Links and gigs from around the web

Happy birthday, Siouxsie!

Whilst I do have outfit photos in the works, for various reasons (crappy camera, no one to take photos) they aren't quite top notch and I doubt I'll post them just yet - plus, you're likely to be sick of my face by now, so I'm trying to get a little more variety into my posts. :P


So in lieu of a blog round up, here's a list of many a silly post on the interwebs and Scottish gig I found during exam leave -

 

Interwebs

• Buzzfeed's post 'BEAUTY DARE: Siouxsie Sioux Eyeliner' made me giggle - compared to original banshees lead's make up it looks a little heavy and clumsy to me (the look could have been softened with thinner lines and far more eyeshadow, personally), and the statement 'for most of us, this isn't exactly an everyday look' was amusing. Still, the tips that they recommend are useful, and I can testify that gel liner is glorious stuff for dramatic looks.
• Buzzfeed do, however, have the glorious photo sets Goths of the '80s and Goths of the '80s, Part 2, which have some magnificent pictures of our trad ancestors. For a more complete collection of photos, I recommend the Post Punk Project, an amazing collection of photos and memorabilia of all things dark and post punk from the 80s. 

 

Scottish Tour dates

• The Damned have new UK tour dates! Well, not brand new, but I'd recommend getting your grubby little hands on them regardless. I went to see them in December last year, and I can honestly say that it was the best gig I've ever been to; my uncle has nabbed me tickets for their Glasgow gig, and you can bet your skinny arse that I'll be saving for the Edinburgh one in December too.
•  Peter Murphy is coming to the Oran Mor on the 15th June. I won't lie; for £20, I am indeed tempted. I'm not entirely certain if I'll be on holiday during this or not, but there's also an Amanda Palmer Edinburgh gig on the 17th, so we'll see.
• The Edinburgh Fringe is springing up in Edinburgh (oddly enough) over the 2nd to 26th August in various venues. While some of the shows do require you to buy a ticket, as far as I'm aware they're still running the 'Free Fringe' programme, which includes many amazing free of charge shows (from memory, the steampunk bands The Mechanisms and The Men Who Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing both played in the free fringe, but don't quote me on that). I'm going to scour the programme and check for anything of interest and blog about it later. :)

Now, Game of Thrones is calling, so I'm off to go bond with the family over brutal fantasy violence. Ta for now!



Fee

Happy World Goth Day, chumps!

I've resurfaced from exams and discovered today that I have successfully passed first year medicine (whoop!), so I have a chance to celebrate World Goth Day!

... Which I did by putting on my favourite playlist and dancing about like a loon while I applied daft make up.

Ah well. Danse Macabre isn't until tomorrow, and my go to fellow spooky folks aren't back in Glasgow for a while yet. Still, I'm sure there's nothing gothier than applying eyeliner while singing along to Bauhaus.

The quality and light of these photos are terrible, being taken on my phone, but at least it hides the fact I've ran out of foundation! Still, now that I'm home I can start using the better camera.

Surprisingly, I wasn't terribly worried about exams - not because I thought I had done well (far from it), but because the medical school is fantastically terrible at communicating with students and told us we'd get them two days earlier, only admitting their mistake when students were frantically calling the office asking where they were. So I got the panic out the way early.



Ah, there's the acne.

This is actually something of a new look for me; black lipstick is always something I've been wary of, as it's quite difficult to pull off (plus I wasn't sure if it would suit my hair), so this was an experiment. I toned down my eye make up - usually it's far darker, with more eye liner involved - though given I was more interested in the lip it's rather messy here anyway. My outfit was just a black tank with shorts and tights for moping about my room, so nothing special on that front either.

All in all, I'd say it was a success! My lips aren't too thin for black, it turns out, and despite a few smudges and a lack of materials (this was done with eyeliner and clear gloss, so I didn't have to fork out for lipstick I might not use), I think it turned out not too bad. Black lipstick has something of a bad rep in the alt community, but I think if you avoid the 'sulky teenager in a hoodie' cliches and stick to a simple classy it work very well.

I'm thankful for world goth day because it reminds me of how awesome this subculture is - while I often get frustrated because nothing I wear seems to work or irritated because the course I'm doing doesn't let me experiment with my appearance to the limits, it's easy to forget that to other people I look strange, unusual and occasionally even magical. Indeed, I've been told by people on my course that they enjoy seeing the bizarre variety of clothes I turn up to classes in, and surprisingly several girls have admitted that they are jealous of the different hair styles I wear (lord knows why, as I rarely manage any of them particularly well).

We goths, like everyone else, are special. We're a bit darker than most, and we get dog's abuse sometimes, but at over thirty years we're still going strong, and from Kenya to Ireland, from Hungary to the US, from Columbia to the UK there's spooky folk out there like me that I have a connection with. So I hope you enjoyed your day, folks.

Three cheers for World Goth Day, and for not having to resit the year!

 

 

Fee

 

P.s. I couldn't talk about my experiences with black lipstick without mentioning Sincerely, Boot's posts How do you wear black lipstick? and her review of the Portland Black Lipstick Company.