the fact that dating and dining are their primary reasons for being present, some of the audience felt so compelled by the good music issuing forth from the band that they broke into dance although there was little spaced allocated for it. If hearing masterful, accurate covers of famous hits by Counting Crows or Third Eye Blind have that same effect on you, I suggest you follow The Memory Pain at various venues where they perform and where you can come as close as possible to being at live performances by the originals.

Lost Boys Beach Party at QXT’s

Newark nightclub QXT’s held a theme night called “Lost Boys Beach Party.” The club was absolutely packed, both the upstairs main hall where DJ Ron Medina spun his usual masterful mix of 80s and Dark Wave; and the two lower spaces, where DJs Wintermute and Mykill Plague assaulted rivet-heads and their ilk in Area 51 with EBM and industrial; as well as The Crypt where DJ Helixx aired danceable, but horror-themed Goth and darkwave. Vendors were present offering horror and vampire themed merchandise as well as accessories of club attire. There were periodically announced giveaways.

A special treat was a live performance by singer/saxaphonist Tim Cappello, known and revered for his musical performance in the now-classic vampire movie “The Lost Boys.” Appearing youthful and muscular at 61 years of age, wearing little more than an elaborate set of chrome chains, a ponytail and a black wife-beater, Cappello absolutely enthralled the audience with his energetic show. The crowd pressed up to the stage to get the most out of his performance. Excitement was heightened further when Cappello jumped off-stage, singing and wailing from his sax right into the midst of the crowd who responded with enthusiasm and a flurry of camera-phone flashes. Despite the love showered upon him, Cappello limited his performance to the single “I Still Believe,” modestly admitting it to be his one and only hit. But what a hit!

Necropolis at Windfall
5th Anniversary

On Sept. 3, veteran DJ and club organizer Fr. Jeff Ward celebrated the 5th anniversary of his over-the-top, successful monthly dance club night, Necropolis, at midtown Manhattans’ Windfall. Jeff managed to rescue from oblivion a dance night called Necromantik that he had co-hosted at the Knitting Factory some 9 years ago. The Knitting Factory has long since moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn. He recruited 3 top deejays, Patrick Cusack, Sean Templar and Erik Aengel who now serve as consistent resident DJs to the renamed, monthly Necropolis along with various guest spinners. Moving from the Knitting Factory to The Bowery Poetry Club, then later to Element (previously The Bank) Jeff finally settled on Windfall.

For this anniversary celebration, the guest was noted musicologist and published author Andi Harriman, as pleasing to the eyes as to the ears. Together, they created a festive and gala observance of the milestone event with a rhapsodic mix of classic post-punk and oft-forgotten gothic/industrial treasures, such that the floor was crowded with fervid and energetic dancers like rarely seen elsewhere.

Windfall is an elegant bar and dance hall smack in the middle of Manhattan’s midtown. Once the site of the Architects’ Guild, it boasts modern interior design in the Frank Lloyd Wright or Mission-style, with stately wood floor and paneling, to which a curved and lengthy polished-top bar has been added. It is the location where black-attired and finely groomed Goths and denizens of the NYC after-hours music crowd gather on the first Saturday of every month to attend Necropolis.

Doors open at 11:00 pm. Imbibers line up and socialize at the exquisitely designed and well-stocked bar, where knowledgeable and attentive mixologist Gerard serves up the concoctions of their choice. Attentive, pony-tailed manager Chris roams the space, ever watchful to assure everyone enjoys a perfectly comfortable time. The main reason for attending this particular night is the uncommonly astute musical selection served up by Father Jeff (Ward 6) and his cohort of similarly skilled DJs, to provide a the atmosphere for a night of New Wave and Goth-Industrial dance. Eminently danceable musical rarities are blended in with beloved favorites from the Depeche Mode/Sisters of Mercy/ Siouxsie repertory.

Celebrities of Gotham’s underground scene are noted to come and mingle, sometimes spreading word and flyers of upcoming social and musical events. Merging with the crowd of gorgeous and transgressively garbed patrons this night were DJs Arsenal and Ron Medina, Sir William Welles and Matt V Christ. Among the glitterati, Shirley Alvarez and Kai Irina Hahn of The Sedona Effect add glamour to a ravishing and splendid crowd of attendees.

