reddragdiva | Standing on the headland taking in the scene.

But the clothes always were what was interesting about the goth scene, and nothing wrong with that. ;-p

As to the music: three or four reasonably good bands who, in their time, consistently produced interesting and innovative stuff, then half a dozen others who had one or two good songs, and the rest are nothing more than fourth-rate imitators.

And that's just talking about the 80s, when the goth scene actually was dynamic. Nowadays, sorry, but musically the scene is dead. Be happy that for a while it was quite amusing, but now just let it go: hauling loved ones out of graves because you can't bear to part with them is a quick way to get arrested... ;-)

But then, I never did like goth music all that much, so I should probably keep my ill-informed opinions to myself before everyone tells me quite how wrong I am.

IMO, the rise in the popularity of EBM in the goth scene is precisely because they have good pop songs and the trad goth rock bands don't.

Eris' comment applies just as well, to my mind, to buying EBM. The EBM bands know their fans are goths, at least of a sort.

(And I know your fondness for EBM. Now you just have to combine it with hair metal ...)

And I know your fondness for EBM. Now you just have to combine it with hair metal ..

Apop live have practically done that already. Bless, it's so sweet the way they want to be rock stars. ;-)

Yes, you (and

markeris) are probably right about there being more money spent on clothes than EBM records (buy one item from Cyberdog and you've spent about the price of 10 CDs). But EBM is relatively flourishing: or certainly gives that impression.

Not compared to, e.g., Germany.

i don't spend any less on music than i used to, as i can now afford to buy cds instead of used records and cassettes. i'm just not as excited about the music i do buy, and i think that's just because i'm older - music no longer offers an exciting way of defining my identity, i no longer think that i could be like my rockstar idols, and having heard a lot more music, nothing sounds as fresh and new. i wonder if the wee babygoths find music as exciting as i did when i was younger. i bet they do.

I could spend just as much as records. With reference to wanting my old vinyl, there are four or five compilation CDs of my favourite period of Australian indie rock I really really really should buy.

I spend rather a lot more money on music that corsets. Good Music, mostly *grin*.

Has there been a decent goth album to spend money on in thr last few years? Closest I'd say have been VNV's Empires/Burning Empires, and covenant's last couple. And they are borderline genre int they?

Rico has been bringing some good dark shouty stuff out, good, but would most people consider it goth? The Cure? Nothing since High has caught my ear. I guess Evenessance are a blp on the old goth radar, bought it, singles are ok, not to sure about the album as a whole. Prefer funeral for a friend when i want shouty rock... I guess the closest we have is the Rasmus, but i'm not sure the rest of the album groves as much as the single...

So how many people have i upset with this?

I like the Rasmus ^_^

(Yes, ok - and I fancy the singer - so what! :p )

the last soft cell album was quite good really... not very goth many would argue perhaps?

Taste the Blood of Zombina and the Skeletones

I just don't know any music that I like atm. Most of the music I listen to is at least a year old. In fact, I've been listening to a lot of 60s/70s stuff and 80s dance music *lol*

I don't listen to "goth" music at home really (the closest I get is the Dream Disciples!) Plus the fact I have no money and can't even afford £10 for a CD, let alone a corset (I wish... :/ )

I can't afford clothes or records, and now that my puter's speakers have died I'm not making up for it in mp3s.

So you do in fact spend one-tenth what you do on clothes on records!

Doh! Yes.

YOU SAVED GOTH AND I'M TELLING EVERYONE!

I've always found I will buy records/CDs before buying new clothes. Back in the eighties I hardly had any bought Goth clothes anyway, most were normal clothes customised or accessorised. (Miss Selfridges used to be good for black crushed velvet stuff.) But then I've never owned a corset either (and probably never will). I don't think I'm particularly typical though.

I don't actually care if the goth music scene dies. There's been nothing interesting in it for a long time. The most interesting newish band around at the moment are mclusky IMHO, but then I always was as much into punk/alternative as goth.

I've been spending far too much money on records and CDs lately. I can't even keep up with my purchases and listen to them enough to do them justice. I may have to cancel my Emusic subscription for a bit too.

Yes, but that's because you havea full-blown case of Record Nerd. More of it, I say!

"I've been spending far too much money on records and CDs lately. I can't even keep up with my purchases and listen to them enough to do them justice."

Now, that's just being a quitter.

