The Sisters of Mercy will be playing The Music Box at the Henry Fonda Theater in Los Angeles on Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008. Read on to find out how you can win tickets courtesy of GoldenVoice and Blue Blood.

In the same way perhaps that Guns n’ Roses is essentially Axl Rose at this point, Sisters of Mercy is essentially Andrew Eldritch. Having different collaborators on different Sisters albums gave different ones slightly different feels, but I personally enjoy the music on all of them. I even liked Vision Thing when all my unsavory pals derisively referred to it as the “Sisters Metal Album”. (I maintained that the Egyptian iconography on the cover made it totally gothic, but whatever.)

My friend Jeanne has been emailing me nostalgic photos recently and this made me think of of an amusing related anecdote. Uncomfortable with the goth label, Sisters of Mercy has tended to tour with potentially incongruous acts. So Jeanne and I were at some stadium show. I don’t recall all the acts on the bill, but the arena was probably the New Haven Coliseum or the Hardford Civic Center. This was pre-internet, so she and I were really enjoying the people watching and deconstructing the different tribes which had come out for the various bands playing. And looking for cute boys. So Jeanne spots this totally hot guy with dark hair and pale skin, a type we both favored, and she grabs me to point him out (I’m the forward one), only the guy disappears into some door and we can’t figure out quite where.

Eventually Jeanne figured out that she had been scoping out Sisters frontman Andrew Eldritch. Apparently he had managed to walk around the arena hallways unrecognized, simply by not wearing his trademark sunglasses. Absolutely classic when one can be incognito by taking the sunglasses off.

I’m sure Andrew Eldritch is a difficult man to like in real life, so probably for the best. Sometimes you have to love the art and not the artist. Now I realize that Andrew Eldritch has repudiated the goth label, along with his former music label, bands who wanted to support him, and a laundry list of former bandmates. I find it really tragic that things went this way for someone who could create such consistently brilliant music and intriguing lyrics. I know genius is often tortured and alienated. I have days when I feel stabby too, but I try not to interact too much if I’m feeling like lashing out at everything around me; that feeling is nature’s way of saying to take the day off. I admit that I didn’t create art for years because a junior high art teacher was mean to me, but, in my defense, I was in junior high at the time. The Sisters of Mercy haven’t had a proper new album in years because Andrew Eldritch was on strike because he didn’t like his record label and hasn’t landed with a new one since breaking up with East West.

Word is, however, that you can hear new Sisters material at a live show, so I’d expect to hear some new music in the mix at The Sisters of Mercy show at The Music Box at the Henry Fonda Theater in Los Angeles on Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008. If you want to win a pair of free tickets, either post in this thread or message privately here or on MySpace or VF. Your post or message should include a personal anecdote about Sisters of Mercy, such as the one I told about me and my friend Jeanne, or your thoughts about the band or one of their songs. Basically, talk about something related to Sisters of Mercy and the most entertaining anecdotes or insights win free pairs of tickets to the Hollywood show.

Blue Blood sponsored an awful lot of events this Halloween, but the one I was saddest to miss personally, because I had to work, was the Release the Bats 10 Year Anniversary party. In addition to limited edition RTB 10 anniversary commemorative Blue Blood pins, the goodie bags for the event included limited edition RTB 10 anniversary commemorative pins and all sorts of fiendish goodies, including some Sisters of Mercy tickets.

When Release the Bats started in 1998, Shane Talada wrote in his Anorexic Press zine, “It is with complete and utter disregard for all that is established, and with murderous intent we seek to tear down and rebuild a part of the underground movement that became institutionalized by greed.”

He was talking about what was being called goth or gothic by flavor du jour club promoters in the Los Angeles club scene at the time. It was a situation where something, which had seemed like the dark part of punk, had diverged into this wussy netgoth scenario with prissy clothing and a playlist limited to corporate pop dark bands only.

So Jenn Bats, Dave Bats, Shane Taleda, and Jeremy Meza set out to participate in reclaiming deathrock for the scene. I’m not sure whether Jeremy Meza is still involved. I haven’t seen him there when I’ve gone in recent years and, liking everyone involved, I’ve never asked, for fear of the answer. The rest of Element was on hand for the anniversary festivities to perform air guitar in the video featured above.

