The original 'Goths' were a Germanic tribe who were at their most violent and maurauding at the time the Roman Empire fell. They had their own language and religion but had very little to do with post-punk posing. There was a 'Gothic' architectural period which you can still see in many European buildings. The most common feature is a very high pointed archway. There were two periods of 'Gothick' literature. The first started with a spate of bad fiction about cursed Dukes in Italian Castles and ended in the post-Romantic period with Mary Shelley et al. The second was based in America at the beginning of this century and included such notable fascists as H.P.Lovecraft. Suddenly, in about 1981, as a concession to the energy of punk and the pristine peacocking of the New-Romantics the 'gothic-punks' began to appear. Initially they modeled themselves on the Addams Familly, and then began to adopt the medieval, and victorian gothic into their costume. As far as I remember the clubs existed before the bands. The Batcave and Another Excess spawned The Specimin and Alien Sex Fiend rather than the other way around. The fashion spread, but managed to keep its sense of humour. Meanwhile, in Leeds... (There are too many SoM biogs. around for me to add my own) The music changed, but never lost touch with its roots. Bands who wanted nothing to do with the Gothic tag were 'adopted' and followed everywhere they went by tribes of hairspray weilding black clad fans, everything was going just swimmingly. One day I woke up to discover that the second generation of goths (Those who discovered The Sisters, and Bauhaus *after* The Mission and The Cure), are a bastard offspring. Humourless, unoriginal in dress, thought, and dance; *and* (worst of all) with a 'harder core than thou' attitude. We called them 'mini-goths', but they did not understand. We called them 'quantum-goths', but they were even less likely to understand that. We wrote fanzines for them, told them about the past, tried to make them laugh - but they said 'who cares, we're having a good time!', at last they understood. So we got the DJ to play Creaming Jesus and slamdanced till we bled.