Kat Says: “Once A Goth, Always A Goth”
Exploring my own dark roots and the subculture that made me.
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Hey Friends!
Coming to you live from the aftermath of my first real hangover of 2023. It’s been raining non-stop for days here in south Florida; the perfect mood for sitting on your couch, binge-watching Netflix and eating an entire medium pizza from Dominos.
Considering we’re five months into the year, this is an incredible statistic—a new high score, if you will—and even if this hangover did steal my motivation for at least 48 hours, I have absolutely zero regrets.
Why? Because it was goth night, and deep inside my rainbow heart is a darkness that will never go out.
Me at my house, getting ready to go to The Kitchen Club.
It’s the honor of my life that so many folks think about me whenever they listen to or read about Justice and Daft Punk. Yes, I have dedicated the past 15 years of my life to worshipping the French Touch gods, but before I was wearing cross patches on the back of my cheap pleather jackets, I was rockin’ black-beaded rosaries made from plastic and my natural dark hair down to my hip bones.
To truly dig into my musical soul is to come up with handfuls of ‘70s post-punk records and teased-to-death haircuts. I am a dark and disturbed creature of the night, and it is not a phase!
If you’ve never enjoyed the sweet, sorrowful embrace of goth music, let me tell you, it’s a big 10/10 recommend. It might be the most misunderstood genre in music history, and not because that’s totally just what a goth kid would say.
From the outside, folks often think goth is some scary, black metal-type, demon-worshiping situation. On the inside, it’s one of the gooey-ist and dreamiest soundscapes you can explore. It’s the connective fiber between post-punk and shoegaze, as much an influence on The Weeknd’s catalog as it is Interpol.
If you’ve ever found yourself sad, frustrated and angry at the world but also incredibly turned on—so like, anywhere between the ages of 12 and dead—goth music is for you.
To this day, I think South Park is the only mainstream pop-cultural outlet that totally got it right. That, my friends, is what goth kids do when the doors are closed. It’s so perfect, down to the disdain for emo kids. Omfg, the emo kids.
I mean, look. You’re all great. Enjoy whatever you want, but when I was a 16-year-old mini Elvira stalking the halls of my high school, my biggest pet peeve was when someone asked if I was emo. The Cure is not Dashboard Confessional, and Joy Division is not Underoath.
I like to say that the distinction between the two sub-cultures lies in that emo kids have this sort of self-deprecating hate for themselves, while goth kids hate everyone else. We are actually quite in love with ourselves, thank you. It’s this capitalist-fascist world that is imperfect, not I.
Still, emo kids. I’m really happy you get to enjoy a wildly-popular modern-day revival. Good for you, I guess.
My journey with goth music began somewhere in middle school. My mom had a cassette tape of Nine Inch Nail’s Pretty Hate Machine, and I distinctly remember a time when my pubescent depression started to really overflow. The only thing that made me feel good was sitting in the apartment with the blinds closed and all the lights off, blasting that industrial-pop bang fest as loud as I could without worrying about the neighbors.
That was a small teaser, but I’d say I really fell in love one fateful evening when my dad brought me to my Uncle Frankie’s house. I think I was 12. My uncle was getting rid of some CDs and said I could have first dibs.
I immediately grabbed Metallica’s self-titled (aka the Black Album). I’d grown up intimately familiar with “Enter Sandman” and “Wherever I May Roam,” and I was already exploring the world of heavy metal. Then this cool cover caught my eye: a single, graphic rose standing stark and alone on a black background, the word “violator” written in delicate script on the bottom right corner.
I didn’t know what it was, but it touched my soul like a cold breeze in a cave. It was surreal and intriguing and full of foreboding, and I fucking grabbed that shit with both hands.
If you don’t already know, Violator is Depeche Mode’s seminal LP released March 19, 1990. It’s easily one of the greatest goth albums ever created, a sensually-depraved exploration of synth-pop at its most sinister and perverse. It’s the sound your guts feel when you’re sick on anxious excitement, about to make out with someone for the first time, and you know deep down they’re bad for you. It sounds like doing something a little bit dangerous but incredibly addicting. It’s just UGHHH IT’S SO GOOD, YOU JUST HAVE TO LISTEN TO IT.
(Sidenote: I once wrote an essay for Discogs about how Violator changed my life, diving even deeper into its iconic sound and contextual history. That article isn’t live on the website anymore, but if you’re interested in reading it, I’ll be sharing a PDF and readable text version of that article later this week for paid-tier subscribers.)