All of this, I guess, just goes to show that sometimes the more things change, the more they stay the same. In every cool scene, there are always good guys, always bad guys, always dramas, always pretenders, and always annoying dicks who care more about a dollar than they do about what they are involved in. While it all goes in cycles, the cool stuff hasn’t been wiped out entirely yet, not even with cool new internet astroturf technology. So keep your hopeful hats on.

As part of the Halloween festivities, a series called spiderwebs, featuring Natalie Addams shot by Matthew Cooke just posted to the Blue Blood VIP members area. (I actually meant for it to post tomorrow, but I’m a little distracted with the Halloween holiday celebration, so y’all get it a day early.) Natalie Addams busted out the gothic cobwebs beautifully for this. These sexy spooky images are the eighth Blue Blood set of Natalie Addams and mark photographer Matthew Cooke’s first set for Blue Blood. Forrest Black and I have shared a house with him before, but this is his first Blue Blood appearance, although you should expect many more. Let’s make him feel welcome! Although I promise Natalie is delightfully nude on BlueBlood.com, we can’t show you any nudity here on BlueBlood.net, but you can check out a very hot preview in this free Natalie Addams Halloween gallery. Some of Natalie’s other credits include magazine appearances in Marquis, Sonic Seducer, Rue Morgue, Bizarre, Gothic Beauty, Tattoo Savage, DDI, Drum Pro, and Secret. Blue Blood superstar hotties do tend to get immortalized in print. And now, I’d like to share the sensually artistic Natalie’s thoughts on Halloween with you all.

Amelia G: What are your favorite kinds of Halloween treats?

Natalie Addams: Vegan Candies!! peanut chews, pumpkin pie.

Amelia G: How do you like to spend Halloween in general and do you have any special plans for Halloween this year?

Natalie Addams: I love dressing up, and of course halloween seems like it’s everyday to us goths ;) I usually like to go out and strut my costume on halloween, and see everyone’s costume creations. This year I am in New York filming some amazing zombie footage for the SMack! Halloween party. Hope to show you the photos and video footage soon :)

Amelia G: Last year, you were a sexy marionette. What are you wearing for Halloween this year?

Natalie Addams: I am wearing a rad zombie costume featuring a amazing waist cincher by Eirik Aswang, lots of latex, blood, gore, medical crosses. Kinda a medical barbie doll/giesha gone horribly wrong.

Amelia G: What are your favorite holidays?

Natalie Addams: ^v^Halloween!! by far!! An excuse to dress up and make even crazier outfits!

The talented Calan Ree, whose Gingerdead & Friends comic strip I have mentioned here before, wrote about gathering paper frogs this week. According to Calan Ree, paper frogs are these partially translucent, pale, flat, dehydrated amphibians. The frogs apparently get flat from the absence of moisture and not being run over, so recent rains may have washed away the paper frogs which could normally be found in Calan Ree’s neck of the woods this year.

According to Calan Ree, paper frogs are seasonal and normally could be found this time of year. Her searches for them, perhaps due to the weather, proved fruitless. While hunting, she was, however, approached by, not one, but two creepy guys. The first one rolled up on her in a van and asked her if she wanted a ride. The second guy asked for directions to the nearest schoolyard, despite the fact that it was eight o’clock at night. After her van suitor left, she lamented that she had

“missed a golden opportunity. I should have answered, “Oh no thank you, I’m gathering frog carcasses!” It’s so rewarding to creep out the creepy. Sigh.”

Oh, in case the part where Calan Ree does a cutesie gothic horror comic was not a tip off, she, of course, wanted the paper frogs for an art project. I will admit that my research efforts to learn more about paper frogs just lead me back to GingerDead.com, but the artist’s mother used to have paper frogs in her walls too, so they must be real.

