Imagining the scene and the memory of the F-Club: Talking about lost punk and postpunk spaces in Leeds

Spracklen, Karl; Henderson, Stephen; Procter, David E.

doi:10.1386/punk.5.2.147_1

Cited by 16 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…We are exploring the scene's folk memory of these times, including its rise in status and mythology from a period that covers the years 1988 through to approximately 1994. People's recollections are contingent and subjective, but by asking people from the scene to reflect, we have gathered data that reveals at least part of what people remember as being the key events that shaped the scene and their experience of it (Spracklen, Henderson and Procter, 2016). This data was gained through semi-structured interviews with members who have been active continually since the 1980s.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the South of England, dark fashions emerged out of the Batcave scene, influenced by The Misfits. But Spracklen and Spracklen (2018) argue that Leeds and the F-Club were instrumental in fixing the look and the sound of goth (see also Spracklen, Henderson and Procter, 2016): the Sisters of Mercy came from there with their dry ice, black hair, black shirts and drum machine, and their song 'Alice', released in October 1982, brings together and blends everything dark and transgressive about Bauhaus and Joy Division then develops it into a new and more digestible, and arguably commercial form. The Sisters toured extensively, working in the alternative underground circles around the F-Club, soon became international superstars: this was the era when what is goth was constructed, or at least what is generally considered to be goth in the mind's eye of the majority of UK based goths and non-goths alike.…”

Section: What Is This Thing Called Goth?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Spracklen andSpracklen's research (2014, 2018) is framed by the lead author's extensive work in the field of leisure with his interests moving naturally into the area of music and spectacular cultures spaces where different Habermasian rationalities are being contested. We draw on Spracklen, Henderson and Procter's (2016) post-Marxist notions of the commodification of the spectacular and the memories and value of identity work and myth making within the F-Club scene in Leeds, to explore memory, identity, belonging and the effects of commodification in the UK goth scene in the period.…”

Section: On Gothsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Becoming and being goth: How goths remember the scene’s transition from the eighties into the nineties

Bamford

Ibrahim

Spracklen

2021

Punk &Amp; Post-Punk

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Goth emerged from post-punk, and by the 1980s became an identifiable feature of the popular music scene and wider popular culture. Fuelled by the success of bands such as the Sisters of Mercy, goth music and culture spread around the world, interacting with wider alternative, gothic fashions. At the end of the 1980s, goth reached a peak of interest followed by retrenchment into the alternative, subcultural spaces from which it had emerged. Nonetheless, it survives. In this article, we interview goths who became active in the 1980s and who remain engaged in order to understand how they became goths and what goth meant to them then. Using memory work, we are interested in how these goths construct their own histories and mythologies, and what this might tell us about the political and sociological importance of goth as a counter-hegemonic space at a time of globalization, consumption and commodification. We explore how they remember goth emerging from the post-punk scene with its radical politics and alternative, anti-mainstream culture. We examine the way these individuals remember becoming goth and their awareness of being in a goth scene. We then show how they remember and construct stories of when goth retrenched in an alternative underground that reconstructed the counter-hegemonic politics of punk and post-punk. Finally, we show what happened in the late 1980s and early 1990s and argue that the scene, or that part of the scene represented by our goths, is following a dialectical path carved out of the neo-Gramscian concept of negotiation when faced with the culturally and aesthetically hegemonic effect of a dominant culture.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: What Is This Thing Called Goth?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: On Gothsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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