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Ok, i'm 30 and surrounded by 20-somethings at work. They say I'm goth, which i'm stuptified by in any case since i wear work appropriate attire (casual, jeans and dress shirts). Sure they're funning around, but I don't get it. My music taste for one is all over the board as they are aware, everything from jonie mitchell, u2, etc - maybe it's my moody personality...although everyone finds me funny so i can't be that moody.

In any case i brought up that in high school i was a freak. They said "yeah, it's the SAME thing".

Hello? ok, circa 1986 freaks were defined as the kids who listened to metallica and megadeth, wore concerts shirts, smoked, drove mustangs and cameros, recreational activities varied (pool playing, drinking, pot smoking..lol). We were the kids who would kick your ass. We wore skull jewelry, black boots with steel toes, leather jackets..etc...etc. We rebelled because i guess we didn't fit in any other social order.

I never heard of goth until I got out of school and to me it defined the kids who dyed their hair black, black fingernails, lipstick, trenchcoats and dresses, who wore crosses and listened to underground music or marilyn manson, perhaps worshiping vampires..lol. Did these two groups merge? My co-workers claim i'm only a few years older so i can't say the group was different in MY day, but i think those few years make all the difference because clearly our definition of 'freak' is not the same.

Now we had some kids in school who were probably "pre-goth", they were called new-wavers. They were skater-rejects who listened to the same music but progressivly over the years became a little darker.

I'm still baffled how this came up at work. So i don't shop at Old navy and talk about Justin Timberlake and have a perky personality, and maybe i can still throw a scary look. But i'm not even a freak anymore...i'm just.....

old



Post Edited (05-23-04 11:54)

I'm a little older - 39.  Back in the late '70s early '80s what you're describing was the stoners or burn-outs.  I was a proud member ;)  I think goths are just what you describe, black nail polish, black hair, etc.  The difference between them and stoners is that goths are really depressing.  I think that to be a goth you have to spend at least an hour a day contemplating suicide.  And you have to be named Winter or something similar.  Whining about the unfairness of it all is a requirement as well.  I believe they're required to make appearances at coffee houses too.

Of course, what do I know, I'm old...

Goths are lame so I wouldn't want to be called one.  Goth music is pretty awful (real goth music not like marilyn manson which is some industrial shock rock crap I guess) I should know because I know a few goth bands personally. They have distorted the coolness of vampires I'm afraid and put it to bad music.

Aren't the people you're calling freaks really just metal heads in the end?

I went to high school in a small town in a very rural state and we had three groups of people . You were either in the  "I'm Popular!" group or you  were a roper or  doper.

Ropers wore long hair drove pickups or  muscle cars, drank beer by the gallon and raised hell  whenever possible.  I was a Roper.  The Dopers wore long hair, drove pickups of muscle cars,  smoked pot like a chimney and raised hell whenever possible.  Wait..................what difference does all this make?

Be who you are and stay away from all this label crappola you'll be much happier.

Yes, freaks are stoners, dopers, potheads, metalheads, hoods..(well at least that's what they were called in the 50's). We were easy going, we just didn't take crap. Now i'm not by definition "goth" in any form - although not perky i find amusement in everything so the suicidal personality is out. Obviously they were having some fun, mostly because i'm an enigma at work - just when people think they have me figured out they don't.

I think i was a little frustrated at trying to explain to these kids there actually IS a difference between what they refer to as "goth" and freaks. I began to question after the popularity of nirvana and the ultimate death of metal and true rock and roll whether or not the two groups merged

While i was a child of the 80's, in many ways I can totally relate to "Dazed and confused" - that was my life, those were my friends.I spent half my teenage youth hating being a teen and wanting to be older to be free of all the restriction and to "do what I want". Only now that i'm older do I realize those were truly the golden years, only now can I be nostalgic about a time in my life when the real irony is that I had more freedom to be who I was when I was 15

trek_geezer wrote:



> Be who you are and stay away from all this label crappola
> you'll be much happier.

i have to agree with you. people spend to much time trying to label you its like figure yourself out leave me alone.  ive been labeled so many things its crazy. because i wear my "urban clothing" i like rap and smoke weed. couldnt be more wrong. or when i wear my punisher t- shirt and leatherjacket iam some sort of crazy man. i work for NYPD for crying out loud.

"Dont be a fool for ur tool"

>I think i was a little frustrated at trying to explain to these kids there actually IS a
>difference between what they refer to as "goth" and freaks.

Maybe you should SHOW them the difference. Dye your hair black (or wear a wig if you don't want to go that far). put on black nail polish, black eye shadow, black lipstick, dress in all black with maybe a leather collar around your neck and spend the day only giving one-word answers whenever possible. Take your breaks alone and stare off into space, or slump over a table with your head in your arms. :)

When I went to high school, I don't recall any 'official' names for groups, other than jerks and a***oles...

Maybe you should SHOW them the difference. Dye your hair black
> (or wear a wig if you don't want to go that far). put on black
> nail polish, black eye shadow, black lipstick, dress in all
> black with maybe a leather collar around your neck and spend
> the day only giving one-word answers whenever possible. Take
> your breaks alone and stare off into space, or slump over a
> table with your head in your arms. :)


Ok, maybe after.  my appraisal...lol
If i did that, however, i might prove their point

you must have went to a very straight school. For generations each group of kids is always labeled unless you're school produces much of the same. I think that's why my group stood out so much, we went to a new school with a bunch of rich prep kids. It's funny how you think everone grows up and out of labels.  I found out the workplace is much like high school relived, only the problem is your supervisors and managers are the kids you hated in high school and they want to exact all their pented up feelings  in some sadistic game called "i have power and control your paycheck". I guess my only satisfaction is in knowing that they're still dimwits which i prove at every meeting when possible



Post Edited (05-23-04 21:13)

Heh, in HS I was always labeled as a Punk/Skater.  Now, that's kinda fallen away now that I'm in the working world.  Now I'm just a lowly computer geek.

As for the Goth thing, why don't you post up a picture Susan and let us guys let you know if you fall into that column or not (as if it matters).  Would also give us a chance to see what Mullet Man was so obsessed about.

:o)

I graduated HS in 1989, so my only real exposure to Goths was Molly Shannon and Chris Kattan's skit on SNL - the brilliant one where Kattan is the prince and lord of all darkness by night and a Cinnebon counter boy by day.

From what I can tell, Goths did not grow out of what we in the 80s called "freaks" or "burnouts."  I think Goths have their roots more in the apathetic, "alternative" Cure-fan types with the dyed black hair, black nail polish and pasty skin.  At some point in the early 1990s, ALL music suddenly fell under the umbrella of "alternative" music (sort of drains the meaning from the word) and my guess is that the original "alternative" types felt the need to differentiate themselves from the crowd again...  so they sort of rolled in the natural direction led to by the Cure asthetic and all became "vampires" and such.  This is my sociological theory, anyway.

Ok Skai- it's on my profile. And i'm taking it down in 24 hours, after that you'll have to go to the post office to see it. It's called..."i'm 30 and I can still kick your ass!" - at least that's what it looks like i'm thinking. Either that or hostility that i don't have cable but 3 channels and telemundo.


>>Goths did not grow out of what we in the 80s called "freaks" or "burnouts." I think Goths have their roots more in the apathetic, "alternative" Cure-fan types with the dyed black hair, black nail polish and pasty skin. <<


Right, that's my thinking. Those who listened to the cure were generally skaters who branched into "new wavers".  I remember going to the mall back then and seeing guys dressed exactly like the singer. The funny thing is today is the first time in about 15 years i've seen a punk in a mall! lol, it was quite startling - the entire crowd in Sears stopped and just watched as this 15 something year old kid walked by with his little brother. He had hair that i guestimate was chest-long and it was twisted in those huge massive spikes that shot out all over his head. Kudos to him, I remember for halloween one year I had very long hair and it took about 2 cans of aquanet and 3 hours of frustration to form a decent mohawk...



Post Edited (05-24-04 00:11)

Goths write bad poetry, and are usually drama or art majors, freak is an umbrella term for weird people, which can include goths, who are just the wimpiest of the freaks. Robert Smith of the Cure is a good example-sad, pasty, weird hair, black clothes, thinks in a sort of existentialist way. Freak today also sort of means freaky- think of Rick James' "super freak."

No offense if you like some of them, but the people you work with would appear to be complete dips**ts.  The goth thing started circa 1979 with bands like The Cure.  It has been taken over and made, not more, just differently, retarded by guys like Marilyn Manson.  Goofy makeup aside, Manson seems to be a pretty sharp cookie.  Too bad he doesn't realize his gimmick is so dumb.