Sean Abley is working on a series of interviews for a possible book project entitled People Who Are Cool. The theme is, as you might suspect, people Sean Abley knows who are cool. You can read the two part interview he did with yours truly online now here and here. It is a two parter because, as Sean says, we are a couple of chatty bitches. Seriously, it is very in-depth and his questions were really interesting and unusual and I answered a lot of stuff I don’t usually talk about in interviews. This is going to post to Dark Blue Films in approx six weeks, but you all get the inside-skinny on where to read it pre-publication.

Socket writer/director Sean Abley writes:

“Somehow Amelia G and I became blog friends about 8 years ago. I’m not really sure how that happened, and when we’ve discussed it, neither is she. But somehow one of us surfed into the other’s Live Journal account and friended same, and we’ve been reading each other’s stuff for years now.

When I first started reading her blog, I was immediately struck by the photographs she’d post, taken either by her or her collaborator, Forrest Black. These were semi- (or not so semi-) naked shots of Goth chicks with beautiful lighting, styling and makeup. As I say further down in my interview with her, “[She] took two things I have no interest in – Goth culture and naked girls – and photographed them so I can’t turn away.”

Soon I realized Amelia had a mini media empire based on this subject matter, the hub of which is (are) http://www.blueblood.com and http://www.blueblood.net. Start there and you’ll find yourself winding down internet corridors full of fetish photos, films, music and art. And none of it feels exclusionary. Less “Butt out, square!” and more “Hey, we’re awesome! Check us out!” I would encourage anyone reading this to do just that. Amelia and Forrest’s work is pro and punk at the same time, and never boring.

When I decided to interview Amelia, I did some research and found out she has a crazy interesting past, from living in a punk/goth group house in D.C. to moving in the industrial music scene, to founding a magazine . She is also the kind of feminist that I love, e.g. one that doesn’t think a naked girl is being suppressed just because she’s having her picture taken. She’s also a workaholic, as evidenced by the sheer number of projects, websites, and events she has to attend to in any one week.

Although we live mere blocks from each other in Hollywood, I conducted this interview via email, which probably lead to us be much more verbose that we would in person. (I hate transcribing, so I tend to keep it short in person).

How did the daughter of a diplomat and an attorney become the reigning Queen of Goth Erotica?

Please give a warm welcome to Amelia G!”

The interview kicks off with:

Sean Abley: I read that you’ve lived all over the world and the States. Army brat? What’s the scoop on your childhood?

Amelia G: When I got to college, it was my twelfth school in twelve years. My mother’s a diplomat. My father’s an attorney. Two of the schools I went to when I was fourteen to sixteen had a lot of army brats, so some of the experience is similar.

Funny, I moved around quite a bit as a kid, although it was mainly within the same town, Helena, MT, with one two-year chunk in Carbondale, IL. But even within the same town for a little kid it means changing schools and friends, so even now I hate moving.

I get wanderlust really easily, but, if I travel enough, then I don’t itch to move as much.

What subject were you awful at in school?

Even though I rode a purple three-speed bike everywhere in ninth and tenth grade and was very fit, I never got into gym. I especially loathed dodgeball. Only I would get picked pretty early. I think because I was great to have on a team because I hated getting hit by the ball so much that I would never get tagged out. This might seem like a good trait, except that I practiced the Golden Rule and did not wish to do unto others as I would not have them do unto me. So a dodgeball game could be this endless purgatory because I wouldn’t tag the other team out either.

I actually loved dodgeball because it was the one of two sports I was actually good at as a kid (the other being volleyball). I was very agile, and I think the opportunity to nail the popular jocks with those big, red, rubber balls imbued me with an unfailing eye and super human strength.

Those are good superpowers to have for playing dodgeball.

It seems like you really made your mark first in D.C. What were you doing in D.C.?

Living in a punk rock group house, throwing legendary parties, trying to be a writer, doing as many peculiar day jobs as possible, tying up unsuitable suitors in the back seat of a car which was a parting gift from my unsuitable college suitor, discovering ramen cuisine. I still think of ramen as the flavor of poverty.

I actually bought dollar’s worth of ramen . . .

( Read more )

History.

The Whitby Goth Weekend began around 13 years ago, and was originally only held once a year in October. It became so popular, that the organizers decided to hold it every six months. It has grown so much that one shop can take enough money over the 2 weekends that it doesn’t need to open for the rest of the year.

