By Dylan Madeley

dylpillar(at)gmail.com

Frustrated by club owners who did not understand the alternative scene to which he catered, Paul Samuels established a club for “Goths and rivetheads”. Then he watched the scene and its music change, though many outside perceptions of the scene stayed the same.

“You can’t really say Goth culture anymore because it’s subdivided.”

Whether he makes this statement from book knowledge or theory is of little relevance; he has to his credit over a decade of direct involvement in what, according to him, we can no longer accurately call the Goth subculture of Queen Street West.

The line belongs to Paul Samuels, 37, a slim and tall male with short and slicked back hair. He is civil if not friendly, has a slight pucker to his lips when he listens, and looks you in the eyes when you speak to him; a nice man who is nevertheless intimidating in a quiet, intellectual way.

Paul Samuels November 11, 2006

Savage Garden November 11, 2006

Paul owns the Savage Garden nightclub and, not content with merely sinking money into the venue and organizing events, remains close to his beloved scene—whatever we might call it—by spinning music under the moniker DJ Pale. Savage has been open since 1993, and has since expanded into the field of fashion; the closely affiliated Posepod, with its attention-grabbing fluorescent sign and intriguingly dressed manikins, sits a few intersections to the West. Both establishments cater almost exclusively to an alternative sense of taste, and they undoubtedly share clientele: though the Savage Garden has no dress code, regular patrons tend toward uncommon fashions that people of the mainstream miscall “Gothic”. It is very important, says Paul, that such patrons have access to these services through establishments that understand their needs.

This sentiment was bolstered, if not born, at his first DJ gig in England. He was spinning alternative material (or Goth music, as it could be more accurately known in 1988) in a SoHo club with a partner. The club was owned and operated by people with musical tastes much closer to the mainstream; one had to rent the place to play anything different. A difference in taste, however, would not be the most important problem. By Paul’s reckoning, he and his partner were fleeced.

“At the end of the night we broke even, and the venue we were operating in, playing, I guess, Goth, Industrial, a bit of glam, a bit of sleaze, made a huge amount of money—open bar—and at the end of the night asked us for £500 for the privilege of giving them a bunch of money.

“It was about at that point that I realized if you want to run an alternative night the only way to do it was to have a club that was run by alternatives, through Goths, by rivetheads for Goths and rivetheads. I guess that’s where the idea [of opening my own club] started.”

Even in 1988, perhaps, it would oversimplify things to claim there was only Goth. There was at least one key division which went largely unacknowledged by an uncaring mainstream. The title “Goth” tended to describe followers of post-punk; they listened to bands like Bauhaus, The Cure, and Siouxsie and the Banshees. In purely stereotypical terms, Goths had monochromatic wardrobes and fixations on depression, death, and vampirism. Rivetheads, represented at Savage by DJ Shok among others, listened to coarse Industrial music, and to this day are often thought of by uncaring observers as Goths simply for having a style of dress outrageous to the common public; similar enough to a “Gothic” style that the uninformed would easily confuse the two.

By 1992, which found Paul in Toronto’s SoHo rather than London’s, the idea of opening a club would become action. A space was bought, and renovations to it were finished the following year. As the years went by, and other establishments came and went (the iconic Sanctuary closed, and its followup, the Vatikan, has since become the Wicked swingers’ club), the Savage Garden acted as a pillar of stability and still does. Apart from weekly DJ nights, the club hosts live music, fashion shows, and even a charity “Zombie movie night” where all proceeds go to the Daily Bread Food Bank among other special events.

As the scene changed, and the venues changed, so did the music. Paul and his club have been there to witness that change. One might call it the electronic revolution.

“[In 1993], Goth Industrial nightclubs were pretty standard... you played Sisters of Mercy, The Cure, Front 242, Nine Inch Nails, so you know, alternative, Industrial and Goth. Through the years, I guess mid to late 1990s, a whole bunch of other musical genres started to emerge from the people who had been making Goth and Industrial prior to that, using more electronic forms of music, newer instrumentations, laptops, samplers… technology became readily available and music changed.

“Along came electronic music into a scene where, previously, 50 per cent of the music was more of a rock-based or acoustic end of things.”

To be sure, all of the genres Paul currently spins—electronic body music (EBM), Darkwave, synthpop, terrorcore, dreadgoth, and electro-industrial, to name a few—carry with them some stylistic element or raw spirit of Goth and/or Industrial music. He still spins original Goth tunes as well, which is either under the umbrella of Retro, or just called “Goth”—and describes Savage’s “Dark Retro” event, held on the third Friday of every month, as “the most like an old school toronto club night in existence.” The many branches of this tree are not completely disconnected from their roots.

If he had his way, though, people would not ignore the diversity of the branches for the simplicity of a common—though dual—trunk. Paul believes that the mainstream media aids and abets this oversimplification: “Mainstream media has to condense everything into a ten second sound byte. It does it with every genre. I don’t think you understand any subculture or any scene until you’re involved in it, until you bother to go look at it, until you get to know it. It’s no different than turning around and, you know, asking somebody how many Muslim factions there are in Iraq… most people couldn’t answer you.”

Paul’s relationship with the media is civil but not necessarily friendly. He feels that reporters want his time for marketing purposes, and inquire about the scene he works so hard to support for all the wrong reasons. “When [Interview with the Vampire] came out, all of the sudden there was this huge interest in alternative Goth venues, and it was all marketing. And it’s the same with [newspapers, reporters, and the Press] for the most part. It’s all marketing. It’s all getting a headline so you can sell either product or advertising, and that’s all there is to it.

“For the most part, when reporters approach me about this, I’m not interested.”

In fact, one of the issues that resulted in this interview, Kimveer Gill’s armed rampage at Dawson College, was a sore point. Paul finds it unfair that such outbursts of violence cause people to turn a suspicious eye toward a community far more interested in dancing, drinking, PVC fashions, consensual fetishistic play, and listening to styles of music that many clubs will not play, than shooting people.

“In all honesty, it has absolutely nothing to do with Goth, Industrial, and Goth Industrial culture… It has more to do with alienated youth on, I guess, uptake re-inhibitors and various antidepressants than any music scene.

“What happened to the days where journalism was about fact-checking? What happened when journalism was a day of telling what had gone on, as opposed to sensationalizing? Or taking a really sorrowful and really painful and really scary event and doing a followup piece on it, really investigating what is going on here, and what is going on with alienated children, and what this entire set of incidences starting with Columbine is really all about?”

Paul expects this misunderstanding and misrepresentation to continue. As long as most media interest in the “alternative, Gothic, Industrial” scene is for “ten-second sound bytes”, instead of deeply researched and informative pieces designed to enhance understanding, he does not expect anything to change. As for why the mainstream media would act this way, apart from monetary interests, Paul touched on it but would not continue further for fear of creating a long ramble.

“It’s very easy to go to anything that somebody doesn’t understand and then use that culture to scare people because they don’t understand it. And if you scare people, you control people.”

Interview and photos by Dylan Madeley: dylpillar(at)gmail.com

posted May 2007 by dem(at)toronto-goth.com