installed to cop

Boston really never had much in the way of a homegrown gothic music scene, which is pretty surprising considering the city's historical atmosphere, architecture, and abundance of "spooky" locales. Salem's pagan Mecca is just a short hop up Route 1 from the city proper, and the Halloween season around these parts is absolutely note-perfect, a time when chill October winds make the fallen leaves caper and dance around the crumbling headstones of colonial burial grounds under the glow of a swollen harvest moon.

While the region's inherent spooktacular qualities would seem like a more fertile ground for a local goth scene to take root in than Los Angeles' surf, sun, and subdivisions, it never managed to happen. There was a small handful of bands clustered around the BDSM-themed multimedia hijinks of Sleep Chamber (who as a band, made an okay performance art troupe), but they made little if any impact outside their small circle. It wasn't until the early 90's that Sleep Chamber, in a symbiotic relationship with the goth-friendly (but not goth-exclusive) dance venue Man Ray, evolved into a minor cult sensation, but by that time the band's sound had drifted into then-popular industrial-dance music realm.

That's not to say that Greater Boston didn't have its share of goth devotees in the early-to-mid-1980's, but most of the crowd (the younger ones, especially) tended to exist as a subset of the larger punk milieu. As my wife, who was a punk rocker at the time put it, "the pretty punks became goths." In music, as with fashion, the barriers between the non-hardcore punk and goth sets blurred, with the fans getting their darkly iridescent music fixes from the UK's thriving gothic rock scene. Not surprising considering that, with the exception of LA's roster of "deathrock" acts, very few American bands copped onto the early 80's goth sound, and the few who did tended to be, well, uninspired.

Which brings us to the matter of Holy Cow, who were one of the aforementioned local gothic rock outfits in Sleep Chamber's orbit. Maura caught them live, as the opening act Specimen, back in her teenage years, and despised them, mostly due to the absurd onstage antics of their frontman. (Apparently he had an excessive fondness for leaping around and mugging for the audience, to the point where Maura was worried he was going to reach out and grab her eyeglasses from her face.) As a result, "Holy Cow" became a shorthand reference for a terrible performance, and a mention of the band's name would bring an elicit an reflexive "Oh, Gawd..." from the lovely lass (as it did this morning when I told her what I planned to write about today).

I'm not ashamed to confess that when it comes to the differences in taste between Maura and myself there is a point where I willingly cede matters to my personal imp of the perverse. My appreciation for certain bands or songs is heightened (Bowie's "Drive-In Saturday," Lord Sitar) or in some cases entirely predicated (Shampoo) or anticipating my wife's disgusted reaction when they crop up on the Zune's playlist during a commute home from work.

(I see it as a way to defuse incidental tensions in a non-belligerent manner, thus maintaining our usually harmonious relationship. Maura may see it differently. In fact, when it comes to Shampoo, I know she does.)

And so, when I came across a copy of Call It What You Will, Holy Cow's 1986 debut album, in the "Misc. H" bin at Second Coming Records back in the summer of 1993, I knew I had to buy it. Having only listened to it in the safety of my own personal space, with no risk of harm to my spectacles, I have to say it's really not that bad. It's simply redundant.

From the vocalist's blatant Peter Murphy impersonation to the obligatory dub-derived sonic effects, Call It What You Will makes no attempt to conceal the band's attempt to ape Bauhaus circa 1980. While I think In The Flat Field was and is a fantastic record, I really can't see the point of making a blurry mimeograph of the album half a decade after the fact.

It doesn't help that Holy Cow chose to fully embrace the genre tropes that were still in gestation when Bauhaus recorded their debut album six years prior. Good goth music tends to either walk a fine line between atmosphere and pretense (Bauhaus, UK Decay), or embrace the sillier aspects of the subject matter in a tongue in cheek fashion (Specimen, Alien Sex Fiend). Screw with the balance and there's a high risk of devolving -- no matter how strong the material may otherwise be -- into caricature, unintentional self-parody, or even worse, the po-faced absurdity associated with the death metal scene.

Remember: A little bit of the macabre goes a long way, and there are better way to honor one's heroes than to dress up in their natty old clothes.

From Call It What You Will:

Holy Cow - Ichorous Pus

Holy Cow - Lady Cadava

(For the record, this is the first post in which I made use of my USB turntable. It only took me four months to set it up, which is a new record time for my achieving a stated goal.)