People travel from all over the world to come to the small fishing town. One person we met had traveled from Alaska! First time visitors maybe a bit confused when they first arrive in the town, as each side of every street has a different name (due to the person that was asked to draw up plans for the town was paid by the street name, so he named as many streets as possible.)

This Weekend.

Most people start the weekend early, arriving on the Thursday. It’s a night of meeting up in a bar with old friends or making new ones.

Friday is when most of the festivities start, when the Spa Pavilion hosts the first night of the bands, and for those that don’t want to see the bands, there was a burlesque night at the Metropole Hotel. There were several other events like bands playing in social clubs and bars.

Saturday daytime saw the dedication of the Sophie Lancaster Memorial Bench, which is situated near the WhaleBones on the West Cliff. There was also a Charity Bungee Jump called the Dracula Drop, for the Royal National Lifeboat Institute. The Goth weekend has got a long reputation of donating to local charities, usually the local Cat & Dog Shelter, but also this year there was the campaign for S.O.P.H.I.E. (Stamp Out Prejudice Hatred and Intolerance Everywhere) which was trying to get the law rephrased so that hate crimes based on the lifestyle choice of the victim would get harsher sentences. There was also a benefit night for Lucy Fur, a DJ that came down with cancer. There were also some bands that played at the Spa Pavilion.

Sunday is the day that some take a little time and watch the “Gothic Football Match” where selected members of the bands play a select team of players from the Local Newspaper, the Whitby Gazette. This year, as usual, the Goth team lost, but the spirit did not leave the fans. Sunday is also a time of departing for some, but others it’s time to prepare for Sexy Sunday, a light-hearted night where those that have the stamina can dance the night away at the Metropole Hotel.

Monday brings us Manic Monday, also held at the Metropole Hotel, and this is a fancy dress affair. This year’s theme was Heaven & Hell, so a lot of people can dressed as Angels and Devils. It is always fun and the organizer is always up for a laugh and a double entendre or five.

There was even an event organized for the Tuesday, for the real die-hards, but since I had to travel back home on Tuesday, all I can say is it was called the Nightmare After.

Corporate Goth is a familiar expression in East Coast cities where people tend to separate their playtime from their workdays. I was living and working mostly in Washington, DC and Baltimore when I founded Blue Blood in print. I did primarily contract design work and most of the companies I worked for were conservative federal contractors, management consultancies, and lobbyists. My hairstyle at the time consisted of only natural colors, albeit definitely not colors which would appear striped together in nature. On my own time, I believed that shirt was spelled L-I-N-G-E-R-I-E. Heck, one of my neighbors harangued me from across the street, telling me I belonged in a whorehouse for what I wore just to clean my car. (I called the cops on her.) But, when I was seated at a computer in someone else’s place of business, I might not have looked like the most standard employee (or contractor). My clothes might have tended towards a darker palette and my hair was not really a businessperson’s cut, but it was usually businesslike enough. (When I worked at EDS, my manager did complain to my agency about my sexy stockings.)

This might go without saying, but I’m going to state the obvious here: I read a lot of cyberpunk at the time. I loved William Gibson and John Shirley and Richard Kadrey and Norman Spinrad and Pat Cadigan and Walter Jon Williams and George Alec Effinger and of course Bruce Sterling’s Mirrorshades anthology was seminal. The list goes on, but one of the salient points of the emerging cyberpunk genre at the time was that it acknowledged both street culture and corporate culture. Cyberpunk was, in many ways, first and foremost a sociological study of how the human need for tribalism might manifest itself in a future with new technology.

So there were the heavily modded post-human gothic and punk tribes with writhing tattoos and tusks and animal muscle grafts and music implants in their ear drums. But there were also the sleek corporate melds of gangsterism and business core values. I don’t know how it was where you lived, but, where I was, both styles had a real appeal to counterculture people striving to achieve their personal goals and power, despite preferences for rebellion and individuality and flamboyance. This is where Corporate Goth comes from. The whole steampunk fashion thing sort of built on and evolved from some of this scene as some of the cyberpunk authors started writing steampunk and Neal Stephenson burst onto the scene. But the evolution of steampunk is another article.

