Siouxsie Sioux

That's it.

I guess just because most of the famous icons within the subculture, you know, like the musical artists that started it all, like Susie Sue or Robert Smith or Peter Murphy or Johnny Slut or whatever, just because all those people are white doesn't mean that's a requirement.

Why do people ask me this so often? It's scary.

Do you think goths of colour can even be considered, respectfully, as an official people? Oh, what? What are you saying? An official people of the community.

But looking back, that's what it was.

You know, Billy Idol came in and Susie from the Banshees and Marco Peroni ended up in Adam and the Ants.

So, again, that coupled with the art school kind of thing.

I don't know what the thing's going on.

Always wanted to meet you.

Did you really?

Susie, she was just being like coy with him.

And he said, oh, maybe we'll meet after.

The vibe is not a brash blast with a hint of exoticism.

It has a darker Cure-ish or Susie Sue vibe.

Marco was in an early lineup of Susie and the Banshees.

It's more than the stripped-back sound of just the guitar and bass, and while the slower delivery could have been because the two are working through what the song is going to be, my instinct is that the original version was a bit gothier.

And if they wanted to, they wore short skirts.

That too is something that we forget because we tend to think, again, in this cherry picking that happens in pop culture, we tend to think about punk women in terms of these really to a certain degree, traditionally beautiful women like Susie Sue or Viv Albertine, who were always knockouts, who were always slender, even if their style was shocking, that as we've become kind of desensitized to and embraced punk womanhood as being a particular kind of beauty, then that strand winds up resulting in the Mets punk exhibition where you see all of these hyper skinny feminine bodies with Dolce and Gabbana gowns next to giant images of Joe Strummer and Mick Jones being conventionally masculine badasses, but that we forget both the kinds of women who were defying beauty standards.

I mean, there's that great quote, I think it's from Penny Smith, who said, what I always loved about photographing Patti Smith is she didn't care how she looked.

And that that was really the key to, again, not just kind of feminine anti-beauty standard of punk photography, But, you know, also sexuality, that Patti Smith was an overtly sexual performer, which we kind of forget now that she is viewed as the godmother of punk.