Magazine Review: The 200 Greatest Goth Albums…ranked! by Kelsey Media (“from the makers of UNCUT”)

 A new year, a new ‘history of goth’, this time in the guise of a magazine special (retailing at £9.99) entitled The 200 Greatest Goth Albums…ranked!, promising a different take from the historical timelines offered in the recent summaries of the genre penned by Robb, Unsworth and Tolhurst. The continued media interest in the goth scene, fuelled no doubt by the return to live duties of Bauhaus, Siouxsie, Gary Marx, John McKay and The Cure amongst others, shows little sign of abating, much to the delight of those who feel that the scene has been ignored for too long.

No surprise who is on the cover!

Any list of this kind inevitably gives rise to gatekeeping debates (Is artist X really goth??), discussions about glaring omissions (a phenomenon known as “whatabootery” in my locale), arguments about provenance (what is ‘goth’, and what is ‘pre-goth’?) and queries about the position of artist Y in the overall ranking, and there will no shortage of these polemical debates with regard to this latest addition to the thinking goth aficionado’ bookshelves.

Unsurprisingly, the “makers of Uncut magazine”, who are behind this latest mini-tome, are keen to give the genre the widest possible definition, thus maximising their potential market, which means that artists as diverse as Depeche Mode, Julee Cruise, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Berlin, Front 242, Mogwai and Soft Cell make the list. In a brief editorial, John Robinson somewhat pompously excuses some frankly inexcusable inclusions by stating that “a mind that is open to those sounds, those themes [“the tribal drums, reverberating darkness and tricksy arpeggios” of Siouxsie and the Banshees”] … will also find much to enjoy in some adjacent territories.” I suspect that his argument will find little favour with fans of core early goth acts like Play Dead, Balaam and The Angel, New Model Army and UK Decay, all of whom do not feature at all, despite the double century of albums included. The latter omission is particularly puzzling, given the critical roasting which John Robb was rightly given for his non-inclusion of the Luton-based masters of what was memorably termed at the time “punk gothique”. It would be interesting to learn of the grounds on which the 1981 classic LP For Madmen Only was dismissed.

More of these missing artists could have been included had the compilers not permitted more than one album per artist. Pioneering Belgian EBM act Front 242 feature no fewer than three times, whilst The Cure have an incredible eight albums in the list. Three of the first four Banshees albums make the cut, but curiously it is Join Hands, arguably their darkest and starkest LP, which misses out, and the bleak Tinderbox also fails to survive the editors’ blue pencil. Whilst Front 242 feature, there is no space for the arguably more goth-adjacent acts of their sub-genre like The Young Gods and Neon Judgement, and similarly fans of influential early 80’s acts like The Sound and The Comsat Angels will wonder why their favourites miss out given the broad “goth” definition, when Sad Lovers and Giants and The Chameleons make the Top 200, an issue which could have been avoided by restricting the number of inclusions per artist.

No definite article in line three? An easy mistake, as the title of this blog will testify!

In terms of the starting point of goth, few will argue with the listing of The Doors’ eponymous debut album, The Velvet Underground and Nico, and Iggy’s The Idiot, and the inclusion of other goth-adjacent acts like The Cramps and The Psychedelic Furs will also surely have unanimous support. There is no space however for Suicide or even David Bowie himself,  both key influences on many of the early gothic acts. The top six albums in the ranking would likely feature in most Top 10 goth album lists, although not necessarily in this order, as Disintegration, First and Last and Always, Prayers on Fire, Closer, In The Flat Field, and Juju are widely regarded as classics of the genre. 

But whilst the compilers are generally reasonably solid on (the very simple task of cataloguing) goth’s early years, along with most who have tried before them, they appear far less confident on what has happened since the end of the 1980’s, with the recent published goth histories having failed to give them a proper steer on the past thirty-five years. Some of the classic acts of the 90’s do fortunately make the grade, but extremely low in the ranking: although The Wake (Masked at 83) reasonably well viewed, London After Midnight (with, curiously, Psycho Magnet as the chosen album at 165), Strawberry Switchblade (167), Rosetta Stone (175) and Corpus Delicti (177) all find themselves (seemingly begrudgingly) clogging up the ranking’s lower reaches. One must wonder why the likes of Type O Negative, Tiamat, Nosferatu, Paradise Lost, Suspiria and Dronning Maudland have missed out, given their standing in the scene during that decade. The answer probably lies in the very large number of merely vaguely goth-adjacent acts (Miranda Sex Garden, Eyeless In Gaza, Tuxedomoon, etc) deemed worthy of inclusion at their expense.

The contributors’ knowledge of the current scene seems to be even more embarrassingly lacking. How many of the following (very broad range of) contemporary artists would you expect to feature in a list of the 200 Greatest Goth albums - She Past Away, Then Comes Silence, Kaelan Mikla, Actors, Lebanon Hanover, Sweet Ermengarde, Molchat Doma, Whispering Sons, The Soft Moon, Shrouds, Twin Tribes, The Bellwether Syndicate, Angels of Liberty, Selofan, Ash Code? Most? Half of them? Just a few? The incredible answer is … not a single one of them. Surely having even just one person on the panel of contributors/editors with an abiding interest in the genre would have helped to ensure that the publication retained some credibility and the sense of authority which it clearly assumes for itself.

