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Happy (Sad?) World Goth Day

David Pescovitz at 2:40 pm Tue, May 22, 2012

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Today is World Goth Day. Celebrate with the Sisters of Mercy.

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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  • Gabriel Morgan

    And somewhere that midget Andy Eldritch is screaming, ‘Nooooo…’ as he’s linked to the Goth Scene one more time.  Sorry, Uncle Andy, you’re one of us.  Take your meds.

    Could have picked a better Sisters song, though.  Poison Door?  Nine By Nine?  Vision Thing?

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1648730333 Charles Gilliland

      One hundred… dollah… _____ ______!

      Ribbons will always be the best SoM song for my monies. 

      Mad under-appreciated in any decade; here’s to someone finding those old sounds and breathing new life in it’s moldering corpse.

    • http://profiles.google.com/substancemcgravitas Substance McGravitas

      It could have been a better version of the song even. 

  • HahTse

    WGT in Leipzig starts this Thursday. Till monday my fine city will be the largest aggregation of goths on the whole planet. Joy! :)

  • GawainLavers

    Apparently Goths still mourn Myspace…

  • Peppermint

    Neither happy nor sad. Weird, strange, bizarre and other synonyms match goths much better.

  • Shibi_SF

    Any day is a good day for some classic Sisters of Mercy.  

  • That_Anonymous_Coward

    And in the random collection of quotes I’ve gathered only 1 entry on goths…

    “From the neck up, the look cultivated by goth girls seems to say, “O, we despair of this world and long for the sweet embrace of death!” From the neck down, their look seems to say, ‘I’ll take the bacon cheeseburger, two orders of fries, and a Diet Coke, please.’ ” – Dan Savage 

    1 million points of light 1 million dollar Vision Thing!

    • IronEdithKidd

      Went to see Sisters of Mercy on the Vision Thing tour.  Size 2 was about the average female size.  Fast forward 20 years and 33% of America is obese.  Make of that what you will.

  • http://twitter.com/erg79 Evan G.

    It was goth day at Disneyland this past Sunday. Though there seemed to be more people who were steampunk-ish than what I think of as goth. 

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OAUXAA362EXWLYVMPJOKLFB5JQ Incipient Madness

       Steampunk is the new goth. Steampunk is more like old school proto-goth from the seventies and eighties than all this emo crap today.

      • Shibi_SF

         I completely agree.

      • Beanolini

        Steampunk is the new goth

        Did you mean ‘the new black’?

        • HahTse

          No, that would be leather-ish brown.

  • Rich Davey

    “Old goths don’t die, they just look like they have.” Guy Garvey (Elbow) , Any of the following would have also done for me:
    The Cult – She Sells Sanctuary http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I8mWG6HlmU
    Bauhaus – Bela Lugosi’s Dead http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U1SiIWuZeE
    Bauhaus – All We Ever Wanted Was Everything http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4rqbs0vxK0
    Siouxsie & The Banshees Arabian Knights – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EXR34CukkQ
    And proving that goths can have happy days The Cure – Lovecats http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcUza_wWCfA

    • cinerik

      If you really want to prove we can have happy days, I give you a fantastic cover of the 3D Invisible’s ‘Island of the Zombie Women’ by The Horatii – a firm WGW favourite :)  
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MueKVN6gtG0

    • Beanolini

       Or you could celebrate with ‘Celebrate‘?

      (It seems a penchant for the Nephilim is still not acceptable in polite society, even after all these years).

  • cinerik

    I hope no one will mind me posting this reminder for the Brits on here..

    http://www.sophielancasterfoundation.com/ 

  • http://profiles.google.com/keithdtyler Keith Tyler

    Man, I miss goth… Somehow I ended up as a normal, but I was a wannabe goth. RIP Manray and pretty much every goth club ever in existence.

  • templarsmonochromata

    The Sisters last concert in Auckland, NZ was fantastic. I think they even downed a few pints at our pub during the after party. I felt old and I’m sure they felt even older, but the concert was an event to remember. Since it was the same night as the System of A Down concert, it was almost a perfect way of dividing the crusty olds like me from the late ninteys-wave alts just a few years younger…
    If someone ever asks what goth is about, its the music. The answer is always the music. Anything beyond that is a byproduct. 
    In my opinion goth ‘officially’ died when its aesthetics successfully crossed the gap to the States in Brian Warner’s incarnation of it. I don’t actually think he ‘got it wrong’, or anything like that…simply that if America “understands” its essential aesthetics, its status as ‘underground’ or ‘fringe’ is no longer justified, and almost counts as mainstream.
    Heck, when I look at what is considered ‘mainstream fashionable’, faux goth by ‘normals’ that wouldn’t know the Sisters of Mercy from Manson, its just a fact that its not ‘alternative’ when everyone is dressed in black….

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1256337371 Michael Foster

    The “real” Sisters died in 1985. The traitor and heretic left to form The Mission. Gary Marx went off to dance with a ghost, and our Mr. Eldritch became a one man band with the dear Doktor.
    I think they should of called it quits after The Reptile House in 1983.