Monica • 2000 by Tobias Seeliger

Gothic II by Matzke/Seeliger
2002/Schwartzkopf & Schwartzkopf

Monica Richards: Punk Rock to Gothic
(original text translated to German for the book)

Monica • 1983 by Ellie Moran

I've often been asked how I changed from Punk Rock to Goth, which is interesting because Goth stems very much from the punk scene. I, myself, never really changed at all.

I began singing for bands in 1981, and at that time, the harDCore punk scene in Washington DC was in its heyday. There was no term for different looks; costumes and hairstyles ran the spectrum - it was all seen as Punk Rock. There were kids with torn jeans and combat boots, kids dressed as Nosferatu, some dressed in S & M gear, some in T-shirts and safety pins, there was spiked hair, greased hair, black hair, blue hair, one might have no makeup on or one might wear thick makeup - it was all joined under the Punk label, and everyone dressed according to their own taste.

The D.C. scene back then was fantastic. Everyone knew each other and everyone was at every show supporting the bands and the scene really flourished. New people were accepted as if to a family. We were all unified at being outsiders, at being thought of as different or weird, and it wasn't until around 1984 that looks began to take shape under different labels.

I always leaned toward the Dark side of things, most likely due to the death of my mother from A.L.S. ( Lou Gehrig's disease) when I was five. Her name was Joy and she was a great talent - a trained soprano, a musician, she played the organ for our local church, and performed the lead in shows such as "Cabaret". She was creative with us kids, dressed up in full costume for Halloween with a cauldron and scary music just for trick-or-treat; she had a hilarious sense of humor... Having such a person weaken and then die when you're so little is like having your entire world shut down. Losing her made me view life and its promises with a profound sense of skeptism... and her influence on my creative pursuits has been a very big thing.

Even as a small child, I knew I was different. I was very much in my own world, kind of aloof in ways, more interested in animals, nature, and old things. If you've ever seen the movie "Impromptu" - the flashbacks to George Sands as a child running in the forest and offering a dead lizard to the forest god she created - that was me. I was called a tomboy (the unfortunate term for a free spirited "girl child"): I had short hair, played sports, didn't play with dolls or stick with my own gender at recess... I was a loner, unpopular with the other kids, a downright weirdo to most.

The Punk scene was my chosen path towards finding my identity. I became a punk like many in my day - it was the natural progression from being a New Waver, which I became in reaction to my search for a group that celebrated uniqueness, rather than scoffed at kids like me. I didn't fit in with the Preppies or Jocks or any of the cliques, so I went off in the quiet Rebel direction. I played Columbia at the local midnight Rocky Horror screenings and the music that played before and after the movie: The Tubes, B52's, The Cramps, The Police - it led me towards the punk scene.

As a punk, I found other outsiders like me who no longer wanted to try to fit in with the normal types. I didn't feel at home in modern society, the modern world, I was a romantic, I looked to the past with longing...

While fronting bands, I displayed my penchant for the theatrical - my looks involved top hats, masks, dramatic costume, I would transform myself for some shows. My earlier bands opened for acts such as Bad Brains, Circle Jerks, Meat Puppets, UK Subs, Xmal Deutchsland, PIL, and the early incarnation of Clan of Xymox. Our core audience was full of diverse types who came to see us perform - college kids, students, punks, preps, jocks, rockers, older intellectuals, etc etc.

Monica • 1984

Throughout my years performing, I've had pink hair, purple hair, two-tone hair, white hair, black hair, spiked and short or long and crimped. I've gone through periods with thick tribal make-up, no makeup, glamour make-up, I've done it all... My looks changed according to how I felt, which way I wanted to face the world, what was going on in my life, what was going on in the world. I was often hollered at by passers-by, sometimes I took it well, other times I did not...

It was around 1989, while I was in Strange Boutique, that I first began to read reviews where my band was described as "Gothic" - and our music as "doom and gloom". I didn't mind it so much, it described how I viewed my place in the world well. My lyrics often spoke of a longing for ages past, for heroes and heroines fighting for their lives, of the search for one's place in the world, for the need for understanding, full of literary references and poetic refrains. Having a degree in Literature, I studied my share of poets, and the Gothic writers of the old days, their sense of escapism into chivalry, Romantic love, ideals of the past, a sense of drama and mysticism, ghosts and regal beings, it all very much made sense to me.

Monica • 1996 by Clovis IV

"Goth" and "Gothic" became a more and more popular description, and our audience began to include "Gothic" types of fans - Victorian costume, black lipstick, white faces... They reminded me of the New Romantic styles of the early 80's, or even the Rocky Horror Picture Show. When William and I joined forces and created Faith and the Muse, I jumped into full theatrical looks - dramatic and romantic noir, and I've very much enjoyed the freedom of self-expression I found... Gothic, to me, is a deeper sense of the bigger things in life, full of Old Souls and romantic hearts. Like punk, goth is a "counter-culture" full of outsiders, misunderstood by those who find all things generic to be acceptable.

There have been times though that I found pitfalls of conformity, like that of any extreme kind of music scene. I have felt a bit trapped by my expected persona, I have felt that I am supposed to look a certain way, which is strange because those who've known my music before F&TM know that though I go through changes, it's all very much me. A few years back, Goth seemed at times to be only confined to all things "dark" - skin became whiter, eyeliner thicker and more ornate, eyebrows sharper, hair piled higher - to out "Goth" the rest had become so prolific that the scene seemed to collapse on itself and lose all sense of humor.

Each scene goes through its own moods; when we toured the UK, there was a great deal of levity, of humor - cat ears and wigs, costumes of all sorts, and I've found that sort more and more in our recent travels in the U.S. and the rest of Europe... that's the best way to transform and escape from the mundanity of the world, not just somber ideals but with a sense of adventure and fantasy. Now I enjoy looking out at the audience and seeing punks again, seeing a new diversity of look and a new sense of self-expression without judgement. I do very much hope that this continues, self-expression is just that, the expression of self and one's place in the world...

I know it well.

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