In fact, only eight albums from the past ten years are included in the Top 200: predictably two of these are the latest albums by The Cure and Depeche Mode, one is a recent Dead or Alive retrospective, another is (bizarrely) a compilation soundtrack album from Twin Peaks which includes such goth luminaries as ZZ Top, The Platters and The Cactus Blossoms, and three of the others are so broadly adjacent to the genre that I, for one, have never heard of them (Kali Malone, Anna von Hauswolff and Dean Hurley, for the record). This paltry and inconsequential list of recent offerings would lead any “elder goth” (surely the publication’s target market) to erroneously conclude that the genre is effectively dead, contrary to the contemporary reality of a dinsticntly undead, thriving and multifaceted goth community.

In terms of what you get for your money, the magazine provides potted summaries of each album selected, going from ten to a page for numbers 200 to 51, then five to a page until the top 20. Thereafter, each selection gets a picture-heavy two-page spread, culminating in a four-page tribute to Disintegration. Interspersed with the countdown, there are archive (i.e. previously seen but well worthy of inclusion) interviews with some of the biggest names on the original scene (Bauhaus, The Damned, The Sisters, The Banshees, The Cure and Nick Cave) and a new interview with Tim and Julianne from goth-adjacent folk pop stars All About Eve. The remaining five pages consist of a somewhat pointless Goth Miscellany of random space-fillers (example - “Just who were Love And Rockets?”).

Is it worth the cover price for Sisters fans? Well, two TSOM albums feature in the Top 20, The Sisterhood’s Gift also makes the Top 30, Wake is in the list of “20 Essential Goth DVDs”, and there is a Sisters miscellany which sadly contains no new information for seasoned TSOM obsessives. The genesis and content of FALAA is well-captured in Peter Watts review for the ranking’s second greatest album (“a genre landmark”, to quote Watts), although he fails to mention the album of two halves from a songwriting perspective which reflected the band’s inner turmoil at the time, and for those unfamiliar with the band, it might have been helpful had he pointed out the puns and deliberate ambiguities inherent in Eldritch’s clever wordplay in the seemingly straightforward lyrics briefly quoted in his well-written summary. The interview reproduced in the magazine is the Adam Sweeting-conducted chat first published in Melody Maker in January 1983, and creditably is here in its full version (unlike the abridged account in the NME Originals magazine which was quoted on the seminal Ultimate Sisters Guide website), and Tim Bricheno is also asked about his time with the band in the early 1990’s in the new interview. The top 200 also features albums by Salvation (Clash of Dreams), The March Violets (Natural History) and Ghost Dance (Gathering Dust), the latter two of which were effectively compilations of previous singles rather than genuine studio albums. 

Brown font and capitalisation for the definite article?

With Death Cult’s retrospective Ghost Dance set also being selected, TSOM fans will wonder why Some Girls Wander By Mistake does not warrant inclusion, yet another example of the somewhat erratic selection policy employed by the editors, which undermines what is generally a decent effort at cataloguing the much-maligned genre. Whilst the rankings themselves are inevitably subjective,  there do seem be some odd placings [surely most seasoned Bauhaus observers would rank Mask ahead of albums by Love and Rockets, Dali’s Car, Peter Murphy and Tones On Tail, contrary to their position here? Should The Sisterhood’s album really be twenty places higher than God’s Own Medicine? Does anyone with even a passing knowledge of goth music genuinely believe that Only Theatre Of Pain should rank lower than albums by In The Nursery and Nitzer Ebb?], the overall impression is of a flawed retrospective which could have benefitted significantly from input from someone authoritative (Mick Mercer, for example) who has been keenly observing and analysing the scene since the beginning and retains a keen interest in it. 

The magazine is from the same stable as the more generic current publication The 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time…ranked! (in which, incidentally, Floodland features at number 261, with First and Last and Always trailing in at number 412), and with these one-off titles commanding both a longer shelf-life and a higher price point than traditional mags, there will surely be more ‘specials’ to follow in this series from Kelsey Media entitled The Ultimate Record Collection. Hopefully, by the time they come round to the genre again (The 100 Greatest Goth Singles…ranked! maybe??), both the history and the present state of our beloved musical style will be covered in a more comprehensive, consistent and even-handed manner.

The 200 Greatest Goth Albums…ranked! is available from Kelsey Media

Leather Trouser Press - Early The Sisters of Mercy and the cream of American music journalism

 

Since this blog started well over a decade ago, two books have been published about The Sisters of Mercy, the first being Trevor Ristow’s Waiting For Another War (reviewed here and available here), which is notable for its extensive research and revelations about the band’s various US trips in the early/mid-1980’s.

As we have already chronicled, the Sisters received better press coverage Stateside than they did in the UK, which wouldn't have been difficult given the bizarre non-appearance of the band even in UK alternative publications like Punk Lives and Jamming. Well-respected music journalists in venerable generalist regional titles like The Washington Post, LA Times and the Boston Globe all featured the band well before their name would grace any of the English national daily papers, for example, and gave the band a more fair appraisal than the contemporary specialist broadsheets in the UK could manage. 