You know, this sort of reminds me that I am actually that one person that the record labels whinge about; the one who, because they download stuff, doesn't buy records. Of course, before I had the internet I tended to get CDs out of libraries and tape them, because I have huge objections to paying £16.99 for twelve songs when I only want four of them, and I am perennially impoverished; the only way I get new CDs is if someone buys me one for my birthday ["I asked for BACH string quartets, you fucking imbecile, not BRITNEY SPEARS"] or if I actually have money when one of my seemingly endless Friends-in-a-band is throwing their latest guilt trip.

I wouldn't be much use to the goth scene were I inclined to buy CDs anyway, though, as I don't ... actually ... like .... obscure bands. *phew* I know, I know. Hand in my goth card at the door. I'll go one better now and say that if I was going to buy obscure-band-CDs I'd probably buy punk ones, because at least I can be assured of shouting in the same key to those.

Wow, what an entirely pointless comment. Summary: Del doesn't buy CDs because she's a filthy pirate who doesn't like goth music.

have you considered using an online service where you can pay for the songs you want?

Mmmm, but then I'd never get any songs at all ... I really don't care enough about any music to actually pay for it.

I'm not really in the target audience -- I may have a slightly gothy outlook on life, but I don't do the club thing -- but...

I spend considerably more on music than on clothes, and have done for as long as I've had money. My shirts may be getting holy, but I spent a couple hundred dollars on music in the past fortnight...

(Not that much of it was goth. Hm. Probably none of it. Simply haven't heard of any interesting new goth music worth spending money on for a year or three...)

I am one of those who spends more on music, books and DVDs than on clothes. No change there.

I am in fear that some goths who have tons of clothes and lots of new things to wear at events will make fun of me for wearing the same old stuff (some of my dresses are close to 10 years old or older), and as of now, still don't own a corset.

But, a lot of the music I get is not goth. My latest purchase was the Eurovision song contest winner Ruslana's single Wild Dance and I got the Bloodhound Gang's Horray for Boobies at my shop yesterday for 2 quid.

I still like and support a lot of the current bands (Swarf, Manuskript for example) and do my best considering I am older than 95% of the people "in the scene" and no longer live in a city with a large live scene to choose from.

I've not spent a single penny on any CDs (or tapes or...) in at least the last 18 months. Why? Well, you try buying Swedish prog rock in London...

I still spend an absurd amount on music and concerts, and discussions like this one make me feel better about doing so.

I still have all my old vinyl, but the quality of our turntable is somewhat dodgy, so I must rectify that soon. Our new house has the living room right next to the kitchen, so I'll be able to play music while I'm cooking, which makes me hugely happy. I'm partial to punk, ska and old-skool industrial while whipping up some coq au vin.

What I don't do anymore is just sit and listen. It seems like such an indulgence not to be doing anything else while I listen.

My younger self has no such issues. Maybe I need to relearn that habit again.

£3 doesn't buy a lot of music. But I take your point.

It's a large chunk of getting you into a gig!

O-h-h, I see.
Yeah, I have to find some tuits somewhere. I think there's a whole in my pocket where they keep falling out.

As opposed to two halves, or something. Durr.

A factor that the whingers haven't considered much is that even as little as five ago, they wouldn't HAVE CDs to sell. A decade ago, which was about when I at least was buying most of my goth music, CD production for even a small run was a $20k-$30k investment, and "small" was 5000 discs. Bands fought for label attention, not public dollars, because that was the only way that CDs got made. Unsigned bands might have cassettes for sale, if they'd been around for a long time, but mostly they just sold shirts and stickers at shows. Where I might have even the opportunity a decade ago to purchase 10 goth cds a year, I now am presented with about 150 opportunities to buy goth CDs, most of which are NOT showing up on RIAA's counts.

Ooh, good point! The crapness really doesn't help, no.

The good thing: anyone can do it. The bad thing: anyone can do it.

It's interesting, though, to see what happens with a half-decent band, e.g. Deathboy -

deathboy was putting up MP3s of everything he did for a few years before getting a live band together and recording a pretty good album. Which I think has sold within expectations but nothing like it deserves.

The crapness is a whole other issue. DB's CD is a windfall situation, if I'm understanding it right; a collection of tracks that in the "normal" scheme of things would never have been released, and never counted. One or two tracks migh someday show up on a "Rarities" disc or something, but that's it. Instead, DB got some sales out of it. Are those completely new sales? No, the majority of them are probably cd purchases that would have simply happened on other CDs that the owners now have not bought, and at least some of those are likely to be the one that RIAA et al. would point to as "record sales are down!", and some might have been from any of the various whingers.

????

I`m sure i`ve gottent the wrong end of the stick, but I`m reading that as "Deathboy CDs don`t count because people had already got the (incidentally different) .mp3s and therefore this release is stealing sales from other people with proper releases?" and I`m sure that`s not what you meant. And if that *is* what you meant can you explain why not buying a proper CD because you`ve already got it off soulseek is different?

Okay, I think I misinterpreted RDD's words: I was reading this as Deathboy released a self-produced CD of tracks that were working versions and bits left out of an "official" album released in parallel. I don't see that kind of thing as likely to pull sales from the "official" Deathboy release, but I suspect that those that purchase the self-produced will be buying it out of the "money I have to buy CDs with", which may well mean than a CD from a less-favored band may not end up getting purchased. If that other CD was a Brittany Spears album, then Brittany lost a sale, and the Industry says "Sales are slumping!"

How it differs from soulseek downloads is that while MP3s for download *may* (and I don't believe they do much) "steal sales" from the same band. Deathboy downloads may hurt Deathboy sales, and that's what the Industry bigwigs are maintaining. In the case of a parallel CD, few people are going to choose the parallel CD *instead of* the production album, but rather will puchase it *in adddition to* the production one. Since the parallel CD costs actual money, though, there's the perception that the buyer has purchased two CDs and spent 2 CD's worth of whatever mental budget for CDs they have running. And that probably means that some other CD doesn't get bought. So, instead of "stealing sales" from Deathboy, it steals sales from (a hypothetical only) Machinae X, who released a CD around the same time, but isn't as favored by the buyer of the full set of Deathboy.

No, no. The Deathboy thing is that the MP3s are just stuff Scott does anyway; the album is a recording by the band and only one track is officially up (you're supposed to buy the CD).

I mention Deathboy as an example of a non-crap band lost in the flood of crap, and getting little notice because of it.

markeris or

lee_chaos know the precise sales, but the point is Deathboy have nothing like the fame they deserve. Though the Deathboy Minions won't rest until they do ;-)

The other point is that live bands don't do so great either here, except the ones with popular records. But the live band scene in London is pretty much a tumour on the side of the record industry, not something alive in any rocking sense.

Um, not sure if that statement offends me because of my natural knee-jerk alt.gothic style rabid reaction to abolute statements and broad sweeping ones at that.. or if I just think it's wrong. Regardless, my $2.00 worth:

What a crock of shite. I've spent far more on music than on clothes and guess what? Although SOME new stuff is okay, most of it is so heavily rave-elctro-trance based it annoys. In terms of evolution, once an organism reaches enough iterations, it is not akin to the base animal. This has happened with a LOT of the newer stuff. To defend people who spend shite-loads on clothing,

eisdamme spends more on fashion in a year than some small third world countries spend on their budget. I exagerate, but not by a much. Yet, she keeps current with everything in the scene and has reached the same conclusion. Hrm.

I expect my journal is strongly biased toward record nerds. But don't say you don't know the people the statement is talking about.

With a laser turntable.

Have they actually fixed the problems with the laser reading dust on the record?

The idea of reading the part of the groove wall undamaged by styluses is certainly neat, but I don't see how you get around the dust problem.

I know that the early production laser turntables shipped bundled with high-end record cleaning equipment that IIRC correctly had a price tag (just for the cleaning equipmenent) approaching that of a Linn Sondek.

I can see its value for archival of valuable vinyl (cleaning, done right, will do far less damage than playing with a stylus), but presonally I'd rather have a Linn Sondek any day... (Though I make do with a Rega Planar 3 and a pair of SL1200's)

-roy

-roy

Apparently they have. The things are reputedly REALLY GOOD. See the Wikipedia article, which of course I wrote.

They do advise you to clean your records first, and supply a cleaning device.

Stevie Wonder bought one. You know a new piece of musical technology is hot when Stevie Wonder buys one.

Hmmmm.
A rough tally:-
Funds spent on Records in the last 12 months: $60
Funds spent on clothes in the last 12 months: $7 (socks!)
Funds spent on gigs in the last 12 months: $100 (60% was Cov, 25% Mark from Ride)
Funds spent on clubs in the last 12 months: $5
MP3s downloaded ... about 100.
MP3s worth repear listenings: About 20.

What does that tell me? Er... nothing.

Standing on the headland taking in the scene.

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