31/01/2025
the author of the "Gothic Rock Black Book" Mick Mercer pours aptly gothly scorn ;) upon the top 200 list made by Uncut magazine ...
It’s massively disappointing, what did you expect? An unforgivably lazy approach (all interviews are ancient reprints apart from a wonderful piece on Juliane Regan and Tim Bricheno, of which more later) and the most important UK originals UK Decay, around whom the early scene virtually coalesced, don’t even have their wonderful “For Madmen Only” included! Christian Death’s ‘Only Theater Of Pain’, which most people would expect to see somewhere in any Goth top 10, are at 94. That sort of thing.
It’s perfectly understandable that they include the ‘goth-adjacent’ artists, because they want to sell copies, hence good old Uncle Bob on the cover, so you know there’ll be The Cure galore (all of the holy trinity make it). Also there’s bound to be the justifiable inclusion of both the Banshees and Joy Division, bands successful in their own right before the Goth scene came into being, and therefore a strong influence on the scene yet never part OF it. There’s plenty of Nick Cave, through the ages, yet still not part of the actual scene itself. We’ll see the Sisters, Mission, The Cult, All About Eve and Nephilim, albeit not greatly.
Elsewhere it's nice to see S*x Gang, The Danse Society (‘Heaven Is Waiting’, while ‘Seduction’ is ignored), Skeletal Family, Xmal (‘Tocsin’, but no ‘Fetisch’?), Alien S*x Fiend, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, March Violets, London After Midnight, Inca Babies, Black Tape For A Blue Girl, The Wake, Rosetta Stones, The Rose Of Avalanche, Virgin Prunes, even KaS Product, all of which is fine BUT …
Where are Children On Stun, Balaam, Ataraxia, Mephisto Walz, Ausgang, Nosferatu, Play Dead, IKON, Incubus Succubus, or modern wonders like A Cloud Of Ravens, Senex IV, Vazum or Ariel Maniki & The Black Halos? I ask because they prefer to include goth-adjacent over Goth. They’ve allowed album entries (sometimes more than one album) by Kirlian Camera, Sort Sol, Fra Lippo Lippi, Hunting Lodge, Front 242, The Stranglers (???), Samhain, Mogwai, Berlin (!), The Associates, Nitzer Ebb, In The Nursery, Tubeway Army and Matt Johnson. They even have s**t like Death In June, Current 93 and Marilyn Manson. That is wasted space.
To show how lopsided it all gets we hit the top 20, only to find Joy Division (twice), The Birthday Party, The Cure (twice), Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Cocteau Twins, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Bauhaus, Ministry, Swans, Iggy (‘The Idiot’), The Doors, PJ Harvey, The Sisters (twice), Nico, The Velvets, The Jesus And Marychain, and Depeche Mode. In other words over half of THE most important Goth albums of all time aren’t even Goth.
Would it be asking too much to simply shunt most of those into the second half of the chart and concentrate on what was actually Goth? And if you can waste space on some of these why on Earth would you not, as music journalists, have sufficient sense to include John Foxx-era Ultravox, and Gloria Mundi? Why does everything have to be so fu***ng pedestrian and ill-informed? How can you look at the assembled list when completed and argue that Nico genuinely deserves having three albums included while The Mission get just one? And so on and on and on….
Anyway, the features might entertain even though they’re mainly old reprints involving Dave Vanian, Bauhaus, Nick Cave, the Banshees, Cocteaus, The Sisters and The Cure. Obviously they couldn’t be bothered including anything with Ian Astbury, The Mission or the Neffs. The best thing here is the interview with Julianne Regan and Tim Bricheno, weirdly uncredited to any writer as far as I could see. It covers the whole Eves history with typical honesty from our delightful duo, and it does so with vitality and dignity, also getting at what Goth is, which none of the other pieces do. The magazine is worth getting for this interview alone.
I feel like a teacher marking homework. This gets five out of ten, or C+, at best. Detention beckons.
https://shop.kelsey.co.uk/product/ultimate-record-collection-200-greatest-goth-albums
https://www.yourcelebritymagazines.com/products/ultimate-record-collection-200-greatest-goth-albums-the-cure-robert-smith
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