Impossible to choose just one, but if you put me on the spot, I'll go for Cocteau Twins. Victorialand means the world to me, and it helped me through a rough period of my life where everything seemed to fall to pieces. The beauty of this album, like looking through a turquoise glacier, helped soothe my mind, and it probably kept me in check when the fights in the street got a little too violent and stupid. I realise that last part doesn't make much sense, but I'm referring to a time where a small part of Copenhagen was lit up in flames and riots - all on account of some idiotic political misconception. We, the youngins (well I wasn't that young at the time, but I had been part of the place since I was 13), lost our beloved Ungdomshus (Youth House, club for misfits and the underground people....for lack of a better wording), and the powers that be got to be "in the right". 

Victorialand was my antidote.

A cool thing about XTC that just occurred to me is that they managed to be successful (critically and commercially) with off-kilter pop song material that seemed to blend the Beatles (complex, rich song craft) with Captain Beefheart (avantish dissonance).  With Skylarking, their approach had changed to a sort of baroque pop, and was equally successful (and is very common nowadays with indie bands).  But even that stuff could be kind of dissonant here and there.  I went through a phase where I wanted to learn as many of their songs on guitar as I could, and the tabs I found online revealed some really weird chords I'd never attempted before - difficult to play.

As for Bauhaus (my 2nd choice), they really had a wide stylistic range that most people don't know about, what with their "goth" legacy.  Heavy rock, dance rock, goth, punk, new wave, and more than a fair bit of humor all run through their work.  They had the makings of a truly great band, had they stayed together longer.  Love and Rockets was a great substitute for a while, but I'm not sure they ever did anything quite so sublime as, say, "Silent Hedges".

You've never heard Lovecats? 

No I haven't - even the name doesn't ring a bell

This is a particular fave of mine from Japan, who back then sported a decisively younger and more make-up laden Richard Barbieri:

No reason to be sorry, don't worry - we can't all be listening to the same stuff If there is one thing I've learned over the years here on PA then it's exactly that.

Of course Lovecats is The Cure at their most chart-friendliest and is very atypical. 

This is their "most famous" song and has featured in several films and tv programmes over the years

However I prefer their earlier stuff:

(this was also "covered" by TMC and was the flip-side to Song To The Siren)

here, here. 

akamaisondufromage wrote: I would have liked the original line up (not the Sid Vicious et al version, but the Scream version) to have done a couple more albums as well - maybe at the same time as Kaleidoscope and JuJu - in my own little fantasy world but hey, what we got was incredible stuff.

On ability I think he's rated pretty much where he should be but he deserves credit for more or less defining post punk guitar with Switch.

 

I am not sure punk killed prog, prog and jazz/fusion died by themselves because they were beginning to bore people. Punk and prog can coexist: Cardiacs, Nomeansno, The Mars Volta, many mathcore bands...

 

Regarding the poll, I don't know. Maybe UK decay? but they are not on the list...

I loved Jeopardy and it would easily be in my top-25 postypunk albums, but Lion's Mouth not so much.

But as our friend with the Berk avatar says, there could be any of a million bands.

Post-punk is an umbrella term that encompasses a number of different music subgenres and Gothic Rock is just one of them. The Cure, Bauhaus and Siouxsie and the Banshees were not Gothic Rock but were certainly influential in its formation and were readily adopted by the Gothic subculture. Gothic Rock also includes a sizeable influence from Glam Rock as well as the darker aspects of late 60s Psychedelic Rock, developing as it did from the 80s synth-pop New Romantic movement (and it still retained some of the cheesy kitsch of that in both musical style and fashion sense).

I'm always reticent about recommending albums because it depends upon what you are looking for, all these bands changed over time as they became more successful (Bauhaus perhaps less so). I'd not actually group these bands together even though all of them are held in special regard by the Gothic subculture, however, if you're looking for the darker side of post-punk then certainly the earlier albums The Banshees, The Cure and Bauhaus encapsulate that proto-gothic ethos. 

The first two Banshees albums are what I would call true post-punk and as I commented earlier, John McKay's guitar playing pretty much defined post-punk playing (relentless arpeggio chord picking over an almost drone-like power chord rhythm) - this can also be viewed as the proto-gothic style too if you listen to Paul Wright and Peter Yates with Fields of the Nephilim and compare them to the previously mentioned Switch from The Banshees' The Scream album. The Banshees fourth album JuJu is regarded as their only gothic album, and some say it is the album that more or less kicked-off the genre in the public consciousness, but to be honest I could listen to their entire discography in constant rotation from now until the day I shuffle off this mortal coil and I'd die a happy man.

The Sisters didn't release anything until 1983 and their début album didn't come out until 1985, by then the Gothic Subculture was in full-swing, Japan and Bauhaus had disbanded, The Banshees had departed from Gothic Rock into lusher neo-Psych realms and The Cure had become MTV residents with quirky pop songs and quirkier pop videos. TSoM didn't hit the big time until Floodlands in 1987 and I suspect that's the stuff that you heard in rock clubs. If I were to be brutal I'd have to say that after 25 years I now find them irritating and would much rather listen to The Mission or the Nephs.

