All Goths Eve: The Night before World Goth Day

wgd-bannerGood evening all, I hope you are preparing to be proud of who you are, as it is World Goth Day on May 22nd! Once again, all our thanks to DJ Cruel Britannia and DJ Martin OldGoth for giving us a day to get our Goth on!

Tomorrow, I’ll be plugged into as much social media as I can manage. Ideally, I’ll be doing this from a bar in Newcastle with at least a jukebox I can put a decent playlist on, or the friendly rock surroundings of Trillians Rock Bar in city centre. I attempted belatedly to organise an event, and had DJs… but no venue. Next year!

Photo Credit gadgetsinfoavailable.blogspot.co.ukI’ll also be sharing a couple of articles I contributed to – BBC3 and The Independent newspaper both reached out to me for comments, which is really heartening.
I’ve maintained that a key objective of The Blogging Goth is to be a resource for journalists, so we don’t end up with inaccurate, laughable or dangerous articles in the press – I trust both the journalists I’ve spoken to, to do a good job. These will be published tomorrow.

If you’ve spoken to the media about being Goth, please let us know! I’d love to share your stories and the way it’s presented in the press. Challenging negative presumptions about depression, devil worship and deadbeat teenagers is something we should all feel passionately about.

a9ftZ88HStay involved with #WorldGothDay on social media, and let us know what you’re up to.
A big issue with the Goth scene is its fractured, tribal nature – even from city to city, here in the tiny United Kingdom, there is a disconnect between local urban scenes. It can be easy to forget there’s a worldwide subculture out there that we’re all a part of.
That’s just one more good reason to have a day to celebrate each year.

So whatever you’re doing, keep it dark and delightful. See you out there!

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WGW April 2016: Saturday Night Live Music!

Have you read our review of the Friday Night at Whitby Goth Weekend April 2016? Click to head back, or read on to hear about the Saturday lineup at the UK’s premier Goth music event!

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WGW April 2016: Friday Night Reviews

wgw-new-bannerThe decompression time from Whitby Goth Weekend is getting worse! So chase away those blues with my belated reviews of the storming bands that filled the Spa for April 2016 WGW! As always, my thanks to the talented Mel Butler Photography for choice pick of her quality pics!

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On The Web in Hull: Spiders Nightclub

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Mention the city of Kingston-upon-Hull to anyone vaguely alternative in the UK, and chances are they’ll tell you ‘Spiders Rocks’! It’s possibly one of the most formidable nightclubs in the country, running consistently since 1979.

That longevity probably owes to their stubborn resistance to playing dance, modern R&B or anything popular – which meant a lot of sidelined music genres ended up taking refuge at Spiders, in weird proximity to each other! Even when I started going, at the end of the Nineties, I knew you could hear Motown and Soul and Blues upstairs. It was downstairs where you could hear rock, punk, metal, indie and even some Goth.

The Blogging Goth, right, at Spiders in 2005. Stereotypical Snakebite and Black is author's own.

The Blogging Goth, right, at Spiders in 2005.

This was a holdover, of course, from the club’s contemporary music policy during the Eighties, the Golden Age of Goth. By the time I arrived, however, the DJs were catering to the broad crowds of pop punk and rap metal fans, and grudgingly allowed just a handful of classic Goth tracks spread thinly throughout the night.

For me, the clearest symbol of that proud heritage as a Goth venue were the black-and-white framed photos of punters from the Eighties on the wall approaching the cloakrooms. For many, many weekends as I waited to check my jacket, I’d gaze at those photos of Goths and Punks and envy them living through the rise of my favourite music genre.

So I was delighted to see that the photographer who originally took them has put them online, and is seeking his old friends to get in touch with memories and anecdotes of Spiders Nightclub.

If you have any recollections or recognize yourself and friends, please contact Andy Roe, who is considering writing a book about this infamous venue. I look forward to enjoying even more of the history of a place personally important to me, that was also vital to the developing alternative scene in the Eighties – and has remained a safe haven for it ever since!

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Whitby Bands Poll: Result!

wayne-husseyWe let our recent competition to win two tickets to April’s Whitby Goth Weekend run on a little longer, hoping for a surefire winner to break ahead.
Except, our final poll ended up showing Wayne Hussey of The Mission and Therapy? – the headlining acts – drawing neck and neck at the final tally, with a healthy 25% of the total vote each!

Eighties rock chicks (We’ve got a) Fuzzbox (And We’re Gonna Use It!) took the next biggest share of votes (13%) from readers of The Blogging Goth, followed by Lene Lovich Band (9%) and then the other support bands battled viciously for the remainder.
If this indicates a preference for veteran bands over new, or if it just shows only fans of older bands are actually reading the blog, I’m not sure, but the facts indicate the line-up and running order is a solid hit with Whitby fans.

Congratulations to our competition winners, Rachel from Wishaw who wanted to see Wayne Hussey, and Elizabeth from Belfast who wanted to see Rhombus. They each won a ticket, and we look forward to running this competition again!therapyWhitby is of course this weekend – I’ll be heading down there this Thursday, and regular coverage will come through Twitter, Instagram and the Facebook pages.

I’m also delighted to inform you Whitby Goth Weekend are now retaining my services as a formal press officer, so expect closer coverage of the entire festival, including one-on-one interviews with the bands and unique backstage news, not to mention what I can pinch from riders.

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Follow @WGWGothWeekend on Twitter, and the hashtag #WhitbyGothWeekend – #WGW refers to something mainstream I don’t understand and don’t wish to.

There is a vague plan to use the new video-streaming app Periscope to share some of Whitby Goth Weekend with you via your device. Simply install the free app and going looking for the originally-titled @TheBloggingGoth – I’ll walk around town, look at the Bazaar, stalk Goths, drink in the Spa and generally make a nuisance of myself whilst giving you a first-hand look at this most famous of Goth events.

Or just stroll up to me in the street, tell me you read the blog, and offer to buy me a drink!

 

 

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