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krisinabox · 5 months

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Being Goth in the 80′s

“Beware! I live!” - Sinistar

“What was it like in the 80′s?” the baby bats often ask as their dark forms flutter about me, eyes wide and ready to drink up every last, minute detail - “The music from the 80′s is sooo amazing; if I had a time machine I’d be so there,” they’ll gush. “OMG, tell us EVERYTHING!” Very well then - here’s everything: No internet, no cell phones, no texting, no email, no streaming, no downloads, no Uber, no apps - oh my! If you had a time machine, the 80′s might be a fun place to visit, but trust me, once you saw your cell phone had zero bars, you wouldn’t want to live there.

Of course, to those of us living back then, we didn’t know what we were missing as those things were still science-fiction. So had anyone been asked how they liked the 80′s, they’d probably think things were going reasonably well, myself included. But lets zoom in and focus on what it was like being a goth in the 80′s. Yes, the music was amazing - but you had to find it first.

First off, getting any information about the goth scene was like blood from a stone. Rare, infrequent, and treasured. For most of the 80′s, we lived and died by Propaganda magazine. It represented about 90% of all the info you received regarding music / fashion / trends / style and it only came out 4 times a year. Ever wonder why there are so few Propaganda magazines copies floating about now? Because you read it and re-read it and then re-re-read it. Your friends read it and re-read it, and then their friends. Beverages were spilled on it. Photos were cut out of it and pinned to walls. Concert schedules were torn out. And it’s not like they were printed on the best quality of paper to begin with. It boggles my mind that any still exist today at all. By the time the new issue arrived in the mail, the previous one looked as though it had gone through a blender. The other big place for music info was the local record store.

For me, those record stores were Camelot and Sam Goody and yeah, they really looked like that. If you were lucky, someone who worked there was a sage and knew a little bit about everything, including goth music. I was lucky - very lucky. Michael, the assistant manager at my Camelot, was like a bio-Alexa. “I’m looking for something…dark,” I believe I mumbled at him one day. “Have you listened to this?” he’d ask, handing me a Bauhaus album. I shake my head ‘no.’ “Here”, he’d say, “Put on these headphones and have a listen.” And that was that. He hooked me up with The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Xmal Deutschland, and Joy Division, just to name a few, so I was all in from the early days. He knew when all the albums were going to be released and he’d order them for you (since those mainstream stores rarely carried them). I must admit, there was a tiny bit of cred to be had when you walked in and the person behind the counter recognizes you and says the special album you ordered has arrived and hands it to you. The third place to learn about music, was on telephone poles.

As far as I know, this hasn’t changed much as I still see band flyers stapled up around town, but back then, this kind of direct marketing was essential. Propaganda magazine and Michael at Camelot didn’t know when a smaller band like Strange Boutique was next playing at The Metro, but those flyers did. And wise was the person who stapled up several flyers at a time in the same place, because he knew we would tear them down to put up on our refrigerators at home so we wouldn’t forget. And while it was easy to see the small, local bands play live, it was difficult to see the big bands play live. The tours never seemed to come near where you lived. I didn’t even see Siouxsie & the Banshees play live until 1991 even though I had been listening to them throughout the 80′s. Your best bet to actually see the big goth bands was on MTV’s 120 Minutes.

Now, MTV was super mainstream and you’d rarely see a goth band on there (at least in the US), so the 120 Minutes program was progress. You might only see one or two goth bands on each episode, but that was better than nothing. I would record each episode of 120 Minutes on my VCR while I was out or sleeping. The next day, I’d fast forward through the show and find the goth bands and watch them a few times, and take my VCR to a friends so we could copy the good videos to save and share. Then the next week, I’d use that same VCR tape to record the next episode and so forth and so on. Eventually, 120 Minutes seemed to run goth stuff less frequently and I stopped watching. But by that point, I’d discovered that just like with music, you could order VCR tapes with hours worth of videos of Siouxsie or The Cure or whoever and I just mail-ordered those. And these videos were not cheap. I recall my Siouxsie VCR tape set me back $60, plus shipping. And this was in 1986, so that was big money. But what about the rest of TV?

In general, TV didn’t have much to offer to goths in in the 80′s, so I consequently didn’t watch much. Some shows that come to mind are ‘Tales from the Darkside,’ ‘Monsters,’ ‘The Hitchhiker,’ ‘Friday the 13th, The Series’, The Twilight Zone,’ and ‘Elvira’s Movie Macabre’. Most of these shows were syndicated and tended to be on quite late, so I’d record them and watch them later. In general, I might watch just a few hours of TV a week. I’d be curious to see stats for 80′s TV viewership among goths, but I bet it would be low. They just didn’t make many shows for us back then.