I'm always reticent about recommending albums because it depends upon what you are looking for, all these bands changed over time as they became more successful (Bauhaus perhaps less so). I'd not actually group these bands together even though all of them are held in special regard by the Gothic subculture, however, if you're looking for the darker side of post-punk then certainly the earlier albums The Banshees, The Cure and Bauhaus encapsulate that proto-gothic ethos.

Adding to the confusion is that not just many of those early bands but also some of their followers (e. g. The Sisters of Mercy) rejected the "gothic rock" categorization which started as how Joy Division described their own style even though I'm not sure they intended it to stick as a genre. Then there's the question of how the United States' "deathrock" scene (Christian Death, The Gun Club, Radio Werewolf etc.) fit into the question... they kind of arrived at a sorta-similar aesthetic and sound just by virtue of parallel evolution.

I don't think Jim Derogatoryitus knows his arts from his elbow, I read most of what he writes as speculative fiction.

There was a slight resurgence in psychedelic rock in the 80s (neo-psychedelic). You cannot single-out The Doors or Gothic Rock as being unique in that respect even if you add The Banshees cover of Lost Little Girl because you've got dozens of post-punk bands (not just gothic-ish bands) also covering other 60s Psych bands at that time.  The Doors were indeed influential - just listening to Dave Greenfield of the Stranglers will tell you that much - but so where the Velvets, the Beatles, Syd Barrett, Nick Drake and Tim Buckley etc.

-------------
What?

Post punk is not Punk, the clue is in the name.

None of these bands are Punk bands. Only a couple of them were even associated with Punk, this is what came after punk (ie when punk was dead). 

exhibit "A"

exhibit "B"

exhibit "C"

exhibit "D"

exhibit "E"

exhibit "F"

Seriously, it isn't. Nor did it kill Prog. It's just another genre of music. I find Punk (and Oi! and Ska-Punk and Rockabilly and Hardcore and Grunge and Skater) as boring as hell, but none of the band in the poll are punk bands.

Well, post-punk is 80s rock so that's hardly surprising, though likening them to A-Ha and the Pet Shop Bouys is like comparing Yes to Sailor because instrumentally they really are that far removed from "80s pop". All of them have a Mr Bowie influence to some extent because he was very influential on all 80s music but Japan's Mr Sylvian and his baritone vocals are more often compared to Mr Ferry, though my ears hear a very distinctive and unique style and a timbre like no other, just has I do with Mr Fish. Perhaps your ears were confused by the pretty boy image on the video. For actual Mr Bowie connections, Mr Sylvian comes from the same small town in Kent that also gave us Mr Frampton and he provided the vocals to Mr Sakamoto's soundtrack for Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence after Mr Bowie declined involvement in the soundtrack so he could concentrate on the acting, [Mr Sakamoto managed to do both of course, though neither of them could hold a candle to the films real stars Mr Conti and Mr Kitano and since I've wandered off on this little diverting tangent - Mr Van der Post's novel that the film was based upon was given the Prog treatment in instrumental concept album form by The Enid in 1988 and released under the novel's actual title of The Seed and The Sower]. Another connection is Mr Bowie's one-time collaborator Mr Fripp invited him to join King Crimson and while Mr Sylvian declined the offer, they did work together on the rather excellent The First Day album and their even better live recording, Damage. Another Prog connection with Exhibit "F" is sitting to Mr Sylvian's right on the keyboards is Progupine Tree's Mr Barbieri and on his left somewhat uncharacteristically playing another keyboard is the greatest bass guitarist of his generation, the very sadly missed Mr Karn.

BowerHouse's version of Ziggy was a bit too xeroxed for my tastes - I preferred their covers of Third Uncle and Telegram Sam, (Waiting For the Man less so, but then Bowie didn't fair much better on that song either)

... a far cry from the gentle Lord Ralph Meyhew he's better known for...

...isn't that right Ted?

Not forgetting his (let's be charitable) 'difficult to get into' collaboration with Holger Czukay.

Which conveniently ignores The Velvet Underground (and Bowie). Derogatoryitis wasn't there.

From my perspective, that's another of those "after the event" associations that over time has become cemented in perceived history, writers such as Derogatoryitus tend to be revisionists in that respect. 

I also saw The Cure many times in the early 80s, sometimes as support for the Banshees, sometimes as the headline band. Goths were never present in those audiences though there were many Siouxsie, Robert Smith and Steve Severin look-a-likes in the audience such that the later Goth scene adopted Siouxsie's fashion styling, and to a lesser extent Robert Smith's (the loose black jumper he favoured became an item of casual wear for the discerning goth, known in the parlance as a http://forum.darkness.com/topic/48305-goth-slang-2-0/" rel="nofollow - "Fat Bob" ). 

I've known many goths who look like this:

From what I recall of the Goth scene in the mid to late 80s (and later during the resurgence that occurred in the mid 90s that persists to this day), neither band were adopted as bona fide Goth bands, they (along with a raft of other post-punk bands) have an honorary role and no one can deny their influence on the scene aesthetically or musically (even if it is only for a couple of albums).

Girls called Eileen aren't as keen on it as you'd at first think.