Coffee House Conversations

We so enjoyed our trip to the Bridge Coffee House inShoreditch back in January that we went again yesterday, or at least a smaller and different selection of us did. We talked mainly about soft furnishings, but also about the state of the Goth world.

Janet is one of the dressier members of the LGMG and can change outfits several times a day depending on what she’s doing. But as she moves elegantly through her forties some things become less of a priority. ‘I’ll still wear a corset to go to a club’, she said, ‘But that’s only for an evening. I just can’t put up with that sort of thing all day now. Corsets and bustles stop you doing so much, and as you get older getting strapped and laced into your clothes doesn’t do you any good. I used to dress up in the whole gear to walk around a stately home and I'd feel completely exhausted and ill by the end of the day. I just can’t be bothered now. I’d sooner wear something looser and less elaborate and be comfortable.’

‘Well, there’s a younger generation to do all of that’, I said. ‘Yeah’, she replied with some ruefulness, ‘unfortunately. Actually’, she added after some thought, ‘I’m not sure that the youngsters in their 20s are going in for all that either.’ I don’t know, and will have to take more notice when I’m next at Reptile or Tanz Macabre. There is an economic factor at work, in that proper vintage clothing, or modern interpretations of it, is now so expensive that younger Goths may not actually be able to afford it.

We also had a conversation about the state of clubs and the music played in them. You might expect that the more mature of us would be miffed about the way things change but in fact the main complaint was just the opposite, that so little new music tends to get played in the London Goth clubs. ‘You’d go to a particular night’, said Mark, ‘and you’d know that when a certain Depeche Mode track was played that was the end of anything interesting. From then on the DJs were catering for nostalgiagoths who expected the same limited playlist.’ This is odd because there are plenty of newer Goth bands in other parts of the country, and the experience of people who head into Europe for the big festivals is that it isn’t the same there. The main purpose of the DJ is of course to get people dancing, but they do have a secondary one of introducing their audience to new music they may like; it may not help that the London DJs and promoters are a remarkably small circle and tend to be, let’s say, no younger than in their mid-30s. Salena (25), who adores Kylie and Nine Inch Nails more or less equally, and Sarah (24) who finds herself drawn more and more to dark-cabaret, electroswing and classical music, didn’t really feel able to contradict any of this. ‘I’m too anachronistic to be used as an example of anything’, stated Salena.

Of course I don’t necessarily expect to hear much that I like being played at a Goth club: I’m there mainly for company and ambience. But the evening before going to Shoreditch, I’d been to Inferno at the Electric Ballroom in Camden with Cylene and a couple of friends, and in the car on the way she’d insisted on playing all of her favourite stuff because she was sure she wouldn’t hear any of it when we got there. It was no more obscure than IAMX, either.