The video game market may have crashed in 1983, but arcades didn’t go away and that was a godsend since they were great places for goths to loiter. Remember Michael from Camelot? When he left Camelot he became the manager of the arcade at the other end of the mall (yes, we really did spend a lot of time in malls). He was less useful for music, but now he became gaming useful. He’d let a select few of us into the arcade on Sunday when it was closed - and we played for free. With fresh batteries in my Sony Walkman, I’d spend hours at a time in the dark listening to my fav goth albums while racking up crazy high scores on games like Tempest, Wizard of Wor, Battlezone, Defender, Stargate, Berzerk, and Sinistar. Why would he let some folks play for free, you might ask? Because we would set the high scores others would kill themselves trying to beat for the rest of the week. There was method in Michael’s madness - that arcade was always packed. It broke my heart when I moved away in 1985 to leave that kind of privilege behind, but I’m sure Michael had no trouble replacing me on his weekly roster of ringers. I played a ton of home video games as well, and huge swaths of my free time were spent gaming away while goth music drifted out of my cassette player. It had auto-reverse, so I didn’t even have to flip the cassette!

Magazines were much more popular in the 80′s than now, and many of the goths I knew read things like ‘Heavy Metal,’ ‘Omni,’ ‘Creepy,’ ‘Eerie,’ and ‘Vampirella.’ Although not specifically targeted at goths, magazines like these had stories and art that were very dark and resonated well with darklings. At any given time, I might have subscribed to a half-dozen magazines and picked up more occasionally, which was fairly typical. Compare that to now when most folks don’t subscribe to any and even I only subscribe to one. As the 80′s wore on, you began to see more dark, mainstream magazines and graphic novels creeping out of the woodwork like ‘The Dark Knight Returns,’ ‘Watchmen,’ and ‘Sandman.’ The late 80′s also saw the beginning of ‘Zines that folks would self publish on their home computers and hand-distribute about town, I recall quite a few unsung ‘zines that were very goth, but they rarely lasted more than a few issues before vanishing. In addition to magazines, I read vast numbers of books in the 80′s since that was the best medium for finding darker fare. Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles books were stupid popular among everyone I knew, as were things like William Gibson’s “Neuromancer,” “Count Zero,” and “Mona Lisa Overdrive.” Unlike other mediums, there were so many great books available, most goths I knew had their noses buried within a book whenever you’d visit them, and folks’ personal libraries tended to be quite extensive. Movies were a different story.

Goth films were so rare in the 80′s, you can just about count all of them using only your fingers and toes. It would be forever between goth films and I would often wonder if I’d ever see another one again. If there were so much as 2 in a year, that was a great year - I’m looking at you, 1988, when we got both “Beetlejuice“ and “Elvira, Mistress of the Dark!” Horror films and dark sci-fi largely filled the void, and fortunately, there were a decent number of those, so all was not lost. I still recall seeing “Aliens” and “The Fly” as a double-feature and that made for a good evening of dark entertainment. As far as fashion went, well, you’ve all seen the pictures online.

In the 80′s, casual goth was how you usually saw goths dressed. Everyday goth tended to be plain, compared to now. The most goth girl I knew in the 80′s, Ginny, usually wore black jeans, black Doc Martins, and a black t-shirt. In the winter, she’d throw on a long coat, a black beret hat, and a black & white checkered scarf - she always looked sharp! The pic above is representative of the fashion I would generally see in the 80′s. I believe this particular photo is from 1984, and this general style was common right through the decade. The girl on the left being more everyday goth while the girl on the right is more going-to-a-show goth. Hair was not always spiked up and depended on laziness. By the later 80′s, I didn’t see anyone doing it anymore. Tattoos and piercings existed, but they were not as frequent. Leather jackets and leather long coats were also seen, but not as often since they were expensive and most goths (myself included) acquired their clothes in second hand shops.

And there you go - I’m sure my goth 80′s were fairly typical, although individual experiences may vary. The modern ability to pull a cell phone out of your pocket and bring up any goth song, album, or music video ever made and watch it on the spot, then to check what bands are playing at any club, at any time, anywhere in the world, and then review the photos taken from that same club just last night to see exactly what they’re wearing in that neck-of-the-woods, is a wonder. Plus, goth music is easier to make and distribute now, so good bands are found faster by far more people to be enjoyed than ever before. There are more goth TV series, movies, and video games available than I can shake a broken VCR tape at, and again, I can watch or play them whenever I feel like it. I enjoy seeing current goth fashion as it’s so much more sophisticated and sublime than it used to be and goth decor exists in multitudes undreamt of in the 80′s.

So if you were to pull up to my place in your time-traveling 1982 Delorian, I’ll be happy to visit the 80′s with you to catch a show or two, but be sure to bring me back to today. There’s never been a better time to be goth, than now.

creaturesfromelsewhere 12/31/2021

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