Recently I had said Indie is the new Mod, and someone asked what Mod was. I wondered how many other people might not have heard of the mods, and thought this was something everyone who is interested in music should know.



In the late 50s and early 60s in Britain saw the emergence of two counter-culture movements. The Mods and The Rockers.

The Mods were known for their smart fashion (think Fred Perry polo shirts and Fishtail parkas), cropped hair, use of amphetamines and customised Vespa or Lambretta scooters. True mods listened to ska, bluebeat and British R&B, as well as soul and American Motown music.

The Who became the epitome of mod culture which was described by their manager as "clean living under difficult circumstances". The first and possibly only film to document mod culture properly is a very short one of The Who playing a fevered, active gig at the Twisted Wheel in Manchester whilst overdressed for the heat in black sweaters and smart shoes which included a pan of all the scooters parked outside the club.

Rockers usually wore leather jackets, used haircreme to quiff their hair, drove motorbikes, and listened to rock 'n' roll. There were several clashes between the mods and the rockers on the brighton seafront in the 60s







These riots were dramatised in the 1979 film Quadrophenia.






Here's the trailer from quadrophenia [link]
and a clip that highlighted the seafront riots in brighton [link]

The release of Quadrophenia sparked the mod revival in the late 70s.
[link]

Here's a wikipedia article on mod culture [link]





Enjoy! Love Jazzy x

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