Prince's most goth moment

I chose "It", just because of the music-box/spooky fantasy chord progressions and the orchestra stabs.

But I forgot about "Loose!". Yeah! Actually, that's Prince's most Wax Trax! moment if anything. " *GASP* ONETWOTHREEFAH! " :) Also, "Hot Thing" (from Sign O' The Times as well as "It") is pretty teutonic and dark.

Speaking of Wax Trax!, PIG aka Raymond Watts and friends started off as a totally brilliant Prince parody, the "Never For Fun" single.. which sounds like Clint Ruin/Foetus covering "If I Was Your Girlfriend". Still love that song.

I think there's a good chunk of Orange County, CA musicians that would agree with you, and say there is still a strong codec of specificity required. I've practically been stalked by angry KUCI listeners for making fun of Rozz Williams one night (well before he took his own life). I'll tell that story later. But anyway, the point is, well you can't do much about people who use the term "goth" less specifically than you or I desire. (I don't want to invoke the "R" word in fear of enduring the wrath of Mark S's kennel of dragons.)

And this thread was worth it, thanks to you Alex, for making me realize the brilliance of the word "piffle". :)

Also, I'd get ready to duck and cover if you called Swans "Goths" to Michael Gira's face.

Well... yeah. :) And I'd eternally duck and cover if I were a certain Los Angeles promoter who allegedly refused to pay Gira and Jarboe for a show they played recently there, but that's yet another story...

"My Ding-a-ling" was SOOOOO goth.

I'm not asking Chaki how old he is in order to sound imperious and dismissive, I'm just attempting to explain why I might sound a bit more territorial about the liberal usage of the term "Goth". While I would never call myself "a Goth", I was a *SERIOUS* fan of several inarguably GOTHIC bands (I tend to follow specific bands, not "movements"). In any event, when I was coming of age in - so to speak - and becoming more musically aware in the early 80's, Gothic bands were largely relegated to --- pardon the pun -- cult status here in the States (we're talking about the 'golden age' of Gothic rock -- vintage Sisters of Mercy, the March Violets, Theatre of Hate, the Mission, the Fields of the Nephilim, Bauhaus and their many offshoots [Tones on Tail/Love & Rockets/Sinister Ducks/Dali's Car etc.], the Cult, the Cure, Siouxsie and the whole slightly silly Batcave scene ala the Specimen, Alien Sex Fiend, Sex Gang Children, etc.) While being inarguably depressive and doomy, I would never blithely toss the "post-Punks" (Joy Division/New Orer, the Pop Group, Killing Joke, Public Image Ltd.) into the admittedly wide "goth" cabal". The 4AD scene fit in a bit more snuggily with "Gothic" rock (anyone who can't hear Siouxsie's influence on the Cocteaus simply isn't paying very close attention), but to hang the same confining title on 4AD bands as Alien Sex Fiend happily dons is to do a disservice to a stable of artists of much broader ability. In any event, during the same time period, the British music scene and the American underground were incredibly fertile spawning grounds for a whole host of new sounds, statements, movements and sub-genres. To this point, I'll lend Chaki some creedence -- there was indeed some cross-polination going on, as there are some common threads between the austere histrionics of bands like Visage and Gary Numan and the conventional Goth crowd. That said -- despite some common ground -- you'd be pretty hard pressed to call, say, skinny-tie era Talk Talk a "Gothic" band. Depressive? Surely. Sombre? You bet. Goths? Never.

In the ensuing years, it's true -- genre parameters have been blurred and re-alligned (laregly due to a revisionism and nostalgia), but "Goth" (the term itself not originally coined as anything but a spiteful pejorative) still means something more specific than simply dressing in black and playing the occaisional minor key (Cutting Crew dressed in black....are they Goths? I think not.)

Duran Duran never were Goths. Ever. Not even briefly.