Freed from the straitjacket of heavily gatekept genres and with a more ready appreciation of what the “spirit of Altamont” actually entailed, US musical aficionados and journalists seemed to be able to “get” The Sisters straight away, whether or not the actual songs were their “cup of tea” (or whatever the American equivalent is) and were quick to appreciate and in some cases embrace the band’s musical, lyrical and stylistic aesthetic, as well as the quintessentially British persona projected by Andrew Eldritch, who endeared himself to Americans in the same way as artists as diverse as Quentin Crisp and Hugh Grant (pre-arrest!) also managed to achieve.

One of the few national musical publications in the USA to enthuse about any act which had followed in the wake of punk, Trouser Press had begun life in 1974 as a fanzine (with a much longer name) to showcase UK-based talent in the States, but by the late 70’s it was a more professional magazine with a circulation of sixty thousand per issue and a less Anglocentric slant. Along the way it had acquired a well-deserved impressive critical reputation, so much so that it was able to branch out into its seminal Record Guides in the 1980’s.

One of its most respected writers was Jim Green, who penned the monthly’s singles review column Green Circles, which was avidly read by college radio DJ’s and gig promoters across the States. As music blogger Post-Punk Monk recalls: “Jim Green would weigh in on the calibre of non-LP B-sides for import single cognoscenti like myself. At the very least, you got to know what tracks each single held; invaluable for making a purchasing decision! If the records were 6-8 weeks old by the time they went to press, remember: it was a slower time. It might take that long for anything I wanted to filter down to Central Florida anyway.”

Whilst Rolling Stone (much like the NME in the UK) had writers such as Lester Bangs and Greil Marcus who seemed to believe that they were the star of the show and the artists mere players, Trouser Press’ own team of writers under founder editors Ira Robbins, Dave Schulps and Karen Rose were happy for their enthusiasm for the music to take the limelight, and Jim Green was very much of that ilk (so much so that a quick Google of his name will reveal precious little about his own life).

Responding to a request on the Trouser Press online forum twenty years ago for more information about his own involvement in the music scene, Green revealed “Here’s more than you possibly want to know. I used to special order singles for my Trouser Press column from a record store on the Upper East Side, near Dave Schulps' apartment. Dave introduced me to the guy who worked there, who was really helpful, just a great guy. The latter told me a friend of his from back home had a band that was putting out its own single, and could he have them send it to me. I said ‘Fine’, and got the first few singles by this group, and exchanged letters with their singer, then calling himself Crocus Behemoth. Yup, the group was Pere Ubu! The record store guy himself said he had a band, and would Dave and i come see their first ever gig at Max's Kansas City. We said ‘Of course!’. His name was Lux Interior, and that [band] was The Cramps” (Presumably the store in question was Musical Maze).

Unsurprising, therefore, that Green would eventually stumble across and like The Sisters of Mercy (with the  band being of course huge fans of both The Cramps and Pere Ubu), thanks presumably to their constant presence in the upper echelons of the UK’s Alternative/Independent chart listings, penning his first review of band’s recorded output in the September 1983 edition of Trouser Press (which featured the then-extravagantly-coiffured A Flock of Seagulls by Ebet Roberts on the cover). The selection of Merciful Release records Green reviewed is notable not only for the inclusion of Body Electric/Adrenochrome, which was increasingly hard to find in the UK let alone in the US at that time, but also for that of the Salvation single Girlsoul, but attributed here to the band’s previous name Black Paris, under which moniker they had recorded the songs in the infamous session at Ken Giles’ Bridlington studios and a name which they kept until shortly before the EP was issued, as was confirmed in Ristow's book. These facts might lead one to believe that Green’s source for the records he was reviewing in this instance was probably Eldritch himself, given that the Salvation single was not finally released in the UK until October of that year (and, obviously, under the band’s new name). Interestingly, Green was clearly not yet afforded access to Temple of Love, which would ultimately be released before the Salvation debut EP and which was being shared with UK journalists at this time.

In the review itself, Green gives a measured if personal view of the band’s development from the “first single” (with Eldritch airbrushing Damage Done from collective memory at that time) to the more recent The Reptile House EP, with complaints about the latter’s “sub-par” production but praise for  the increased sophistication of the songs’ structures over time being typical of the more discerning critics of that era, and an assessment that many would recognise as realistic and fair to this day.

Just three months later, Green featured The Sisters’ latest release (the Temple of Love 12”) in his Green Circles column, in a rave review which praised all three tracks, with appreciation for the “thought and cleverness” behind the title track, the “similarly effective” Heartland and turning Gimme Shelter into an “apocalyptic hymn”. Eldritch would surely have particularly appreciated the closing remark: “Neat stuff, fellas”, effectively a warm welcome into the pantheon of American rock’n’roll history, an accolade he had clearly relished.

