Fresno Famous

This Halloween Night Futureshockk and Fresnogoth.com will be celebrating two year anniversary! Famous sits down with Fresnogoth.com founder, Maverick Cadaverick, and talks with him about the motivation behind his goth-themed website.

Fresno Famous: How'd you get started with Futureshockk? Did Futureshockk come out of Fresno Goth?

Maverick Cadaverick: FresoGoth actually developed from futureshockk.

FF: What was it that inspired you?

MC: Back in the day there used to be this pirate radio station in the Tower District and I used to do this stupid little show on there and about the same time for about 6 years, my friend Tracy (DJ Primary Girl) did a show on KFSR called The Night Shift and I met her through listening to her show and I was obsessed with meeting a KFSR DJ so me and her became friends and over the course of years became best friends.

Tracy and I had always talked about how fun it would be to start a club together and then she moved up to San Francisco and I was visiting her all the time and going to the clubs and I was being lonely and depressed when I was here. In my late night time, driving around staring at buildings, I would also fantasize about doing clubs and parties and stuff, never being too serious about it, and then I finally bit the bullet.

FF: So, how did it end up taking place at Club Dance?

MC: Club Dance originally started off as the new location for the old Express. That was the place I really wanted to do it at. I really wanted to have the club there, and I would go there and go, "Ohmygod, if we could do a Goth club here it would be so cool."

I started talking to people and then Herb at the Express went for it. I guess that's the chain of events and I'm not sure what inspired me to do it, just being bored and I really wanted to meet people.

FF: How did FresnoGoth develop out of Futureshockk?

MC: I was looking for a way to promote the club. So instead of doing a website for the club, because clubs come and go, I decided it would be better to do a local guide promoting the club and not just a website exclusively for the club.

FF: Yeah, just in case the club went under or changed names

MC: Totally and I always admired Sfgoth.com and LAgoth.net, and we needed one for the valley.

FF: What's the other club night that you do?

MC: It's Electroshock. It's always at, well, usually at Déjà Vu.

FF: And what are the major differences between the two?

MC: ElectroShockk is all Electro/Industrial like EBM and Dark Electronica music

FF: Who are the main DJs for Electroshockk?

MC: The main DJs are myself and Tom, and Tom's new DJ name is Deviant. DJ Deviant.

FF: What about FutureShockk?

MC: Myself plus Primary Girl, who is my best friend Tracy, and usually the third slot is a rotating slot, but lately we've been having Destructo do it a lot, and he used to DJ in Fresno clubs back in the day, when New Wave was actually new.

FF: So it's mostly New Wave?

MC: I like to say FutureShockk is the dark side of the 80s with Goth and Industrial. Originally I wanted to do Industrial and Goth with a little new wave, but people were responding to a lot of the 80's trashy dance stuff, more fun stuff like that and the Goth stuff to, but a pure goth/industrial club right off the bat that would have been harder to get going.

FF: In your opinion has the Goth scene in Fresno changed much in the last few years?

MC: I would say there hasn't really been a scene although the people have been here all along but I would definitely say we have one now.

I mean, back in '97 or 98, there was a website called Dark Fresno and this guy had like a message board and community profiles and stuff like that and people chatted on there and stuff, but they didn't put on anything, there were no events, so no one really knew each other.

FF: It was all usernames and handles

MC: Yeah, there were cat fights on the message board and stuff like that. And there have been some underground party scenes, I remember hearing about these parties called Panic! which happened downtown and people would it was a real fetishy type thing but I don't think it was too Goth or Industrial it was just a bizarre weird gathering. So, there have always been these elements, I mean I was just a kid, but I remember seeing kids in black and punk rockers.

FF: What exactly does being goth mean? For those who don't know

MC: My tastes are a little different from the mainstream, I mean even mainstream goth culture. I don't think there are too many "Gothis" people in Fresno, but there are a lot of people who have those interests but I am more into the neo-classical Victorian sense of gothic.

FF: What turned you on about gothic stuff?

MC: Having a complete lust for anything eccentric, I guess because I grew up in a very uncultured family. I always admired all my friends who had ethnic families with all these traditions and we didn't have anything. Ever since I was a kid I just had a lust for darker things, my favorite Sesame Street character was The Count, of course. And my older half-brother was all punked out. He had a Mohawk and the studded jacket and every punk rocker I saw I thought was a rock star. I was always just attracted to that.

FF: What sort of response have you gotten regarding your website?

MC: Oh, we get emails every week from people just finding us or people just moving to Fresno or people on there way to Fresno doing searches for stuff that is happening here and all these people have linked to us and people from all over the world read our website. It's a pretty rinky-dinky site, but we are working on it. We're gonna have new site up soon and it will be 10 times better. The problem is that there hasn't been anyone taking care of the website and I really can't do it anymore because it has turned into a real big monster. I never planned for any of this FresnoGoth crap.

For more info about this week's FutureShockk event, check out FresnoGoth.com.