The hight Of Goth (1984)

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MiB81
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The hight Of Goth (1984)

Post by MiB81 »

Man this brought back some memories! :lol:
Kinda watched it on fast forward, awesome soundtrack, a couple of Strangs tshirts
in evidence, and a trio of 'glers tunes too. :shock:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9sMZ_5NjM8

probly best watching from about 10:10 for that authentic Goth Nite Club experience
(and the first of the Skin Deep t's- anyone on here?) :twisted: 8) :lol:
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Re: The hight Of Goth (1984)

Post by theraven1979 »

Blimey this is quality! Just down the road from me -That Cellar Bar looks exactly the same now as it did then!

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Re: The hight Of Goth (1984)

Post by theraven1979 »

Pretty sure that's Matt Holland in the Skin Deep T-Shirt

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Re: The hight Of Goth (1984)

Post by MiB81 »

theraven1979 wrote:Blimey this is quality! Just down the road from me -That Cellar Bar looks exactly the same now as it did then!

Jim
It is good innit.
How many of them are bank managers now, you reckon? :lol:
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Re: The hight Of Goth (1984)

Post by theraven1979 »

Haha yeah. Bet some of them want that video to disappear!

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Re: The hight Of Goth (1984)

Post by MiB81 »

My 19yr old watched some of it and said, "I want to go to that club!"
I had to agree :lol:
It also answers the question- How the fuck do you dance to W!B !
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Re: The hight Of Goth (1984)

Post by MiB81 »

What a play-list:

0:10:26 The Smiths, What Difference Does it Make, 0:12:23 Echo And the Bunnymen, Back of Love 0:13:57 Psychedelic Furs, Pretty In Pink, 0:17:39 The Cramps, You Got Good taste, 0:20:02 Spear Of Destiny, Liberator, 0:22:38 Siouxsie and The Banshees, Hong Kong Garden, 0:23:20 Sisters of Mercy, Temple of love 0:24:35 David Bowie, Jean Genie, 0:27:19 Ziggy Stardust, Bauhaus, 0:29:39 The Stranglers, No More Heroes, 0:32:28 Glen Miller, In The Mood, 0:34:33 The Monkees, I'm a Believer. 0:37:08 Bobby Pickett, Monster Mash, 0:40:02 T Rex I Love To Boogie, 0:43:36 The Cult, Spiritwalker, 0:46:23 Cramps, The Human Fly, 0:47:08 Cramps, Save It, 0:49:24 Killing Joke, Eighties, 0:53:04 Spear Of Destiny, Prisoner Of Love, 0:55:07 The The, This is the Day, 0:58:24 The Associates, Country Club, 1:02:23 Blancmange, Living on the Ceiling, 1:05:36 Birthday Party, Release the Bats, 1:07:53 Patti Smith, Because the Night, 1:21:23 Sex Gang Children Sebastian, 1:23:47 Stranglers, Skin Deep.1:28:29 Stranglers, Waltz in black, 1:30:14 The The, Uncertain Smile, Psychedelic Furs, Love My Way, 1:34:06 March Violets, Walk into the sun, 1:37:09 Leitmotiv (UK) - Living in A Tin 1:38:55 Hanoi Rocks - Up Around The Bend 1:39:15 Freedom Suite - Dry Spell? 1:41:10 REM Rockville, 1:43:12 Echo and the Bunnymen, Cutter, 1:45:27 Undertones, Teenage Kicks, 1:46:05 Buzzcocks, Ever Fallen In Love, 1:46:42 The Doors, Touch Me 1:47:56 The Beatles, Hippy Shake, 1:48:29 Black Sabbath, Paranoid, 1:49:25 Sex Gang Children, Mauritia Mayer, 1:51:31 Soft Cell, Torch, 1:54:33 Spear Of Destiny, The Wheel. 1:56:54 Ziggy Stardust, Life On Mars.

And a blog on the subject:

"The Height of Goth

It was 1984 and I was 18 years old. I was in a band

We were a bit Bauhaus, a bit Killing Joke, a bit crazy. I couldn’t afford an instrument so I was the singer. I wasn’t a very good singer, but we were a band

We used to go to the Xclusiv nightclub at the weekend. It was down by the railway station in Batley, the town where we lived in West Yorkshire

For sentimental reasons Annie (or could have been Ann) and Pete Swallow, the couple who ran the nightclub, got someone to make a video to capture a typical night at the club. VHS cassettes of the final film were sold for £2 to regulars. I think there were 50 copies in total, but can’t be sure. I never bought one, £2 was a stretch, there were bigger priorities

I was there that night along with the rest of the band, my sister (Nancy) and even a couple of my old flames (Karen and Michelle). If I remember it right it was actually filmed on a Sunday night (with ridiculously bright lights!) so as not to disturb the usual Fridays and Saturdays. It was a ticket only affair for the regulars, although some interlopers did make it in too

Over the years those cassettes eventually got recorded over, broken, lost or thrown away. Everyone forgot

Some 30 years later I’m living in London and by sheer fluke we came across one of the cassettes (this is a bizarre story in itself, but for another time). It was trashed. Mildewed. Beyond junk. My brother worked his magic, rescued it to digital and gave it to me as a gift (thanks Ed!)

I put it on YouTube

Since then it’s been viewed nearly 200,000 times. It was the subject of a Guardian Culture article (Alex Petridis on The Height of Goth), in which the writer described it as “At turns unwittingly hilarious, fascinating and incredibly boring, this 1984 nightclub documentary is a great British pop culture document”

It has been watched (and screened, especially for film clubs) all over the world. I’ve had emails from countless people who were affected or touched by it – they wanted to know the names of the songs and the artists that were played that night, they argued about the correct terminology when referring to the musical genres or ‘scenes’, they yawned, they choked, they laughed, they loved it

In the last few years film critics and film lovers from as far afield as Rio de Janeiro and New York have been watching a film of one night in one nightclub in Batley, West Yorkshire, in 1984. They took the time to contact me and tell me. How crazy is that

The film currently has 6 music copyright claims against it. Those claims were from WMG, SME (x2), [Merlin] Beggars, INgrooves and Pirames International Srl. This resulted in YouTube taking the film offline. I recently appealed and have been doing what I can through the annoyingly one-sided YouTube appeals process

So far I’ve lost 5 out of 6 of the (automated, it seems) ‘appeals’. Only Pirames International Srl has released its claim. Where does this leave the film? I don’t know. For now at least it seems the one released claim (thank you, Pirames) is keeping it online. If you do try watching it the first couple of minutes are a bit shaky and all over the place but the picture quality and sound settles down in time for the scenes in the club itself

I don’t know how long it has left, I guess nobody does. This is the film. It is 1984 and it is The Height of Goth

If the embedded video above doesn’t work (because of the copyright strikes/country restrictions), web search it or try it from one of the embedded players on the sites below that have written about it previously:

Dangerous Minds
The Ice Age
poeTV
Last edited by MiB81 on 28 Mar 2016, 12:33, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The hight Of Goth (1984)

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Alexis Petridis on The Height of Goth (from The Guardian)
At turns unwittingly hilarious, fascinating and incredibly boring, this 1984 nightclub documentary is a great British pop culture document.

It's hard to understand why someone in late 1984 took it upon themselves to finance and make an amateur film about an alternative night at a club in Batley, West Yorkshire, called Xclusiv. The person who uploaded it to YouTube claims it was the idea of Xclusiv's owners, Annie and Peter Swallow, who sold copies to the club's clientele ("mainly futuristic and way-out people," as Peter puts it in the film). Anyone who stumped up the £2 certainly got their money's worth in terms of quantity: The Height of Goth, as it's called, goes on for a mind-boggling two hours.

Whatever their reason for taking a video camera into what the introductory voiceover – delivered with the halting quality of a hostage reading a ransom demand, over footage of Batley Job Centre and an easy-listening version of John Lennon's Woman – calls "this jewel of a building that is now a first-class disco", it's hard not to be delighted they did. They inadvertently created a great British pop culture document, by turns unwittingly hilarious, fascinating and incredibly boring.

There are sublime moments: the goth angrily explaining how he lost his job at the local hair salon; the admirably diverse music tastes espoused by one punter ("I like Glenn Miller … and Cabaret Voltaire"); the deadly technique employed by its interviewers (one of whom appears to be the bouncer). "Where did you learn to dance the way you do, because it is fairly good," he asks, clearly not a man to go overboard with the compliments. For reasons unknown, Charlie Williams, star of 1970s TV series The Comedians, briefly appears in the crowd, clutching a pint. "By gum," he says, looking as baffled by his presence amid Batley's goth contingent as the viewer presumably is.

At the end, the DJ plays David Bowie's Life on Mars: the handful of people left on the dancefloor go into flamboyant routines, evidently rehearsed all week in front of bedroom mirrors. This is their moment, in which they leave the realities of life in early 80s Yorkshire behind and fleetingly become stars in their own minds. It's beautiful, a moment of transcendence captured in the most improbable circumstances. You watch it and think: "This is what music can do." Then the song ends, the club closes and they head back to normal life.
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Re: The hight Of Goth (1984)

Post by MULLY »

Pretty cool.

Loved the Goths dancing to Daydream Believer 8)
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Re: The hight Of Goth (1984)

Post by Jon the Impaler »

MULLY wrote:Pretty cool.

Loved the Goths dancing to Daydream Believer 8)
Goth - it was almost punk - almost ........ but with that bit of New Romantic to it . I played bass for a goth band once - briefly . I was heavily into hardcore punk at the time and it was probably the nearest in my area to a punk band , didn't drive at the time so had no transport to get my marshall rig around( 2 x 15 bass cab 200w , 100w amp - heavy and bulky). Due to what I could only call artistic differences we didn't stay together long I went my way and found a worse band - a PROG band - who seemed to want to be the next Fleetwood Mac - we went our separate way due to artistic differences ( again) . I was/am living in Essex and my old punk band in Brum ( The Parasites ) were long since folded - never recorded anything anyway or got much further than practice - but at least we all had the same idea's ( silly one's :grin: ) . I preferred goth to prog , maybe I should have stuck it out longer in that band - mind you they didn't do anything to my knowledge either- never heard of them again after I left.
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Re: The hight Of Goth (1984)

Post by raveninblack »

kinell, what a classic. Didnt remember the dancing being THAT bad, and never realised Claire Grogan was such an influence on West Yorkshire girls.
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Re: The hight Of Goth (1984)

Post by raveninblack »

no one dancing to temple of love? that would have the floor packed this side of the pennines.
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