DEATH ROCK 2020

Mikey Bean

For the past several years – since 2007 – writer Mikey Bean has quietly been working away (or, depending on who you ask, not so quietly!), gathering an oral history of California deathrock for his upcoming book Phantoms: The Rise of Deathrock from the LA Punk Scene. He’s assembled a treasure trove of interviews, flyer material, and other goodies and has had the support and involvement of most of the key surviving figures from the original LA movement. The book’s publication date has been pushed back several times, but there has been a demand for this history for a little while now, especially with the renewed cultural interest that has serendipitously dovetailed with his own work on the book. Below, Mikey shared information from what he has gathered from the hundreds of hours of interviews he’s conducted over the years, and he’s provided a chapter list for the book that is itself an impressive discography of the scene he’s been documenting. 

“Phantoms: The Rise Of Deathrock From The L.A. Punk Scene”: An Interview With Author Mikey Bean

Los Angeles has always had an obsession with death. Our city’s celebrities and socialites have a habit of perishing in the most dramatic and mysterious fashion, Rozz Williams of course being no exception. It’s no surprise that from out of punk rock would come a death obsessed, black clad, sorrowful, mournful form of expression and rebellion known as deathrock. To celebrate the launch of Mikey Bean’s new 600 page encyclopedia of deathrock called Phantoms: The Rise of Deathrock From The LA Punk Scene,

Lethal Amounts and Release the Bats held a photo exhibit and concert celebrating the genre’s Los Angeles heyday. You need this bad boy on your coffee table.

Punx Undead: Phantoms Book Launch: The Rise of L.A. Deathrock Presented by Lethal Amounts

Historical Night in LA – Phantoms: Rise Of Deathrock In The LA Punk Scene

 

The event was packed with goths, punks, models, business owners, and so many different people from different walks of life. It was a special night for sure, one for the books! A great story you get to tell your grandkids if you were there!

Video Premiere: Wolf Woodcock – “All My Life”

This is my grandson Wolfgang

Wolf Woodcock is a Los Angeles based composer and musician. While performing in many bands all over the LA scene such as VS Colour, Jennylee, and Alyeska, he has also been carefully crafting and releasing solo material since he was sixteen. It wasn’t until October 2016 that he put together a band to start playing the songs that eventually became their official debut EP Cove. Outside of playing music with his group, he has written concert art music for chamber ensembles and has scored student-animated shorts. He runs a small cassette label called Wool Fee Records, co-runs the music and animation festival Kinetic with partners Sam Lane and Peter Galindo, and has recently started a community based art collective called the Emo Jazz Collective with fellow composer Emmet Webster. He is currently writing his debut full-length album.

From Wolf Woodcock’s EP ‘Cove’ out now via Chain Letter Collective.

Listen Here: http://www.hyperurl.co/y1y1k6

Director: Alec Cotugno
Director of Photography: Jameson Carr
Production Design: Monse Alanis
Producer: Joe Lombard
Gaffer: Antonio Luna
Titles: Sam Lane

  • Category

  • License

    • Standard YouTube License
  • Song

  • Artist

    • Wolf Woodcock
  • Album

    • Cove
  • Licensed by

    • DashGo/Audiobee (on behalf of Chain Letter Collective)

#Goals – Dirge

The former members of the Circle Jerks and Bad Religion along with Rodcore have created a new group #Goals.  My son Roland and I had an opportunity to appear in the video for Dirge on their upcoming EP release.

Slouching towards Bethlehem

Song inspired by W.B. Yeats and Rozz Williams

Picture of Rozz Williams (Christian Death) Edward Stapleton and Gerardo Valezquez (Nervous Gender) taken 1982 by Ave Pildas.

The Second Coming ( Fire and Fury)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born

W.B.Yeats 1919

Christofascist

Matt Comeione – Music
Edward Stapleton – vocals
Karene Stapleton – lyrics

Waiting in the shadows
the clock is striking three
the time of the arrival comes
for my nemesis and me

Christofascist

I pray to my St. John
on whose cross I stiffly stand
Balancing myself
Half punished, half damned

Christofascist

The mystery is over
the Nightshade takes effect
I’ll not be here tomorrow
a few hours to forget