In Los Angeles, many of the sleek black business stylings of corporate goth are just dressed for a certain sort of meeting. This is aesthetically pleasing to me, but it removes some of the tribal appeal.

Xian (pronounced “zigh-ahn” despite my stupid left hand always trying to add a letter t) Vox is not your typical Los Angeles promoter and DJ. She is interested in varied philosophies and works tech industry day jobs. So it sort of makes sense that she would like a corporate goth theme. A much smaller percentage of Los Angeles denizens who like spooky nightclubs have ever worked a corporate job . . . at least a much smaller percentage than it cities where it is common to be at least as interested in books as in movies, at least as interested in the heart and mind as the body.

So, anyway, Xian did a Hex VIP event as a run-up to a larger ball and Blue Blood were media sponsors of the event. I did not ask Xian what her reasons or inspirations or motivations were, but one of the possible themes for the event was Corporate Goth. So here are the gothic photos Forrest Black and I shot at the event. If you might have otherwise wondered at quite what the theme was, now you know. Unless, of course, you didn’t read this and just went straight to the pics. I think everybody looks really great, so enjoy.

So Scar 13 and I wanted to blow off a little steam in a chill environment after work. We listened to Loveline as we rolled over to Boardner’s in my Town Car. We were not actually going to Boardner’s, but Scar had checked her camera at Bar Sinister the preceeding Saturday and tipsily forgotten it there, so she needed to pick it up. Fortunately, they were able to find it. Yay! She keeps her camera in this little pink sort of chamois slipcover. She mentioned to me that Bradical, who has been kind enough to loan us his house and his lemons (don’t ask), for photo shoots, calls it a pink sock. Pink sock is one of those awful phrases, like Dirty Sanchez, which you must learn the meaning of if you are going to successfully use the internet in the future. Apparently Bradical had run into Dr. Drew, of Loveline fame, backstage at some KROQ event and had decided to ask him impertinent questions about how Scar should run her sex life. He then dutifully reported Dr. Drew’s answers back to Scar, along with the definition of a pink sock.

So we listen to more Loveline on the way over to the gothic club night which is our destination. The guest is advising the best way for a woman to orgasm during heterosexual intercourse is to only insert the guy’s dick about a third of the way in and rub her clitoris. A third of the way in? How enormous is the penis we are talking about here? Anyway, I’m pretty sure the answer is a bit more varied than that and I think I could have helped the caller out way better. Loveline’s guest was embarrassed to actually say clit and Dr. Drew had to help her out there. Anyone have a good contact at Loveline because they need to have my awesomely helpful and well-educated advice on there some night. I’ll even avoid saying fuck and that is a big concession because I love to say fuck.

Scar and I both kind of phoned in our makeup that night and I have a little black eyeshadow swoosh over each eye and Scar has a little black eyeshadow swoosh underneath each eye. We didn’t realize until we were ready to go that we had done kind of upside-down mirror images. Anyway, we’d managed to communicate gothic well enough, apparently. Because this cute Vin Diesel-looking guy hangs out the window of some huge black Range Rover or Escalade type vehicle, next to us in traffic, and made the universal sign for goth by tracing imaginary tears down each cheek and waving for us to follow his car. We went to the club anyway.

We arrive and Bradical explains to me that a pink sock is when you are having anal sex and the giver pulls out with some intestine inverting over the invading item. Thanks so much, Dr. Drew, for sharing this factoid with Bradical. Now neither I, nor anyone I come across, is going to be able to escape the mental image of inside-out ass on cock. We discuss how Dr. Drew is incredibly down on anal sex and generally advises all practitioners to go to their physician. I’m actually not really a fan of anal myself, but this doesn’t stop me from giving Bradical a hard time about his anal experiences. He explains that his girlfriends never want it in the ass because his penis is enormous. Maybe he’s been sleeping with the chick on Loveline?

