Happy 10th Anniversary Release the Bats

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.

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Posted by Amelia G on November 1, 2008. Filed under Blue Blood. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry