I decided to take my dog Britain for a walk along the sea front to check out the opening of Darker Waves in Huntington Beach. It was a gusty Saturday the 18th of November. As I got closer to the part of the beach set aside for the festival, the fans – like something out of a Goth / New Wave zombie apocalypse – grew in numbers as they started shuffling to the entry gate. Within minutes I had counted 68 Cure, 44 Depeche Mode and 35 Bauhaus t-shirts. The amount of eye liner, lip stick and white powdered faces was overwhelming.  And that was just the men. Natch, tight skinny jeans, leather jackets with studs, jean jackets with band patches and lots of black garments everywhere. Many of the attendees had been seemingly cryogenically frozen from 1984/86/89/ select appropriate year / and beamed into 2023 on this little stretch of sand in So Cal at the bottom of my road.

The festival line up featured a healthy slice of British 80s synth pop – New Order, OMD, Soft Cell, Tears for Fears, The Human League – to complement some of the Goth acts lower down the bill (Clan of Xymox, Christian Death, London After Midnight etc).  Also peppered in were some American bands – Devo, B 52s, Violent Femmes – and then some acts that didn’t really seem to fit in (The Cardigans, Death In Vegas). In short, if nostalgia for the 80s is your thing then almost all bases were covered here. 

I see a lot of live music. It always fascinates me on many levels – anthropologically, socially, psychologically – the reasons and functions served by music fans tastes and culture. To me music is the great connector and its amazing to see the pull these genres and acts have on a rabid and loyal fan base, many of whom are now well into their sixties. 

It’s said that Southern California and LA have always – thanks in part to the radio station KROQ – a massive taste for both 80s British music and Goth. This music really made a massive connection with the youth at the time and for generations since they have been trying to – like the first hit on a crack pipe – chase the initial rush they first experienced. It’s a common phenomena – at the influential teenage years, young, impressionable, full of hope and energy – you hear and see something that makes an indelible impression on you. For me, as a teenager in London going out clubbing and raving, the music of acid house and drum and base still affects me like that all these years later.  We want to recapture our youths, to relive those intense experiences we first had and the strong sense of identity we felt in discovering a similar tribe who were into the same thing. 

For Goth music particularly – and its not just the music but the dress sense, the culture and the whole 360 aesthetic – I understand why it has such an impact that has reverberated for many years since it’s inception in the late 70s. Misfits, outsiders, loners, the miserable and depressed – here is a music and sub culture that speaks to their predicament. I am lonely and confused. It seems like all these other people are lonely and confused. Let’s be lonely and confused together. 

Personally I am not massively into straight up nostalgia fests. I like all these bands and some of them – Tears for Fears, The Human League, New Order – provided a sound track to parts of my youth. But I am more interested in new music and genre evolution. Standing in a field – or in this case on a beach – surrounded by fifty somethings Goth zombies chasing their youth is not exactly where I want to be.  Where’s the drum and bass / rare groove / funk and soul room?