Then Bradical tells me a funny story about gettng pulled over which I can’t repeat here. He then says he once got pulled over and taken to jail for the night when he was on his first or second date with a girl. Los Angeles clubland photographer Tim Sinn was apparently in the backseat and was kind enough to drive both Bradical’s car and his date afterwards. Ouch.

Tim Sinn explains that he is much more mature now. Tim needs to really connect with a girl on a certain level at this stage of his life. Fortunately, he points out, the special connection can be something like a pretty pair of eyes. Everyone I know is going to Hell.

As the evening progresses, I run into Perish, who has been kind enough to let me photograph naked people all over his house and vehicles (note the recurring motif here and feel free to drop me a line if you have a cool-looking house you’d like naked people photographed in.) He is hanging out with The Virgin Sister Bones who does the Lucifer’s Party comic zine, issue two of which included an extended sequence having to do with having sex with, or trying to have sex with, Perish. I have not asked if it is autobiographical or artistic license. We run into a guy in a Dallas goth-industrial band who has Scar on the cover of his new CD.

It is basically a chill pleasant normal evening out with cool people until, right in front of everyone, three bouncers chase down this one little guy, punch him repeatedly and pepper spray him about two inches from his eyes. I take a photo of this, then think I should really shoot video for it to be in proper focus and all, and then notice that some of the pepper spray is drifting and irritating my mucus membranes and that I really don’t want to be all that close to violence like this. I’m not going to say what club we were at because I don’t know what heinous crime this beat-down little dude might have committed and the promoters have never done anything bad to me personally and they may not have known what happened. But the bouncers themselves certainly believed they had done wrong because they went around the club afterwards looking at people’s cameras and deleting photos of what happened.

I like that digital photography allows me to document a random fun night out without the crazy expense and time-consumption of film. But is digital photography turning America coast-to-coast into a shame culture? A guilt culture is one where the people internalize right and wrong and feel they should do right, whether or not anyone is watching. A shame culture is one where people only feel bad when they get caught. I think people should do the right thing, whether or not nightclub patrons may have gotten a picture of their behavior. I also don’t want a pink sock. I guess I’m just old-fashioned that way.

Speaking of Rachel Kramer Bussel, some of you who get various newsletters already know this, but Rachel did a really kickass interview with yours truly for the October 2007 issue of Penthouse Variations. It was a really good interview because Rachel asked really thought-provoking questions.

Oddly enough, you can order a subscription to Variations through Amazon, but you need to hit the newsstand in the next couple of days to get the October 2007 issue with the BlueBlood.com photos and Rachel’s and my brilliant words. Due to the way newsstand distro works, November starts the first week of October. Sort of. Then again, if you end up with the November 2007 issue of Penthouse Variations, then you will have the lovely Justine Joli on the cover and that is always a good thing too. The October edition says “DEEP INSIDE BLUE BLOOD’S CUTTING EDGE GOTH SCENE” on the cover, though, so you should be able to pick it out okay.

Maybe I should post it here whenever Blue Blood gets a press mention, but I usually don’t. You all were great when I was feeling sad about one mean press bite, so I also wanted to share that I’ve been really happy about a mention we got on Dark Side of the Net recently.

Anyway, Carrie Carolin, the seemingly indefatigable editor of all things dark recently culled and updated her Dark, Goth and Horror Zines section and here is what she wrote about Blue Blood:

“BlueBlood.net – Highly recommended! The paper magazine is legendary, and its amazing companion website is worth visiting every day or two for new content. High quality articles and photos on fashion, music, and literature. Blogs, community postings, and a newswire, too. This is pretty much the center of the goth universe as it stands today. Extremely professional and high quality. Their MySpace page is here.”

I’m not sure precisely how long editor Carrie Carolin has been collating the best dark links on the web, but it feels like three reincarnations at least. I just checked and when I wrote her site up for Playboy in 1999, I referred to it as “Carrie Carolin’s respected and long-running Dark Side of the Net,” so it was already the gold-standard then and the site was hosted on Gothic.net before that and I think somewhere else before that, maybe a couple somewhere elses. So it is lovely to get positive coverage like that and that much more meaningful coming from such an esteemed source.