An Interview with Demian Sharpe by the Board for the Preservation of Gothic Purity:

BPGP: First of all, your name's not really Demian Sharpe, is it?

DS: No, it's really Gary Webb. Actually my real name is Voltaire. Voltaire Rasputin Eldritch.

BPGP: We'll put that down as "evasive". But let's cut to the chase. Mr. Sharpe, you stand accused by this panel of conceiving of and recording what is variously described as history's first "gay gothic rap song." How do you plead?

DS: On my knees, typically.

BPGP: Jesus, you're sick.

DS: You're referring to "Pretty Boy 4 Me", are you not?

BPGP: That's the song. It is yours, isn't it?

DS: From start to finish. I'd almost call it my masterpiece, but I still have a few tricks to pull.

BPGP: Our question, Mr. Sharpe, is whether "Pretty Boy 4 Me" is meant to be a joke, and if it is, then a joke against whom? The rap crowd or the goth crowd, the latter being represented by this board?

DS: I think the song is extremely funny in its way, but I wouldn't say it was intended to be wholly jocular. I don't think there's a "real" goth song written that isn't at least partially satirical; or am I wrong?

BPGP: Well. . . .

DS: Honestly - take a look back at some of the songs that came to define gothic music. "Bella Lugosi's Dead", "Release the Bats", "Black Planet", etc. If the artists wanted to create something legitimately morose and unsettling, they would have written songs about incest among the rural impoverished. That's not the kind of morosity gothicism is concerned with. One cannot be so self-absorbed as the average goth (myself included), and not see the irony that it represents on a wider, more socially relevant scale.

BPGP: OK. . . But let's come back to that later. What about the rap factor? How could you willfully undermine the most sacred of gothic precepts by admitting an element like hip-hop?

DS: Don't you think that's a bit like saying that Christian Death blasphemed goth when they reproduced a polka on 'Ashes'? Gothicism, so far as I can tell, recognizes no clear generic boundaries. There are presumably gothic bands drawing from every possible influence, including classical, electronic, heavy-metal, traditional folk, pop, classic rock, punk - everything. With "Pretty Boy 4 Me", I merely used one more stylistic element to make a very clearly gothic statement.

BPGP: But why rap, of all things? After all of the questionable and downright objectionable permutations goth has gone through, couldn't it at least have been spared the single most antithetical style in existence? Don't you know you've completely destroyed the last barrier standing between goth music and utter, formless CHAOS???

DS: Well said, old boy! But a bit alarmist. . . I admit that I have never paid very much attention to rap, and that which I've heard and seen, I've hated. The entire culture and motive behind hip-hop is more repulsive than I can find words to describe. Mindless consumerism, "bling-bling", animalistic promiscuity, gang warfare, drug-peddling, some of the most idiotic and degrading clothing styles in the history of fashion. . . Believe me, I find nothing redeemable in any of it. This, however, is not what I hoped to transmit through my song.
One thing I have noticed about rap - and I've noticed it quite despite myself - is its genuine and undeniable ability to drive cultural messages into the psyche of the listener. One cannot listen to rap and remain objective. Either you adopt the culture it represents, or you turn it off and switch to a country station, or easy-listening, or whatever makes you feel like you're in with your own kind. Every culturally distinct form of music has this effect to a degree, but in the case of rap, which is almost completely a spoken art-form, the effect is that much stronger. You're not listening to music as much as you're listening to somebody talking to you - imbuing you with his own cultural standards while you sit and soak it in, mesmerized, as it were, by the inescapable rhythm. This is no small development, my friend. This holds significant potential as a mode of propaganda.

BPGP: I still don't understand what this has to do with goths.

DS: Simply put, I consider myself to be the superlative, salient voice of gothic culture. I have charged myself with the lofty responsibility of identifying the innumerable disparate elements comprising this nearly amorphous mess we call "goth", pulling it all together into the same arena, and saying, "Look - goth is more than a look; more than a sound. It's a goddamned thought process - it's a philosophy - and it's the basis of a global cultural movement that most of us don't even realize we're part of." So in essence, I loosely employed a tested and proved method of transmitting one cultural ideology, to transmit a cultural ideology of my own - namely, gothicism. Make sense?

BPGP: But isn't "Pretty Boy 4 Me" mainly about being gay?

DS: [Long sigh. . .] On the face of it, yes, it's about homosexual tendencies. But that's just the very, very, infinitesimal tip of it. It's more about self-admiration, self-absorption, narcissism. . . . Really it's mostly about narcissism. "I'm the boy of my dreams/I'm lost, I can't be helped." It's about the patently gothic, homo-erotic principle of idolizing one's own physical person, whilst simultaneously realizing one's own emotional emptiness. These are extremely characteristically gothic themes, and without over-analyzing the matter (more than we have already), these are the subjects approached in the song.

BPGP: Are you gay?

DS: That's going to have to be a mystery.

BPGP: Last question: Do you intend to go on recording gothic rap songs?

DS: No, and I hope to God no one else decides to. The statement's been made. I've got bigger things planned.

END OF INTERVIEW.

Submit an offering of $3.00
to receive a CD containing
"Pretty Boy 4 Me" and other
spectacular songs by Demian Sharpe!