The voyage around my daughter's music began the night before the morning after I promised myself it would not happen - my nerves shredded after taking 11-year-old Elsa to see her favourite band at the time, The Fight, in Nottingham.
The Fight began what turned out to be quite an odyssey: eighteen long months of Elsa taking me (or was it the other way round?) to see her music, because she is too young to go alone. After a number of unhappy years at primary school, Elsa had become a goth - or found some punk/goth-rock/emo zone to inhabit. This happened as Avril Lavinge's pop songs and makeover proved inadequate roughage for an inquiring mind, and Elsa began to explore a miasma of music online - music she was not content to listen to on an iPod.
I had a choice: I could either stick to the obvious position that Elsa was too young to go to hear these bands. Or, with her mother's agreement, I could go with - and even channel - the flow and take her along. I went with the latter: better to take her, I thought, BECAUSE of me, while I'm obliged to be around, than have her go DESPITE me, as a tearaway novelty. Besides, I might learn something about my daughter, and about music which appeared to stand for everything a parent should fear: despair, doom and desolation. And I did.
Some of the bands were average and some were awful, ranting their routine rage. And there were some moments in the mosh pit at Brixton and the Astoria when I wondered what on earth I was doing.
But there was some great stuff out there too, some terrific evenings. Elsa spotted some bands long before they made it big, like the Birthday Massacre from Canada - now on the stadium circuit with their epic sound, whom we caught at the Camden Underworld. At the same place, we became especially fond of Pickled Dick from Hampshire, and my biggest pleasant surprise was a droll goth-rock cabaret from York called the Screaming Banshee Aircrew.
The biggest event we went to was to hear the excellent and sophisticated Within Temptation, a Dutch band who describe themselves as 'symphonic rock' - a vast, epic soundtrack to an apocalyptic world and universe, which we enjoyed from the VIP area, feeling very grand.
But the voyage reached its destination when Elsa took me to see her favourite band of all, and the one I install in my own rock Pantheon, having listened to this stuff since The Beatles. They are called Flyleaf, led by a singular and singularly passionate vocalist called Lacey Mosley - a meeting with, and performance by whom, was the high point of the journey. Lacey has led a life of tribulation, in Texas and Mississippi, saved from the brink of suicide by a religious conversion - which, for Elsa and I, makes for a more authentic voice when singing about angst down a microphone.
Meeting Lacey, I realised that the desolate world of goth-punk-rock (I'm still unclear about the categories) is not always intended as a place to stay, but to rise above. That the best of this music is about redemption, not destruction. And Lacey spoke directly to my daughter's heart: "I wouldn't sing any of this if I didn't think it might help someone," she said, "especially girls. It's so hard for girls - pressure to like this band or that band, dress like this but not like that - do whatever will make you blend into the wall. But girls are so passionate inside, waiting for an outlet - and that's what I try to encourage: be who you are, take control of your life". Then: "I tell you, if a girl has a relationship with her father, she'll pick a better guy", and she threw me a glance, like a cautionary jab. Then the shy, charming but slightly wounded girl, 4'11" tall, went on stage with her band, and it was like a detonation of Semtex. - What do you think? Read the piece, check this selection of music - whether with your daughter or your father - and tell us if you think I messed up. Bear in mind, though, that Elsa has no interest in the Arctic Monkeys or any of the big acts - this is music from the undergrowth, good 'n' raw.
Sample the Goth sound of now!
Within Temptation - What Have You Done
Pickled Dick - Wet Blanket
The Fight - Can't Be Bothered
Screaming Banshee Aircrew - When All's Said And Done
