This is a label established sometime in the 1980's by the Dead Milkmen. The song that gives us this great description is "You'll Dance to Anything". Basically, anyone who is: 1. either pretending they have a complete understanding of the art world,(and who the heck would that be?), or 2. someone whom we might say is creative. 3. The direct opposite and right-brained version of techie. Note: This is not a title indicating a person's sexual orientation.

a fashionably gothic, heterosexual, dateless, caffeine-poisoned, posing, scrawny, black turtleneck wearing, slim cigarette smoking, spoony bard that thinks everything he has yet to touch is droll. many over 45 years old are seen wearing berets, these are called beatniks.

(always a work in progress)

When I Was In College (tm) in the mid-eighties, we used the term "art fag" to signify a sort of beta version of what people now call a "goth": They dressed funny, they wrote execrable poetry, they listened to the Cure, the Smiths, Joy Division (the more clued-in ones, anyway) and Bauhaus. I once played Eno's "Third Uncle" for one of them and he told me that he "liked the original better". They always monopolized the college radio station. There was a thrift shop thing going on there which I don't think the goths are into, but otherwise it was a real similar schtick. I didn't project a coherent fashion statement so they thought I was beneath contempt. They may have been right. Most of us found them sort of annoying.

All hail the Dead Milkmen; they're from (or three of them are from) Lancaster County -- an even more barren and desolate armpit of Pennsylvania than I'm from. By the way, Joe Genaro (a.k.a. Joe Jack Talcum, a.k.a. etc. etc.) has a band now called Butterfly Joe, who I haven't heard.

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.