The Null Device

"I've never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I'm going to be blunt and plain: If one ever looks at me like that, I'm going to kill him and tell God he died."
-- Jimmy Swaggart.

You know, "I'm gonna kill him and tell God he died" sounds like a country song lyric.

¶ bigotry country homophobia jimmy swaggart murder religiots 2

When Johnny Cash passed away, I noticed how he had virtually been claimed by the industriogothic scene as One Of Their Own, because of his dress sense and melancholy themes. (Though his covering Nine Inch Nails and Bad Seeds songs probably helped too.) It's funny, as I'm fairly sure that when Siouxsie Sioux and Andrew Eldritch were inventing what was to become 'Goth", they weren't heavily influenced by Johnny Cash, or indeed much country music at all; I doubt that Throbbing Gristle and their ilk were either.

It appears to be a rule that any vaguely dark, ethereal or otherworldly eventually gets lumped into the "Goth" genre, even if it starts life a million miles from goth's tightly circumscribed perimeter. It happened to Depeche Mode (in the 1980s they weren't goth, but now they're Goth As Fuck), and in the U.S. it seems to have partly happened to the shoegazer genre. (In Commonwealth countries, shoegazer is firmly ensconced in the indie-rock tradition, however.)

To wit, a list of artists and genres who might be filed in the "Goth" sections of record shops in 10 years' time:

1. Radiohead
2. Portishead
3. Sigur Rós
4. Godspeed You Black Emperor, and related outfits; in fact, all gloomy post-rock
5. all Norwegian Black Metal
6. various German/Austrian laptop glitch techno

And some things you probably won't find filed under "Goth":

1. Architecture In Helsinki
2. the Dixie Chicks
3. The Vines/The Datsuns/Jet
4. Kid 606's Missy Elliott mash-ups

¶ country culture depeche mode goth johnny cash metal music post-rock shoegazer 19