Steam and Noise

I'm a Steampunk sceptic, I admit. My attire has become gradually more Victorian over the last ten years, and I never encountered the S-word until about 18 months ago. I have been known to voice a certain degree of irritation with the cartoonish antics of Steampunk devotees (all those goggles and fake fobs), when we all know that Goths are supremely sensible.

Nevertheless I was persuaded to set out for King's Cross on Saturday last to what was described as a Steampunk Spectacular, emboldened in the knowledge that at least a couple of chums from the London Goth Meetup would also be there to leaven the brown-clad loaf. I discovered myself, willy-nilly, to be rather charmed.

Firstly there was the music. I warmed to Saville Row, performing what was described as a reunion concert after a gap of ten years; by my calculation that meant they hadn't been playing together since the sixth form at the latest. Then came the lovely Rachel Hayward, Rachel Raygun as she calls herself, married (apparently happily, I'm afraid) to Steampunk fantasy author Robert Rankin: at this point I want you to picture a Goth girl in a latex tutu and little neoVictorian hat playing 'California Dreaming' on steel-pan drum. Having some trouble? No, it wasn't a concept that came naturally to me, either. She was followed by The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing, 'putting', as they say, 'the punk back into Steampunk', and fronted by a large red-whiskered man in a pith helmet singing songs about Charles Darwin (rather shamelessly lifted from the old Jacobite favourite 'Charlie is ma' Darlin'', I think), drainage, and Victorian engineers. Headliners Ghostfire came across as quite pedestrian noise-merchants compared to all that, so I didn't feel guilty leaving two songs into their set.

Then the outfits. A while ago I went to a London Vampire Meetup Group outing and found it all a bit samey: all the girls in Victorian garb, all the chaps in leather trousers and pirate shirts. The Goths, I smugly concluded, are more varied. Well, variety was hardly the word on Saturday. There were remarkably few goggles; what there was was a very entertaining eclecticism and creativity, treating the whole of the past as a colossal dressing-up box.

All in all, it was worryingly fun. It was almost as though somebody had been going through the darkest recesses of my head late at night. I'd sometimes mused that were I ever called on to play a set of music at a LGMG event it would include 'Doomsday' from the soundtrack of Dr Who; and what was almost last on the jukebox before I left the pub on Saturday? 'Rose Tyler, I ...'

What I like about Steampunk is precisely this creativity and breadth of range - although Goth at its best goes even further, as I've seen in some places, and Steampunk can't coherently stretch back any further than George Stephenson's top hat - its sense of history, and humour. All that is colossally appealing, and I can see easily why more mature Goths who want a bit of a laugh find themselves drawn Steamwards. But, but, but ... Something in me yearns for a bit more than humour too. I want something deep and dark to resonate with, the aesthetic of ruin and romanticism. And only Gothic has that.

In the end, as the last strains of the final dance die down and the destitute gamblers unpeel sadly from the table, I am on the side of the flying buttresses and weeping angels rather than the cogs and goggles. I find myself Black, not Brown, though I tip my hat to the boys and girls with the mechanical rayguns.

The hat was a Homburg, since you ask.