Despite these two reviews being the only references to the band in the full online archive of Trouser Press (see below for details - it's well worth a browse!), The Sisters may have gone on to feature regularly in the magazine, but for the fact that Ira Robbins and co suddenly decided to pull the plug on the publication after its tenth anniversary issue in April of 1984, on the eve of The Sisters of Mercy’s first major label release. Subscribers were transferred over to Rolling Stone’s offshoot Record, which was unlikely to feature any bands from the English positive punk scene, and which also disappeared from the racks shortly afterwards. 

Robbins explained the decision to close TP in a recent (2024) interview with Rock and Roll Globe to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the magazine’s original launch: “Once the New Wave moved on, we followed that path into post-punk and the New Romantics and the MTV era, which proved to be our undoing. We were not as keen on Adam [Ant] and Duran Duran and Culture Club and Big Country as we had been on The Clash and The Sex Pistols and The Damned and The Stranglers and Siouxsie and stuff. So, our coverage became half-hearted. Three-quarter-hearted, let’s be fair. And we attracted an audience because MTV had built an audience of young kids who were attracted by the colourful bands and the pop songs. And that audience found us but didn’t find our somewhat more sophisticated, cynical, sarcastic view of their music as appealing as what MTV was selling.”

If Robbins was at best luke-warm about the commercially successful post-punk/New Romantic acts, he was openly hostile to bands of the positive-punk sub-genre. Apart from The Sisters, much of what became known as the goth scene was openly derided in the review pages of the latter issues of Trouser Press, as this typical four album mauling by Robbins himself will testify…

 

Had time caught up with a generation of music journalists who had always prided themselves on being ahead of the curve? The exasperation in Robbins’ tone in that review would tend to suggest that this was the case, and comments from the afore-mentioned interview of earlier this year seem to confirm this version of events; “We were getting older, and we were running out of money, and we just didn’t care as much about what we were doing. And it just seemed like a good time to stop.” In any case, the untimely demise of the one national music outlet likely to give a promising US career a significant boost prevented The Sisters from making the big leap forward that would eventually come a few years later, but in their own small way, the influential Jim Green’s positive reviews of the early releases helped to establish TSOM as serious players on the alternative scene across the pond.

This post is dedicated to Jim Green, Ira Robbins and the team at Trouser Press, the band's chief unofficial US biographer, and my fellow TSOM internet sleuth Ade Matthews. For more about the early years of The Sisters of Mercy, check out the unofficial 1980-1985 TSOM Facebook page. The band still tours to this day and information can be found on the official website. The full archive of Trouser Press is available here with a very handy artist pre-search here. 

 

 

 

 

On this day in history - a new guitarist and a new bassist for The Sisters of Mercy! - York, 5th February 1982

 As discussed on previous posts on this blog (for example here and here), The City of York has long since had an association with The Sisters of Mercy. Although none of the band was from the ancient county town, or studied there, the city’s alternative scene was just as important to Andrew Taylor’s musical development as the Leeds F-Club scene was, with the young Bowie fan southerner finding a second home in Priestley’s, the t-shirt shop, as mentioned by contributors to Phil Verne’s TSOM 1980-1985 FB group who knew him back in the late 1970’s and as discussed in a previous piece on this blog.

As many bands were to discover at the other end of the 1980’s (Inspiral Carpets, Carter USM etc), there was more money to be made for bands in selling t-shirts than in selling records, where the cost of hiring a studio, paying a producer/engineer, and covering the costs of test pressings, and of manufacture and distribution and promotion of vinyl records was often significantly greater than the band’s cut of the revenue. With his sharp intellect and head for business, Taylor (for as Mark Andrews’ excellent biography of the band’s early days, Paint My Name In Black and Gold asserts, the name Eldritch was not used until much later in 1982) was quick to spot this opportunity, and before the band was fully established, their distinctive head-and-star logo t-shirts were featuring in Priestley’s catalogue. Hanging out on the York alternative scene, Taylor established a loose network of contacts within the town, which would prove vital to the early stages of his masterplan for the group, including of course, getting early gigs for the band at the local university.

                                                             Original flyer courtesy of Garry H

The competitive nature of the Junior Common Rooms of the different colleges of the University of York meant that there was a vibrant gig scene on the campus, with the colleges vying with each to attract the biggest and best up-and-coming names on the alternative scene, with the young student promoters another opportunity for Taylor to exploit, and apart from those put on in Leeds by the legendary F-Club promoter John F Keenan, the university gigs (supporting Thompson Twins and Reluctant Stereotypes) at York were the band’s only other creative outlet at that time, given Taylor's reluctance to demean his project by accepting small-time gigs in local pubs. With their local reputation growing, and having proven their ability to bring a small and enthusiastic entourage through from Leeds to boost a gig’s attendance, in February 1982 The Sisters of Mercy were again booked to appear on a four-band bill at Vanbrugh College (named after famous dramatist and former Bastille prisoner Sir John Vanbrugh) on the University of York’s main campus at Heslington just outside the city. Gigs were held in the college’s Dining Hall, a glass-fronted building with distinctive “Toblerone” pyramid features on the flat roof) facing onto the campus’ main feature, the lake (the campus was formerly marshland and the excess water was drained to form the lake feature), near to the space age Central Hall.