My little 12-year-old mind was completely blown open. It felt like someone had stuck their hand in my chest and set a gramophone to my heart. I’d never resonated with a sound so deeply, and I was ravenous for something more.
Then my Aunt Debbie gave me a burned copy of her Greatest Hits CD from The Cure. Elders are so very, very important.
My goth world opened like a sudden ray of sun come peering through a cloudy rain. The Cure’s languid fantasies could be as bright as diamonds or vacant as raided tombs. The band’s early work was punky, in line with The Sex Pistols and Clash records I already loved, but so much bigger and heavier with emotion.
I myself was strange and heavy with emotion. It was destiny.
I’d already started wearing mostly black, and now I just wholeheartedly committed. I spent every weekend at the mall, spending every last dollar I was given on Greatest Hits CDs and black plaid skirts from Hot Topic (it was new back then, okay? Fuck lol). I bought albums by The Smiths and New Order, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus and Alien Sex Fiend. I bought books, like The Goth Bible and bought or downloaded songs and albums by every band they mentioned.
Eventually, I graduated from Hot Topic and started shopping for clothes at the local fetish store. I remember my mom once hurrying us through the checkout as the guy at the counter invited me to some kink party that Saturday.
This photo is really blurry, but I always liked it. It’s from my freshman year of college, before I saw Daft Punk and started going to DJ house parties, lol. All the good goth Kat photos are lost to MySpace, but I will dig more up one day from my personal files.
I was always a bit of a fanciful goth. I liked big, romantic sleeves and lots of layered jewelry. I’d buy my corsets at lingerie stores and grab vintage ‘80s prom dresses from Goodwill. I mean, to be sure, most of the time I just wore jeans and band t-shirts to school, but every once in a while, I’d just go all out and pair a blue, bob wig with ripped fishnet tights and oversized sweaters.
My parents are their own special brand of psycho, and they were all-around pretty supportive. My dad definitely started to get concerned and warn me against satanic rituals or whatever, until one day I put on a Morrissey CD in his car and he was all, “This is what you’re listening to?? Oh. There’s nothing wrong with this.”
When I was around 16 years old, I started dating this older guy. It was inappropriate but not illegal, and while the relationship didn’t last for a myriad of reasons—not least of which was the time I read his diary without permission (oops!) and discovered he actually, factually thought he was a vampire that needed to ingest small amounts of blood a month to live—he did help introduce me to active goth culture.
We’d get all dolled up and head with friends to The Kitchen Club, a well-respected goth night that took over some bar with pool tables and played all manner of goth, darkwave, synthpop, industrial and EBM or “electronic body music:” a genre that blends industrial with elements of trance, synth-pop, disco and other bright and bouncy things best categorized by bands including Front Line Assembly, VNV Nation, Apoptygma Berzerk and Ministry, among so many others.
Yes. Before my life was about EDM, I was getting down to EBM and raving at the goth club.
I kept going to The Kitchen and listening to goth music even after I broke up with that vampire guy, but in school, I was pretty much alone in my goth music obsession. My friends were the indie kids with whom I shared a love of electroclash and post-punk revival, what is now lumped all together as the “indie sleaze” movement.
I was also going to all-ages raves on the weekends, (you know, like I explained last week in my Ultra and MMW essay), and by the time I graduated high school and went off to college in Tallahassee, I felt like I was living in the past or something. The goth scene I loved was alive in the ‘80s, and the world around me was a mash-up of other things. I felt like I needed something new to define myself by, and luckily, in November 2006, I saw Daft Punk perform live in their world-changing pyramid, and nothing was ever the same.
Further Reading: Kat Says: “The Prime Time of Your Life, Now, Live It—Again”
I traded my black, flowing skirts for neon jeans from American Apparel, and I never looked back—but I also never stopped loving goth music, post-punk and synthpop. I mean, it’s really not the world’s wildest jump to go from bat shit to Justice. The cross fixation, as I already mentioned, completely translates.
Now that the bloghouse hype has come and gone (“and is coming back again?” she prays to the French Touch gods, forever and ever amen), I find myself pulled back ever warmly to my depression-core roots, ready to dance with all the grace of my needling elbows to the swaying sadness of my youth.
And that’s why I said fuck it and got happily wasted at goth night this Saturday, because it wasn’t just any goth night. It was The Kitchen Club! The very same goth night I went to as a baby bat when I was just 16 years old.
