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We Do It Different on the West Coast
Goths

Album

Goths

Released

May 19, 2017

Length

5:21

Previous Track

"The Grey King and the Silver Flame Attunement"

Next Track

"Unicorn Tolerance"

We Do It Different on the West Coast is the fourth song on the album Goths. It appears as the thirteenth song on the 2022 live album The Jordan Lake Sessions: Volume 5.

Lyrics[]

The papers write about it back in England
It's practically a lifestyle in Berlin
There's probably some pockets in Ohio
Almost always something happening in Ohio

I heard some bad reports about Long Island
I don't trust what people say about Long Island
I heard some good things from some friends about Chicago
I gotta see with my own eyes about Chicago
We do it different on the west coast We do it different on the west coast We do it different on the west coast We do it different on the west coast I heard they had a problem with some skinheads At a show in a machine shop in Pomona I feel like half my friends have moved to San Francisco I think I'm gonna bleach my hair this weekend And Dave went to New York -- I don't care You can't shut people up once they get back from their Christmas out there
Skim through such magazines as I can get my hands on Glue circuit boards to plywood on the weekend Trellis modulation for the children There's a whole new world just up around the corner We do it different on the west coast We do it different on the west coast We do it different on the west coast We do it different on the west coast

Comments by John Darnielle About this Song[]

  • "This one here is about goth music. Where I grew up, there was like a brief wave of people who were basically proto-goths, or maybe early goths, I'm not sure. The word 'goth' hadn't entered general parlance yet. And these people who preferred to tease their hair really high and wear kohl under their eyes, uh, or black eyeliner if you couldn't find the kohl. Um, uh, we called it 'death rock' out there, which I as a fifteen-year-old thought was like totally the greatest name. What could possibly be a greater style of music, more promising genre than death rock? I accepted the 'goth' term when it usurped death rock and came to contain death rock in the broader canvas, but I will always be a little bit mad about it. I feel that on the West Coast, we had a term that did not need fixed." -- 2018-05-29 - Old Town School of Folk Music - Chicago, IL

Things Referenced in this Song[]

Live Shows this Song Was Played at[]

Videos of this Song[]


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