pic credit: D S Pugh

Not only was this the only gig in the 1981-1985 period where Craig Adams did not perform with the band (he was away in the Canaries helping with a photoshoot), substituted by Jon Langford of The Mekons (and soon to be The Three Johns), a long-time friend of Taylor’s who contributed significantly to the band’s early development, but the gig also marked the live debut of Ben Gunn as the latest “fourth member” (rhythm guitarist). The latter was still at school at the time, completing his A Levels, leading to New Musical Express gig reviewer X Moore having a little fun at his expense by claiming that he was in detention, hence his late arrival at the gig (probably chauffeured there in his Mum’s Volvo, as the band would later be for the gig supporting The Clash at Newcastle City Hall some five months later, according to Gary Marx’s account in one of Mark Andrews’ pieces on the band’s early days for The Quietus).

Review of the gig from  NME

Although The Sisters’ reputation had begun to grow after the incendiary live shows of spring/early summer 1981 in Leeds and York, and the band’s energy and unique look had made them stand out amongst the early performers at the Futurama the previous September, Taylor would have been right to be nervous before the gig, with 50% of the band making their live debut with The Sisters, especially since the gig was reviewed in not one but two of the national music papers, the first time that a live review of the band had appeared in one of the London weeklies, save for brief mentions of the band’s appearance at the 1981 Futurama 3 event at Stafford's Bingley Hall (see blog post here). 

Ticket for the gig, courtesy of collector Robin C

Poster for the gig, courtesy of collector Ian P

Although the gig was one of the earliest, and hardly any artefacts survive from many of the other shows of that era, the Feb 1982 gig is a particularly well-chronicled event, as not only have a ticket, a flyer (with the plea “please support us, we are doing our best to give you good entertainment at the lowest possible price") and a rather impressive poster survived, in addition to the review penned by X Moore (Chris Dean, of former York band No Swastikas and then new act The Redskins, hence the cryptic comment in the opening line of his review – “This is York. City of red skins and blue collar rockers”) for the NME and the Sisters feature written by Adam Sweeting for the Melody Maker, there is a lengthier account of the show as part of a longer feature on the York music scene which Adam Sweeting had been dispatched to write, as the Melody Maker attempted its own “levelling up” agenda some forty years before it became politically popular, which was eventually printed nearly two months later in the 20^th March edition. Eager to show that they understood that musical scenes were developing some way north of Watford, Melody Maker sent ambitious staffers to try to discover the next Liverpool (Echo and The Bunnymen/Teardrop Explodes/Wah Heat/Dead or Alive), Sheffield (Human League/Cabaret Voltaire/Artery) or Manchester (Joy Division/Magazine/Durutti Column), to try to counter accusations of metropolitan bias as they lazily bigged up unimpressive parochial London scenes (the “Oi” punk phenomenon for example) as if they were major new national trends, whilst whole new scenes went unreported because of their exclusively provincial base. As the centre piece the Awaydaze feature, in addition to lengthy comments on the local scene by guitarist Mike Gibson, then of York scene band Our 15 Minutes but who would go on to star in phenomenal punk’n’roll London band the Godfathers’ finest hours later in the decade, Sweeting had gone along to the four-band show on 5^th February at Vanbrugh College, a gig which has assumed legendary status amongst Sisters fans. His article reveals that the promoter of the gig was Elissa van Poznac, “a former NME freelancer and currently in her final year at York,” who would go on to give a glowing review to one of The Sisters’ 1983 London shows for the NME, presumably another Taylor acquaintance of that era. Sweeting interviewed another JCR promoter for his Awaydaze piece, which gives an insight into how important it was for bands to cultivate contacts with these young enthusiasts who were often in post for just one year and were able to use their Ents budget to attract bands whom they personally admired. The journalist also reviews the other bands on the bill as part of his York piece, although clearly none made the same impression upon him as TSOM did. The Plainsmen, the “campus reggae band”, “droop through a soggy set” which nevertheless earns them an encore, whilst “lacklustre” local act Trains To Europe leave the stage to “dead silence” after “their final song sort of fizzles out.” Sweeting missed London act The Lost Boys, the headliners, as he had rushed off to interview The Sisters, anxious to catch the band – “definitely the event of the night” - before they caught the last train back to Leeds with their limited equipment. X Moore also seems to have beat a hasty retreat after three acts, delivering the rather unsubtle if accurate summary “The Sisters of Mercy are f*ckin’ great”.

Extracts from the AwayDaze piece, including a photo of Gary Marx, from the collection of Dav E C

Sadly no live recording of this gig has yet surfaced, so it is difficult to assess exactly how well Gunn and Langford gelled with the band's original two members and Doktor Avalanche, but the enthusiastic praise heaped on the band by both reviewers clearly indicates that the show was a success. The band would return to York for a gig with The Psychedelic Furs during Freshers’ Week that October at Derwent College, the third of the York colleges to host The Sisters, and again a couple of weeks later back at Vanbrugh for a Merciful Release double-header with the then more-successful-than-the-Sisters March Violets. 