Memento Mori 1st Anniversary

This monthly, Thursday night Deathrock-themed dance party celebrated its 1st Anniversary on August 25, drawing its largest crowd ever, culminating a success story beyond expectations, at the customary location, the appropriately decorated Bedlam in Alphabet City, NYC. Doors opened at 10 pm, and the turnout grew exponentially as the denizens of the Greater New York demimonde began showing up to enjoy the music and extend their congratulations to the principals involved. Returning briefly from the U.K. for the celebration was Ana Vice, long-time mainstay in the scene and mentor to the enterprising group consisting of two novice DJs, Valefar Malefic and Bela Lugosi Alex, and the established, seasoned DJ Mike Stalagmike, host of Defcon. Together they managed to pull off the difficult accomplishment of drawing a steady and satisfied crowd to a late-night, weekday night event.

Greeting guests at the door was the glamorous and beautiful Catgirl Morales who heaped praise on the organizers and was happy to disclose the details of the past year to interested attendees. A who’s who of famous celebrities of the Goth scene included Aurelio Voltaire, just back from an international tour; gorgeous and multi-talented Kai Irina Hahn; impresario William Welles; and DJs Mark Cage Knight and Joe Hart of Procession, which is yet another successful and on-going weekday night dark dance party. Goody bags with candy and Memento Mori buttons were among the giveaways.

The scene was appropriately lit with only scattered tea-light candles and draped with hanging shroud tatters. A pitch-black musical selection of classics and obscurities entertained a roomful of die-hard guests until 4 a.m.

Bodylab
at La Poisson Rouge

Extensive Facebook promotion of this new, free and thematic dance party paid off for the organizers , DJs Eisdriver and Arsenal who succeeded in drawing an staunch crowd of between 25 and 30 committed, rivet-headed industrial music enthusiasts on a Thursday night to the downstairs at La Poisson Rouge lounge. Starting around 10:00 pm, attendees were assaulted (in the favorable sense in which they understand it) with a blend of the hammering sounds of old-school industrial and mechanized Germanic EBM (electro-body music).
The classics of the 80s and 90s from Skinny Puppy, Front 242 and Ministry are now-largely neglected, but I was pleasantly surprised to hear these and more woven into a selection of Nordic/Germanic and highly danceable Neo Old School EBM.

The black-clad, booted crowd consisted of recognizable adherents of the genre by their attire, their bearing and their mastery of the dance style, which is characterized by muscular, decisive and resolute stepping to the insistent beat of this mode of music. Celebrities of the scene were in attendance, including the statuesque and talented beauty, Kai Irina Hahn (front vocalist of The Sedona Effect), renowned DJ Father Jeff Ward and noted Diesel-punk artist CharleSilas Garlette. The hosts and their spouses greeted and mingled with the special and somewhat exclusive in-crowd of devotees. Raffle drawings and giveaways of CDs and tickets livened the evening. The crowd seemed to be actually growing when I left around 1:30 am.

Local Music Festivals

A Murder of Crows

A Murder of Crows took place on August 12 and 13 at the Mercury Lounge, in coordination with The Red Party, billing itself a 2 Day Goth & Post Punk Festival hosted by DJ Patrick Cusack, Sean and M Banshie Templar, Dave and Jenn Bats as well as Stefan Axell, Frank Vollman and Jaycee Cannon. Friday’s live musical lineup featured Ritual Howls, VOWWS, and the Memphis Morticians. Saturday saw The Exploding Boy, Frank The Baptist and Skeleton Hands. It is reported to have been a smashing success as revealed in the nearby photo.

Nowhere To Run Post-Punk Festival

took place August 20 at The Paper Box in Brooklyn and also featured an all-day-and-night of bands and dance music. Music historian and DJ Andi Harriman opened the event at 2 pm and reports that the event was packed all night, estimating some 300 people, representing the whole spectrum of goth, punk, techno and industrial fans – came through the doors. Incidentally, Harriman succeeded in selling off the entire stock of her notorious book, “Some Wear Leather Some Wear Lace,” which covers the history of the Post Punk movement from the 80s onward, at the merchandise stand. Among the 11 or so live bands, Post-Punk group, The Pawns and industrial band Statiqbloom captured the audience with their on-stage presence and interesting sound.

