California Deathrock Book Kickstarter

[The Newswire]

So I just posted my first ever Kickstarter project. As I'm sure Blue Blood readers know, Forrest Black and I have been photographically documenting the deathrock scene for over a decade. We would love to do a coffee table book of some of our favorite images from this series. You can see all the info about our California...

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[Mr Karl]

huh.....first I've heard of this site.....interesting

[aXa]

wow, neat. i can't not give to that, one some level.

i wasnt sure what years you were documenting in the book though? and how is modern "Deathrock" distinct from your basic goth music? i admit that i could just be an East Coaster oblivious to the nuances of the West Coast scenes.

[Amelia G]

huh.....first I've heard of this site.....interesting

A thing I really like about it is that it seems to have enabled a lot of creative projects to actually be completed for people to actually get to see. It takes some of the entrepreneurial risk out of art, so something can just be produced if people are actually going to want it, which is really nice for not getting ulcers. So far, I'm liking my experience with it and I keep seeing things I want to back, so it seems to be being used for good.

A lot of people make videos for theirs so, which I am, for some reason, just kinda anxious about.

[Amelia G]

wow, neat. i can't not give to that, one some level.

i wasnt sure what years you were documenting in the book though? and how is modern "Deathrock" distinct from your basic goth music? i admit that i could just be an East Coaster oblivious to the nuances of the West Coast scenes.

Late nineteen-nineties through the present. There are people like Fate Fatale and Gitane Demone and Dinah Cancer and Patrick Mata etc. whose legacies go back farther than that, but that is the time period we've been shooting the West Coast deathrock scene. SoCal deathrock folks tend to pride themselves on being kinda goth style without the wussiness. Some people feel like there is more of a horror rock influence and some just feel it is kind of a midpoint between goth and punk. I think there are bands which most people would agree are deathrock, but I'm not sure too many people separately asked whether The Birthday Party or Christian Death are gothic would say no, so that is an interesting question.

[YoungSoulRebel]

...and how is modern "Deathrock" distinct from your basic goth music? i admit that i could just be an East Coaster oblivious to the nuances of the West Coast scenes.

I don't consider "all early 1980s Gothic rock" to be synonymous with deathrock, no. Honestly, I think very little of the UK stuff would qualify, as it's clearly more influenced by Glam rock than by punk. Of course, the primary reason I count Christian Death as "deathrock" is cos, as with many bands of the early Los Angeles scene, the clearly grew out of the hardcore punk scene of the time, even though musically their first album shares more in common with some of the more avant-garde UK goth and New York No Wave bands, and their next two pretty much pioneered the "dark cabaret" thing at the same time Andi Sexgang was going in that same direction.

And technically, while I'd say that The Birthday Party shares a lot in common, musically, with Deathrock, they were born of a completely different scene: Australian Swampies. Australian Swamp is notable in Oz as one of the subcultures to shape the local Goth scenes, but where Deathrockers were clearly born out of hardcore punk, Swampies came more-directly from late1960s-mid70s garage rock (which, arguably, nearly every punk-related subgenre came forth from, but with Swampies it was a more direct musical offshoot, whereas hardcore punk, for example, takes a couple more steps) and, like a lot of No Wave artists, more Swampy bands than Deathrock bands show a clear interest (to say the very least) in Free Jazz and early Blues. Hell, Laughing Clowns are probably the most explicitly jazz-influenced Swamp band I can think of.

Compare it to why there are three taxonomically distinct species of crowned pigeon which, superficially, all look identical, but biologically, are distinct species that cannot interbreed. Of course, a lot of later and current Deathrock bands cite influence in The Birthday Party in addition to straight-up deathrock, so clearly deathrock and Australian Swamp can "interbreed", but the musical genealogy of the two scenes is very distinct and most similarities are more coincidental than clearly linked.

Also of note, there's an unrelated Southern US genre called "swamp rock" from the 1950s, with no clear musical connections to Australian Swampies.

[aXa]

grats of the successful kickstarter project! does this mean we will be getting it in hardcover? can't wait to get my survey for shipping and other detail information.