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Underground > Gathering >

The Doom that Comes to Camden

trouble at bill

14:26 / 19.02.06

Camden, London, UK, H.P.Lovecraft tribute night, Thursday 20th April, details here. (Bit far away, I know, but if I don't post this now I'll forget and someone may miss out.) NB: There is a dress code(!).

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

14:52 / 19.02.06

Would it surprise anyone horribly if I said that looked ace?

trouble at bill

14:50 / 20.02.06

Not really, no. I think so too, though for me the prospect of having to dress like a Goth (or a Macabre, whatever one of them is) just to get in is somewhat less than ace. But I guess there's plenty of time to think about it...

23:24 / 20.02.06

BB;

You can get away with basic black, as far as the dress code in the Devonshire Arms at the weekend goes, but even a hint of colour is a sign of weakness. Unless it's, y'know, purple, or some-such.

trouble at bill

14:17 / 16.04.06

Alex, thank you for that but it's precisely the 'basic black' thing which is worrying me. You see, it is an ethnographic fact little known beyond the few brave anthropologists who have dared to live amongst and study this tribe that the Goths have over forty different words for 'black'. This is a psycholinguistic point of great importance to the tribe's thinking, reflecting a profound awareness of subtle distinctions within the category of what most Westerners would simply and unproblematically regard as 'black'. As well as basic black for example, the Goths are known to acknowledge light black, dark black, deep black, doom black, slime black, mouldy black, moody black, brilliant black, boisterous or bombastic black, bohemian black, wistful black, wanton black, winter black, fluffy black, flippant black, in-yer-face-fuck-off black, ironic black, kinky black, shiny black, rubbery black, distressed black, deconstructed black, vintage black, retro black, futuristic black, Whitby black, vampy black, tarty black, outré black, couture black, pot black, kettle black, blacker-than-black black and many, many other blacks far too subtle and complex to explain to the uninitiated. If I turn up wearing just basic black they'll all laugh at me and say I am unsophisticated and, well, basic. And I shouldn't be able to stand that - if there's one thing I will not be seen as, it's basic. And so I have decided to home in on the "1930's" bit of the dress code and wear my Indiana Jones costume which I have left over from a fancy dress party, seeing as how he's totally 1930's and sort of like some of the Lovecraftian heroes what with his whole going-off-to-explore-scary-lost-worlds antics. That way I avoid looking like a newbie Goth, and I get to wave a bullwhip about which is never a bad thing.

Is anyone else planning on coming to this, btw?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

17:10 / 16.04.06

Maybe... all depends on cash.

05:29 / 17.04.06

It would seem a shame not to now.

Unless the Indy outfit's already in a vat of non-more black dye though BB, I suspect you may need accessorise the hat and bullwhip with a revolver.

(Perhaps Goth events in general would be improved if more of the people involved were packing heat...?)

11:46 / 17.04.06

Whitby black,

Mr Bogg, you're making that up. Shurely u meen 'Colwyn Bay Black', the cheap black worn by rural immigrants to the big city goth scene that attracts the derisive laughter from the urbanite goths resplendant in their fuck-off-black, the-shade-formerly-known-as-black, Nu-Black and black-on-black branded gothwear. Pity the foolish country cousin goth in the eighties Colwyn Bay Black ripped jeans, they know not what they do.

I am working so I can't make it, will you be Mythos enough for both of us? (I almost typed Methos, whoops!)

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

14:32 / 17.04.06

(Perhaps Goth events in general would be improved if more of the people involved were packing heat...?)

How very... Columbine of you, madam.

trouble at bill

14:52 / 17.04.06

Mr Bogg, you're making that up.

well more speculating wildly really, but surely when the Goths make their pilgrimages to Whitby they wear a special and specific shade of black, just as Muslims undertaking the pilgrimage to Mecca must wear something special? One couldn't undertake a Goth Haj in any old black, I shouldn't have thought.

Alex, I have considered and decided against the revolver on the grounds that the police in South London are trigger happy enough even with people who don't appear to be armed - I have to pass through Stockwell on my way up to Camden let's not forget. But as for armed Goth events, I think some of the school shootings in the States have to all intents and purposes been just that haven't they? American Goths don't have that 'British reserve' and have the right to bear arms, which can be a volatile combination when a jock disses you once too often. Why I believe there's even some suggestion in the anthropological literature that certain American Goths acknowledge a special shade of 'powderburn black' which is worn on the anniversaries of massacres in honour of the militants, for they are a proud, warrior people (or at least, some of them are).

20:46 / 17.04.06

How very... Columbine of you, madam

Ah yes, I'd forgotten about that. The reference was unintentional. (Note to self: Your obsession with guns is getting on top of you. Stop talking about them all the time.)

It is true, though, that American Goths seem to be a bit more proactive than their UK counterparts - an AG friend of mine who was over in London for a couple of months a while ago spent a lot of his time complaining about the scene, specifically, that nobody seemed to do anything much, except sit about in the Devonshire drinking cider. He was used to a faster, less bucolic form of Goth life it seemed, which at it's worst, admittedly, can lead to people going off into the woods with an M-16 in their trenchcoats, beer cans, bunnies etc beware, (not that this friend of mine is involved in anything like that, I hasten to add.) But on the other hand, it does seem to make for better music. I know they've got some fans here, so I really don't mean to be unkind about them, again, but Cradle Of Filth seem a bit, I don't know, lackadaisical when compared to some of their US equivalents.

By which I mean, erm... Fallout Boy?

Well anyway, I should probably get my darkeling leather shroud together - It's not just black, it's incredibly black, but...

Ok, I guess I'll go.

trouble at bill

14:25 / 22.04.06

gah, a particularly horrendous week at work stopped me from going to this after all. Did anyone actually make it in the end?

Orrin's Prick Up Your Ears

15:30 / 24.04.06

Fuck. Missed it.

How was it in the end? Just another night at the Dev, or something more interestingly ... Typhonian?

trouble at bill

15:24 / 07.05.06

apparently it wasn't all that great...

16:58 / 08.05.06

You shock me sir, an eve at Ye Devonshire Tavern that wasn't an ecstatic frenzy of fun? What scurrilous curmudgeon would spread such slander? I bet *they* don't wear blaque.