Roll Call

[manny at garfieldartworks.com]

Hi Sarah-

I'm the promoter who put on the first-ever Pittsburgh concert promoted as
"goth": "an evening of gothic rock" - January, 23 1988, here's the image
of the poster:
http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=88727932&albumID=1941547&imageID=27792555

and have been doing dark music shows ever since, working with everyone
from Death in June to Christian Death to Xymox (by the way, I recently
communicated with Ronny
Moorings - he would love to do another US tour if he can find a reliable
booker!). Since (unlike many people in the local scene) my interests swing
wide into all sorts of underground, indie,
avant-garde & experimental musics, you will find much that I do that may
"cross over" into goth interests (like, say, an IDM or harsh noise show) 
but is not strictly goth or industrial per se.

If you are interested in the live music and goth culture, and don't mind
reguarly hyphenating goth with its apparent sister term "industrial", then
there is no shortage of live performance to check out in the area. The
most active promoters are myself and the dudes from Distortion Productions
(Jim Semonik of Reinforced and his [acu]crack team] and we also work
together to bring the heat.
There are also other events as well - a fetish concert last week at the
Rex with local bands Prometheus Burning and Agnes Wired for Sound was
enjoyable as well.

Last night, Slick Idiot played at Pegasus to about 60 people. So,
unfortunately, even for prominent
live bands, there is limited interest here. I think this is because a lot
of the old people either stick to only DJ nights or just stay home out of
Brian's aforementioned anxiety. And the younger kids
get their info from Hot Topic, so they are more likely to show up at shows
where there are screamo metalcore bands with makeup and autotune and
crouching, or neo-Juggalo type groups (eg MSI), or maybe (if we're lucky)
some band that gets its influences from the Dresden Dolls, and they don't
really know anything about the history of either goth *or* industrial.

Only maybe once or twice a year you might see 300 people in one place.
That almost always means that VNV Nation, Combichrist, or Cruxshadows are
in town.

What I find interesting is that at this point, dark music has spun off
into so many subcategories
that it's particularly difficult to please a whole lot of people unless
the band is already very well
known. For example, the recent trend in the past several years of the
Balkan bands (Gogol Bordello, Balkan Beatbox, etc) has a lot to recommend
it to the dark-cabaret audience but the goths don't necessarily cross over
into it. Circus-punkers World Inferno Friendship Society now has one of
the two Dresden Dolls members as their drummer, but you don't see Dolls
fans flocking to see WIFS here. Cliquey attitudes like that don't help
open any minds.

Anyway, we hope to see you soon at some live events. In a separate post, I
will list some live event you may want to check out.

-mt

> Ey, My name is Sarah Spock,
> Id venture to guess no one on this mailing list knows who I am.  I was
> part of the goth scene in my hometown, and recently moved to
> pittsburgh.  I joined the mailing list so i could get a good idea
> about when and where shows are held.   It seems to be mostly DJ, and
> im more interested in the live aspect of goth music and the culture
> which surrounds it.