Museums & Galleries

Taxidermy: Art, Science and Immortality
at Morbid Anatomy

Brooklyn NY
Aug 12, 2016

Brooklyn’s Morbid Anatomy Museum opened a new and dazzling exhibit with a champagne toast on a Friday evening. Attendees to the reception were guided through the multifaceted aspects of the art by the exhibit’s curator, J. D. Powe whose personal collection comprised the majority of the pieces. Mr. Powe, who is a co-founder of an educational software company, explained how his fascination with taxidermy began with his earliest visits to natural history museums. Small pieces and then large were added to his collection which by now boasts a staggering array of miniature as well as grand acquisitions, spanning the whole variety of specimens. These include wild and domestic; animal, fish and fowl; artistic arrangements; dramatic dioramas; furniture adornments; freakish abnormalities; and perfect, paradigmatic exemplars of the various species.

Thus we are treated to glass cases chock filled with vividly colorful birds, one serving as a fireplace screen. The right half of a sailfish in a regal pose floats high on a wall over a variety of his finny cohorts, while several toothed probosces of different sized sawfish lay disembodied and ready for inspection directly below. Two-headed cattle, a dwarfed calf, a walrus with duplicate tusks and other mistakes of nature are preserved for study and to evoke amazement at nature’s sometimes-slipshod processes of reproduction.
Elephant and rhinoceros feet drew attention in the case displaying functional items such as ashtrays, flower vases and bookends fashioned from animal parts. An entire wall was stacked high with glass cases housing the mortal remains of beloved, deceased pets, mainly dogs. Free-standing canines stood on the floor below them and were aesthetically beautiful representatives of man’s best friend, a large hound and a spotted Great Dane. Little dioramas housed theatrical tableaux, one of which posed a paternal frog administering an over-the-knee spanking of a young’un.

Enlightening, educational and at the same time mind-boggling, this exhibition brought a decidedly respectful – even loving – approach to a practice that might seem controversial to some. The emphasis here is on the beauty of the animal world and of each subject, the ingenuity and skill involved in the craft, and the fascination we appropriately feel when given opportunity to examine carefully prepared and maintained samples of the natural world.

The really good news is that this exhibit is being expanded starting in September with some anthropomorphic taxidermy, i.e. animals clothed and posed as if engaged in human activities. Look for it!

The Creeper Gallery
in New Hope, PA

No trip to the twin cities of Lambertville NJ and New Hope PA is complete without a long and leisurely tour of this extraordinary gallery where artist-owner D.L. Marian gave us a brief rundown on how and why she came, along with her partner and fellow-artist, Danielle Deveroux, to fill this tiny storefront with grotesque and gorgeous sculptures, paintings, mixed media constructions and rogue taxidermy specimens, all of museum quality. Definitely not for the squeamish or the easily offended, these works, self-described as “gothic,” are horrific, iconoclastic, charming, even while bordering on the sacrilegious, but seem to get away without offending by being so ingeniously conceived and artfully crafted. There are fabricated or altered effigies, dummies, heads, skulls, shrines, photos, paintings, constructions and assemblages to provide material for your nightmares as well as food for your thoughts on mortality, morbidity, aberrations and Hell.

You can learn more by checking out their website, but nothing can substitute for first-hand, up close and painfully personal viewing of the ever-changing exhibit of items for sale at the Creeper Gallery.

Manus x Machina
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

On exhibition from Fashion Institute of Technology at ”Manus x Machina,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art held a display of the wildest and most artistic and high tech examples of mainly dress designs produced by a combination of astounding and specialized manual skills and modern day mechanization, such as 3D printing. The range of styles and materials was overwhelming in diversity, but we zeroed in on the most sci-fi and gothic pieces.

Which all goes to show how far and deep into the mainstream culture that gothic/punk/industrial taste has penetrated!