         Adam Sweeting's original piece about TSOM published in Melody Maker shortly after the gig

By the time Wayne Hussey joined the band and touring resumed in the Spring of 1984, The Sisters of Mercy had graduated to the “main hall” university circuit, and their three major UK treks over the following eighteen months would consist of a combination of Victorian/Edwardian civic halls, mainstream clubs and functional 1960’s/student union halls, with notable exceptions such as the new generation of alternative superclubs like Nottingham’s Rock City. The Sisters would return to the city of York just one more time during the Hussey era, for the infamous York Rock Festival in September 1984....

My thanks for their help with this blog post are due to collectors Dav E C, Robin C, Ian P, Garry H and to Phil Verne of the unofficial TSOM 1980-1985 FB fan group, which all fans of this era of the band are invited to join. If anyone has any further memories or artefacts of this or other gigs of the 1981-1985 era, please get in touch!

40 Years Ago Today - The Pied Pipers of Goth: The Sisters of Mercy played two gigs on the same night in Camden!

Forty years ago tonight, The Sisters of Mercy played not one but two gigs back-to-back at iconic venues in the London borough of Camden, on a warm August evening which has gone down in Sisters folklore. Not only was it the only time that the band had played twice in one night, but if (as many fans believe) the listed gig at the legendary Manchester Hacienda the following month didn’t actually take place, then the second of the two gigs would have been second guitarist Ben Gunn’s last gig with the band in the UK.

Having recently played their first European shows at city centre outdoor festivals in Ancona (31^st July) and Brussels (5^th August), The Sisters of Mercy were booked to support avant-garde Dublin band Virgin Prunes at the Electric Ballroom venue on the evening of Thursday 11^th August 1983, with tickets stating that the band would be on stage an hour after the doors opened at 8 p.m.

         The only known photo of The Sisters of Mercy's performance at the Electric Ballroom

The 1500 capacity venue is one of the few which the band played in their early days which is still trading as a music venue under the same name today, and the combination of two of the most talked-about bands of 1983 made the gig one of the stand-out events of what is usually a very quiet month on the gig-going calendar. Virgin Prunes’s album If I Die, I Die had found its way into many goth record collections thanks partly to the band’s striking visual image and attractive record sleeves and on the back of the single Baby Turns Blue, which remains an alternative club floorfiller to this day, but also as a result of their unique live show, which was exposed to the wider gig-going public thanks to this stunning performance on the sadly short-lived Channel 4 music show Whatever You Want. As much a theatrical show as a gig, no verbal description I could attempt here would do justice to the mesmerising spectacle to which Virgin Prunes fans were treated, as far removed from The Sisters’ then straightforward high-octane punk rock’n’roll show as could be imagined. Ironically, the Sisters’ own enduring popularity ultimately owes much to a similarly atmospheric one-off show less than two years later, the seminal Wake live video recorded at the Royal Albert Hall, with the dry ice, hats and shadow-play lighting as much a part of the band’s unique appeal at that time as the songs and the stark iconography of their own record sleeves.

Perhaps aware that he may seem somewhat static and old school compared to the headliners, contemporary reviews of the show refer to Eldritch upping the ante in his own frontman role, with Sounds reviewer Robin Gibson, whilst acknowledging the quality of his vocal performance, finding his stage persona “painfully arrogant”, whilst Ulster fanzine Youth Anthem’s reviewer accuses the band (and presumably the singer in particular) of “the worst case of heavy metal posing since Queen circa 1973” (which many would take as a compliment!). Sisters fan and Heartland Forum user Bearskin also thought that Eldritch was really trying to impress that evening: “I recall the Sisters performance was very posturing - Von was in full strut mode, acting quite the rock star. It was the first time I'd heard the Reptile House songs live.” However, both written reviewers also acknowledge that despite their own misgivings about the band’s music, the Sisters went down well with the crowd and were permitted an encore, which was not often the case with support bands.

The Sounds review highlights the growing importance of Emma in the set, and the overall quality of the show can easily be heard in the three recordings of the gig which have survived, such as the version uploaded onto YouTube (and featured below), which begins with the now traditional crowd chant of “God Squad” over the introduction to usual set-opener in 1983, Kiss The Carpet, which receives a lively reception. After Eldritch’s cheery “’ello!” and the then-obligatory audience shouts for 1969, the singer announces Anaconda, in which the sound mix slowly begins to settle, although Gunn’s guitar still seems a little out of tune, as is the singer’s final line. The heat was clearly getting to the band, as Eldritch announces “You’ve never seen my abs [? arms? arse?] before, have you? Next time we come we’ll have some new songs and I’ll take my trousers off for you.” Before he can elaborate further, the opening riff of what turns into a rather grungy rendition of Alice can be heard. Again the audience requests start as soon as the cheering and applause die down at the end of the song. “No, we don’t play Jolene no more….Settle down,” replies Eldritch.  A different  member of the crowd then shouts for 1969. “We don’t that any more either, this is Burn,” intones Eldritch, introducing a particularly fine version of the Reptile House track, which is followed by an equally epic Emma, and a stately, if not funereal, Valentine, for which Eldritch for once manages the high note for the first, if not the second syllable of the final word. "This is called Heartland, and we think we're going to put it on a record...soon!" is how the singer introduces introduces the next track, which picks up the pace significantly, as does the following Adrenochrome, which is shambolic almost to the point of being unlistenable at times from a guitar perspective. After a lengthy interval to sort the guitar sound, the opening Doktor Avalanche salvo of Floorshow is greeted by cheers, although the drum machine's solo is extended on this occasion until the guitars are sufficiently (de-)tuned to join in. The band return for an encore, with Eldritch announcing "Hello, Wakefield", before the band launches into a typically unhinged incendiary Body Electric to close the show.

