Punk, New Wave or Goth? – Help Us Figure it Out

The other day I ventured off into the world of Faster Books to review Kevin Sampsell’s book A Common Pornography, in which I stated the author went through an “uncomfortable goth phase”. Ever since ince the review went up, I’ve had more than a few people (including the writer himself) mention that what Sampsell went through wasn’t goth, but was in fact, “new wave.”

As I consider myself something of a connoisseur of subculture, I thought to myself, “no, that’s wrong. What Sampsell describes is more goth than new wave.” And plus, was there really a group of kids that ever called themselves “new wavers”? Maybe this is a misunderstanding due to the fact I was losing my baby teeth when the terms were actually relevant, but I felt like I had a firmer grasp on this whole thing.

To figure all of this out, I’m going to play a little game called “punk, new wave or goth” and let you, my dear readers decide. I will give you a series of videos that straddle the line, and you tell me which 80′s subculture they belong to.

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