Brother R

Yeah, when I was in school, the (pre)goth kids were the Bauhaus/Cure group. We refered to them as the Edward Scissorhands Posse. In my scool anyone who didn't wear Guees jeans was a "stoner" and if you owned black clothing you were a devil worshipper. I don't know much about the current goth thing. But, I do know it seems to revolve around the Denny's Restaurant chain. That's where they can be found in my town...Denny's....smoking section.

Good call on Manson, Brother R. It's not that his music is bad, it's his schtick that is kinda lame.



Post Edited (05-24-04 08:01)

"Those who listened to the cure were generally skaters who branched into "new wavers". "

Didn't have skaters (I assume you mean skateboarders) where I'm from, but I agree.  My guess is that in the early 1990s when everyone started calling their favorite style of music "alternative", the alternative fans figured they needed a schtick that would NEVER become mainstream.  Hence, goth.

God, I hated school. I'm 30, and I remember in my high school (rural Kentucky) the popular kids were the 'preps', there were also 'prep-thugs', skate-boarders & heavy metal dudes were 'headbangers', nerds were 'dweebs', rednecks& hillbillies were 'S-10ers', ....I was a 'nobody'.

i dont know how freaks were defined in 1986 but nowadays here in spain, at least in the city where i live  freaks use to be those ones how likes to play roll games, start trek fans, love gore, comics, b movies and lots of things, so i guess that many of us at here we are like that :).

I'm Azreal Abyss.....ooooooooo.....remember...stay out of the light....ooooooo.

I loved that SNL bit with Chris Kattan and Molly Shannon....Goth Talk I think it was.

I went to high school from 1988 to 1992 (yes I graduated) and in the late 80's bands like Skid Row, Poison, Slaughter, Metallica & Megadeth were HUGE.

I was never really into rock until a good friend named John handed me two casette tapes to listen to.
I was given "And Justice For All" by Metallica and "State of Euphoria" by Anthrax and lemme tell ya, I WAS TOTALLY BLOWN AWAY!

Remember that I had never really listened to much music at all and then I get these 2 kickass albums.

I turned into a "Headbanger/Metalhead" almost overnight.

I went out and bought every rock and metal tape I could get my hands on.
I started to let my hair grow out.
I bought all different clothes and adopted the Headbanger style of dress including the large & cool Metallica iron-on patch that went on the back of my jean jacket.
I even bought a bunch of those square color pins that went on the front of the jacket.
Each pin had a rock or metal band on it.  Remember those?
I also bought and wore only black T-shirts that said OZZY or some other band on them.
I also wore those riding gloves with the fingers cut off down to the knuckes.
Hehe!

I even went so far as to buy a cherry red bass guitar with amp and take bass lessons for awhile at a local music shop.

I eventually lost interest in the bass (why, I don't know) and realized that looking like a headbanger all the time didn't go well with the goody-two-shoe public so I phased the look out my senior year in high school.

After that I turned preppy...the antithesis of a metalhead.
The thing is...I turned preppy but still cranked the s**t out of all that rock/metal in my car or at home.

Ah, those were the days....



Post Edited (05-24-04 16:08)

Ash- hate to say but Ride the Lightening was my favorite of all, after "And justice for all" metallica became mainstream. They did their first video, they sold out. I used to loathe when the preps at school said they loved metallica and would blast "enter sandman" in their spanking new bmw's. Or demonstrate they were a die hard aerosmith fan when their new stuff came out ("cryin") and never layed ears on Toys in the attic and earlier stuff. The kids who posed as freaks and didn't really know what the crap they were listening and would go home to leave it to beaver to we called the posers, as the rest of us had broken homes, and a whole lotta issues. I caught up with a friends the other week and found out as it seems almost all of our old "gang" is dead from one thing or another. it's kinda sad, they were descent kids

And god I hope you aren't cranking "poison" and "cinderella" at home...lol

Although i was a freak i didn't listen to alot of mainstream metal, I was very picky. I mean i liked the whitenake and def leppord for the mild glam metal but i liked testement, megadeth, black sabbath...i was all into the 70's and early 80's stuff. I wasn't limited, I liked some of the alternative stuff at the time, like u2 and...i'm embarassed to admit I listened to some pretty freaky stuff like buthole surfers, and berlin (not so freaky but i went through a mild punk phase)..well at least that was brief journey into the unknown at age 13 when i was just discovering who i wanted to be..lol