On a Virgin Prunes site, fan Shaun Morris commented “The only down point of the night was the venue which was underground and unbelievably hot. As we left the show sweat was running down the walls. God knows what it must have felt like onstage,” confirming the searing heat in the packed venue that others who attended have mentioned in their own accounts.

Having finished the first show at the Electric Ballroom, The Sisters and their entourage then headed the short distance down Camden High Street to the Camden Palace, formerly a theatre, BBC radio studio and then in the 1970's a venue called the Music Machine, which had a recently acquired reputation as the coolest club in London after its makeover and rebranding in 1982 as the Camden Palace, when it became the centre of the New Romantic scene fronted by Richard Strange.

The Sisters’ gig was unadvertised, and most fans who had attended the show at the Ballroom were unaware that it was taking place. Fan Robert L, who had hitched from the South-West of England, was one such fan who was sceptical about the reality of a second show: “I was told about it and just thought 'sounds like bullshit, 2 gigs in one night?'. Having hitchhiked from Plymouth I wasn't prepared to travel across London on a rumour, and miss the Virgin Prunes... Someone also told me the admission price, which was far more than I had in my pocket at the time.”

However, the inner circle of fans did know about the show, and in Mark Andrews' essential biography of this period of the band, Paint My Name In Black And Gold, Gary Marx is quoted as saying “It was a brilliant night because we hammered out one set and then went on…marching down the road taking our audience with us, Pied-Piper-style, to the next gig.”

In the book Rik B, a member of the band’s unofficial fan group The God Squad also recalls that “there was no guest list at the Camden Palace, so the Sisters had twenty or thirty ‘roadies’ that night…each person carrying a little bit [of equipment] down the street” and into the venue!

The gig at Camden Palace started some time after midnight, and is therefore usually listed as 12^th August 1983, even though it was effectively on the same evening as the Ballroom gig. No reviews were published of the Camden Palace show, and only one, probably partial and muffled recording of the show has survived, and this extract, the possible opener Emma, shows both band and audience in fine form, with the latter joining in enthusiastically with Gary Marx’s impromptu rendition of Ghost Riders In The Sky before it starts. The lack of soundcheck is evident in the rather thin and reedy start, and the song gets off to a lacklustre beginning, with first Adams false-starting, and then Marx playing a few bum notes of his own in his opening riff. Even the perfectionist Eldritch is not immune to the gaffes, missing his cue for his own second line. The band recovers manfully, and by the end the seven-minute song recovers its full dramatic effect, although it does sound as if they are down to just the one guitar for the last minute or so, possibly due to a technical mishap. There is enthusiastic applause at the end however, which is repeated throughout the show, which ends with a second cover version, Gimme Shelter, which had not been played at the earlier show.

Heartland Forum member Original GS who did both gigs, recalls that “it was a mad day all round. A dozen of us in a van from Wakefield. We got home at about half past eight the following morning!”. A perfect summation for a unique evening, the last time that the band would play in the capital until the following May, by which time major changes had occurred...

As for Camden Palace, the venue was refurbished again in 2004 and renamed Koko, continuing to trade successfully until it was badly damaged by fire in 2020, something of an occupational hazard for venues which have hosted TSOM, but in this case the story has had a happy ending, as recounted in this BBC news report.

My thanks for this post are largely due to Phil Verne, curator of The Sisters of Mercy 1980-1985 unofficial fan group on Facebook who gathered most of the artefacts used in this post, but also to Robin, Rik, Robert, Shaun, Mark, Gary and others who have contributed, wittingly or unwittingly, to this account.

 

40 years ago today - Eldritch-produced Salvation debut EP out on Merciful Release

 Today (29^th July) sees the fortieth anniversary of one of the seminal releases on the Merciful Release label, Salvation’s Girlsoul, the imprint’s first to be simultaneously issued in both 7” and 12” formats. Issued in a stunning white sleeve – a real break with MR tradition – the three tracks were recorded at Kenny Giles’ Bridlington studio and were produced by Andrew Eldritch, who according to the press release pictured which confirms the release date, was also managing the band at the time, using his own name (“Andy Taylor”).

These were not the only connections to The Sisters of Mercy however, with Doktor Avalanche moonlighting as Salvation’s drum machine and playing a prominent role on all three tracks, and lead singer Danny Mass being one of the band’s roadies at the time (and moving into 7 Village Place when Gary Marx moved out).  This was not an uncommon occurrence, with Noel Gallagher having roadied for Inspiral Carpets perhaps the most famous example.