This is me at 18, before I saw Daft Punk, being dramatic with a digital camera and an umbrella for no reason.
The newly-revived monthly comes undead in Bar Nancy in Miami’s Little Havana, and it was just one of the best nights ever. I got all dolled up again, got with my friends, drank vodka cranberries all-night (because it looks like blood, lol, I love dumb goth shit).
It was themed around ‘80s synth-wave specifically, and they played tons of New Order, Depeche Mode and Joy Division, all the hits! One of the top five mixes I’ve ever heard in my life was when the DJ blended the creepy breakdown of Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer” with the guitar warble of The Smith’s “How Soon Is Now.” I literally screamed (shocking no one at all lol).
My friends and I stayed until they turned the lights on and kicked everyone out. We made friends with the cool bartender chicks, and I even met a young woman who said it was her first time at a goth night there on the dance floor and tried to share that welcoming spirit so often identified with raves.
Honestly, it was one of the most PLUR experiences I’ve had in a long time, except at the goth club, PLUR comes with a side of cynicism and sexual depravity, which is to say it’s EVEN FUCKING BETTER.
Further Reading: The Kitchen Club Celebrates 29 Years as Miami's Goth-Music Haven (Miami New Times, 2017, Zach Schlein)
Okay. Hold the fucking bat phone. I just found this article on The Kitchen Club in Miami New Times, and it says it celebrated its 29th anniversary in 2017. That means The Kitchen Club is 35, which means it’s AS OLD AS I AM.
Also, this article was written by my homie and mentee Zach Schlein?! You can’t make this shit up!
Anyway, I digress. Goth music is fucking amazing, about as amazing as bloghouse, and The Kitchen Club is a devious night worth losing the next two days of your life to. I’m definitely going next month whenever it comes back. I might even be so bold as to try and make out with someone?! IDK! YOU NEVER KNOW.
As long as they’re not a fucking vampire.
Alright! That’s my essay this week, and I’m sticking to it.
Do you like goth music? Do you want to know more about goth music? Let me know in the comments, or in a reply to this email, or on social media. Maybe I can put together a list of my favorite, essential goth music tracks for ya or something? Make a playlist? If you want :)
Alsooo
When I wasn’t throwing back five to six vodka cranberries in The Kitchen, I was going viral on Twitter for sharing an image of Insomniac’s filing to register “PLUR” as an official trademark. Yeahhhh. I also wrote about it for Billboard Dance. Learn more.
Speaking of Tweets, someone sent me the kindest Tweet of my life, saying how excited they were to read the below interview with Thomas Bangalter in the BBC, because it meant he was open to interviews, and my own opportunity could perhaps be approaching. I mean, what?! That’s my dream! And someone out there is helping me dream it! Amazing. Also, the piece is very good. What a guy, Mr. Bangalter.
And speaking of Daft Punk and interviews! Notable dance music journalist Shawn Reynaldo has a substack called First Floor, and he recently reshared his interview with Gabriel Szatan; another notable dance music journalist who is also writing the extremely exciting book Afer Daft (available now for pre-order), and who I can say from personal experience is a really, really, really cool and nice guy :) This interview is currently behind paywall, but please consider supporting journalists and reading it!
Coming Up Next
Yo yo! Do keep an eye on my YouTube page! My interview with Orbital is about to drop aaannnyyyyyyy minute now—and indeed! My Kat Calls Season 4 kick-off chat with Moon Boots is live there right the fuck now!
Also, Kat Calls is back this Thursday with a very special guest and fellow Nine Inch Nails superfan, Lucille Croft! We’re gonna talk all about her new EP The Valentine Effect, the struggle to control her own narrative as a female artist in a male-dominated industry, and her newfound obsession with Sticky Notes! lol
Come say hi on Twitch this Thursday!
Absolutely Necessary
(This is the part where I share songs that are so good, they’re absolutely necessary to listen to. That’s it. That’s the bar.)
I made two Spotify playlists for this section that you can follow: one weekly playlist updated with just the new stuff every week, and one cumulative playlist that will host every song I pick ever (until Spotify tells me it's full). Check them out! I made them for you—and me, but mostly you.
Once again, the playlists are updated. We’ve got good fucking shit from Whitesquare, ford., George Clanton and a few more. Might add to the playlist tomorrow, too. You never know!
Thanks for tuning into my newsletter. Listen to the playlists on Spotify. One is updated weekly with all the songs from each edition. The other is cumulative with all the updates ever!