As years pass I still appreciate the classics, but I think the two bands that right now i love more than anything are queen and U2. Queen is pure nostalgia, makes me remember alot of my childhood and through my teens. U2 on the other hand, i love their old and new, they along with aerosmith really managed to keep with the times and appeal to new generations of kids. But the one thing I hated then and now is when kids don't listen to the old stuff. I don't get it, just because it's old doesn't mean it's OLD - if you know what i mean. I listen to all eras of music even now, and i guess the same applies for movies. Back then as now alot of kids don't watch anything old, all they are exposed to is new stuff because they're under the illusion new=better. I always found that anything artistic doesn't age, it's like a fine wine that seasons with age.


but i digress...



Post Edited (05-24-04 18:15)

Sounds more like you were the group that was part of our group more than you were the group that kicked our group's ass...

>you must have went to a very straight school. For generations each group of
>kids is always labeled unless you're school produces much of the same.

I don't think my school was that different. There were definitely various groups, I just don't recall them ever being given 'official' names like freaks. There were many kids who fit the "freak" image as defined in this thread, but they weren't actually called that, at least that I know of. I suppose it's possible that I just never heard it, especially considering that I didn't have all that many friends.

>Ok Skai- it's on my profile. And i'm taking it down in 24 hours, after that you'll have
>to go to the post office to see it.

Gee, I guess I'll have to make sure to save a copy of it then. :)

I'm no expert, but you look fairly normal to me. Funny, I always kind of pictured you as a blonde...

>It's called..."i'm 30 and I can still kick your ass!" - at least that's what it looks like
>i'm thinking. Either that or hostility that i don't have cable but 3 channels and
>telemundo.

To me it looks like sadness that Mullet Man hasn't returned your calls.

> I'm no expert, but you look fairly normal to me. Funny, I
> always kind of pictured you as a blonde...


Normal isn't really the word i'd use..lol But blonde? Do i really come across as a bubblehead? No i'm in the 5 percentile - redhead. With a twist of cherokee and spanish. i guess technically that means i can cook you a mean burrito, get raging drunk, lose my temper and scalp you.

mmmmmm......burito scalp

I went to a small-town high school of about 1,200 kids pulled from a large rural catchment area. I think in those days, anybody dressing too outrageously probably would have gotten the crap beaten out of him by a bunch of farmers.

We did have our groups. There were the preppy kids (popular yet annoying), the headbangers (likeable concert-shirt crowd), the geeks (who hung out in the computer lab and played D&D), the artsy fartsies, the hockey heads and their puck bunnies, and the gearheads down in the tech department. I recall, in earlier years, there were wavers, with their skinny ties, epaulettes and gelled two-tone hair, but they pretty much disappeared.

I basically fit into none of the groups, although I associated with geeks, bangers and gearheads. By the time I graduated in '89, I was fully integrated into the gearhead crowd, with my shoulder-length mullet, tinted aviator glasses, wispy mustache, my jacked-up Buick with the mags, loud exhaust and Aerosmith cranked in the tape deck. My wife, who went to an urban school about an hour away, has since classified me as a "skid."

People do change though. A lot of the people I couldn't stand in high school turned out to be decent folks after a couple of years in the real world.

I've since pretty much developed my own style, different yet conservative. Not sure what you'd call a shaved head and Colonel Sanders beard, with dark-rimmed glasses, blue jeans, cotton work shirt and worn-out sneakers. I've pretty much had to ignore everybody's fashion advice for years to achieve this look. Drives my wife nuts that I have a closet full of similar shirts in three or four different colours (none worth more than $20), a stack of identical jeans, and a drawer full of white tube socks, while she always struggles with what to wear each day.

Is there a name for what I am now?



Post Edited (05-27-04 19:37)

>Normal isn't really the word i'd use..lol But blonde? Do i really come across as a
>bubblehead?

No, I was picturing the repressed scientist type. The one who's always wearing glasses and acting shy until she takes the glasses off and "blossoms".

>No i'm in the 5 percentile - redhead. With a twist of cherokee and spanish. i
>guess technically that means i can cook you a mean burrito, get raging drunk,
>lose my temper and scalp you.

I think I'm in love! Will you marry me?

I'm even willing to grow a mullet... ;)



Post Edited (05-27-04 19:15)