Meanwhile, on the roof of the Museum, the Met had erected the façade of everybody’s favorite creepy domicile: The house from Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” which, set against the beautiful twilight cityscape of New York City’s skyline, appeared as a mischievously evil blot on the otherwise uplifting panorama.

This is the newspaper print version of the report. The searcheable, internet-based version can be found by scrolling down two entries to http://doktorjohn.com/?p=1612

Goth 101:
A History of the Postpunk and Goth Subculture, 1978 – 1992

An Illustrated Lecture with Andi Harriman

Morbid Anatomy Museum
April 27, 2016
Brooklyn, NY

By Doktor John

The Morbid Anatomy Museum hosted a lecture entitled Goth 101 as the latest entry in its series of like-themed presentations by Andi Harriman, musicologist and author of a popular compendium on Postpunk and Goth culture. Ms. Harriman lectured for just under an hour, accompanying her extensive historical account with abundant photographic documentation.

The amount of material proves to be voluminous, but Harriman’s analysis puts forward the thesis that the Punk cultural movement of the 1970s, with its iconoclastic philosophy and raw musical style set the stage for the inevitable rise of the more wide-ranging and varied, but inter-related styles of the early 80s called Postpunk. Out of this conglomerate of musical (and fashion) styles came Goth, a sort of apotheosis of a cultural thread that had run through Western civilization for millennia.

The roots of Goth were traced back to marauding nomad pagan tribes, the Goths and Ostrogoths, then became identified with the architecture that these former barbarians built as they settled in the Europe that they had conquered. Gothic art and architecture, identified with the period of Europe’s Dark Ages became associated with ruins and decay, then served as the back-drop for morbid-themed literature centered on haunted castles, seductive vampires and themes of emotional despair. Early cinema continued feeding the undercurrent of dark glamour, featuring such “vamps” as Theda Bara. Ghastly musical performance art in the mid-20th century fertilized the Postpunk substrate, eventually giving rise to the dark style of music that we now recognize as Gothic Rock.

Along the way, Ms. Harriman provided slides demonstrating concrete graphic examples that connected the thread, from engravings of barbarian invaders to images of Gothic cathedrals, the picturesque ruins of which supply the settings for Gothic novels, later for horror-themed motion pictures and television. Slide images traced the evolution from Screamin’ Jay Hawkins music videos to Alice Cooper, to the Velvet Underground, to Iggy Pop and, most importantly, to Bowie. We learned that the term Gothic Rock was first applied to The Doors, although Bauhaus’s “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” in the movie The Hunger seems to have been its first true inception when it all came together.

At the turn of the decade – the 80s into the 90s – Gothic Rock underwent mutation as electronic and synthetic instrumentation eventually took over, morphing the movement into Industrial Music, while retaining of some of Goth’s dark preoccupations. Thus aficionados of Gothic Rock are to be found today pursuing their musical taste patronizing clubs and music collections that term themselves as “Gothic-Industrial.”

Procession at Home Sweet Home

At least one Sunday night a month can be salvaged by taking a plunge into the dark-dance night calling itself “Procession.” It is held in the depths of a dank, underground basement called Home Sweet Home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The long bar, manned by a beautiful androgynous bartender, is well enough lit by battered, kitschy and mismatched chandeliers, and livened by a mounted taxidermy specimen of a menacing carnivore, but the dance area is gritty and unselfconsciously punk – a lumpy stone pavement.
DJs Mark Cage Knight and Joe Hart spun out popular pieces from Nick Cave and obscurities like O. Children. Mark, Joe and Joe’s gorgeous girlfriend, Rachel welcomed arrivals – both friends and newcomers, warmly.

About 30 late nighters filled the cellar-like space. A melange of genders and sexual persuasions were in attendance. There were 3 bathrooms – one for men, one for women and one “take-your-pick.” Patrons were a mix of jeans/sneakers-clad hipsters and High Goth fashionistas. About ten people were present on the dance floor at any given time. Those elegantly attired in stunning black outfits, sinuously undulating to the rhythms made a splendid sight, dimly seen through the fog, through which the flash of a projector cut to throw disturbing videos on a peeling painted brick wall.