The three songs for the Girlsoul EP were recorded during the winter and at minimal cost, as the band recall on their website that “it was snowing and the band were skint! Andrew knew that the band didn’t have any money and so, asked to be paid in kind with West Yorkshire’s finest stimulants. 3 sleepless nights and the Girlsoul EP was born!”

In Mark Andrews’ seminal biography of The Sisters of Mercy’s early years, Paint My Name In Black and Gold, Mass (real name Daniel Horigan) recalls that it actually took two sessions to complete the recording, the first being aborted after the singer “lost a tooth whilst I was eating a liquorice stick. We had to go back and complete the vocals after I had a crown.”

I myself was lucky enough to have the opportunity to interview Danny Mass for the legendary The Sisters of Mercy online fan group Heartland Forum on the occasion of Salvation’s thirtieth anniversary gig in 1985, and asked him about the recording sessions for the Girlsoul release, the first time he had been in a recording studio. “The studio time was fast and frantic,” he told me. “We didn't have long and had never been near a studio before. Andrew was keen and enthusiastic: he knew the desk and we worked well together. I love being in the studio - it was a great experience and set us on our way.”

Of the three tracks, the Girlsoul EP’s title track bore the greatest musical relationship to The Sisters of Mercy’s own output, with a simple, repetitive guitar riff courtesy of Mike Hayes, and James Kenyon's insistent bassline not unlike Craig Adams’ staccato motif on the Teachers demo, and of course the omnipresent and unmistakable presence of drum machine Doktor Avalanche in TR-808 incarnation high in the mix, although Mass’ vocal tone was lighter and more vulnerable than Eldritch’s own sonorous baritone.

The TR-808 was an expensive piece of kit upon its release in the early 1980’s, retailing at £795, and apart from with The Sisters of Mercy and their acolytes, was also popular with the hip hop fraternity, meaning that even today a good example will fetch eight times the original price, with fewer than twelve thousand units having been originally manufactured.

Eldritch’s growing skill as a producer, evident also on The Sisters’ own Anaconda single from the same era, is clear on the lead track, as explained by Heartland Forum member robertzombie, an expert in needledrop analysis of vinyl records: “Eldritch gave us a great mix with punch, dynamic range, and a reasonable amount of depth. The most intriguing aspect of this song is the way in which, on the 12" single, it gets louder and louder as the piece progresses, with each instrument piling on an additional layer of sinister repetition to draw the listener in (or perhaps repel them)”.

The immediate appeal of the title track of EP helped to propel it into the Independent Chart top thirty upon release, with the three tracks’ very different styles making it clear that Salvation’s music palette was going to be broader than that of their MR labelmates. When the songs were finally released by the band themselves on CD in late 2014, tragically just after the death of original bass player James “Elmore” Kenyon, along with the shelved Clash of Dreams EP (recorded in 1984, also produced by Eldritch but never released on Merciful Release in March 1985 as had been originally intended), I reviewed them in detail:

“The title track was the most immediate, and was deservedly the first of the band's Independent Chart hits, whilst Evelyn has an almost Joy Division back beat. The real treasure, though, is Dust Up … one of the greatest MRs of all time. Danny and the band seem to be playing an obscure OMD b-side in the first couple of minutes whilst Doktor Avalanche rat-tat-tats impatiently on the studio door. The next ten minutes is pure psychedelic goth trance bliss, before the song ends in the same way it started. One can well imagine the band leaving Eldritch in the studio to finish the insipid original whilst they headed to the nearest pub to Ken Giles' studio in Bridlington to make last orders, returning the following morning to find Von slumped over the controls, exhausted by the all-night shift required to make his masterpiece. Possibly.”

The latter conjecture on my part was of course entirely fantasy, with Danny explaining in his interview with me the following year the true genesis of the fourteen-minute epic Dust Up, which certainly betrays a debt to US electro-punk pioneers Suicide, a major influence on not only Mass and Eldritch but on the whole Leeds (post-)punk scene: “Dust Up was supposed to be an improvised 'jam' like an early Velvet Underground kind of 'trip' thing. But recording in a studio with limited time isn't the best way to do that kind of thing so it was all a bit too structured (even though it doesn't sound like it) by the time we finished. It was a good idea but a little naïve on our part.” As further evidence of just how new a project Salvation was at the time, the band didn't make its live debut until 1985! 

On the fortieth anniversary of its release, Girlsoul has rightly just been named as one of the “top fifty guaranteed floorfillers” in Uncut Magazine’s rundown of Goth Club Anthems in their “Ultimate Genre Guide: Goth” magazine, helping to cement the band’s reputation as more than just a footnote in the Andrew Eldritch story, whilst the current iteration of the band has just completed a few dates supporting fellow goth-adjacent Leeds legend The Rose of Avalanche. In 2021 the band released an acclaimed live album recorded in St Niklaas in March 2020, which is available (along with Clash of Dreams and other previous releases) on their Bandcamp page.

My thanks for this post are again due to Danny, QB and other members of the Salvation team for the 2015 interview and for the inspirational music!