I have been watching the film "Quadrephenia".
Really weird, but just like those many albums that I never bought, this was a film that I never saw until last night.I am watching it again tonight.
When I was a kid I was seriously into music. Led Zep were (and still are) one of my favourite bands. I also enjoyed the Who and loved Jimi Hendirx and Rainbow. I knew my rock history and loved those Pete Frame Rock family trees. Even today I can remember rock stuff ...like Ronny Dio was in a band called Elf, Chas and Dave (I think) were in Heads Hands and Feet etc etc. I won rock contests on the radio and was a minor "rock" celebrity with the local radio station. Yes, Phil Easton knew who I was! I wanted to be a rock journalist. A kind of cultured Geoff Barton. Rock (and guitaring) was probably the reason I didn't do Oxbridge! Joke.
I was therefore surprised when after this film Quadrephenia came out, suddenly loads of kids started to wear fishtail parkas. It was summer 1979.
My mate Mike had long hair. He was everything I wasn't. Caucausian. Long haired . Reasonably tall (well nto a short ass like me). Git. He even had Led Zeppelin beautifully embroidered in red on the back of his Wrangler jacket. But he couldn't fight. Alan Greenhalghs (a new mod) wanted to fight him and so there we all were watching this fight. I don't know why Mike agreed to it. He just wasn't that kind of lad. Then another mod, Bobby Perra walked past Mike and stamped him on the nose. Mods v Rockers.
A couple of years later I went to see Sammy Hagar. Like lots of other kids I waited outside for his autograph. (I don't know where it is now! Maybe on that album I won) Whilst waiting, lots of us were jumped...by mods. One Witchfynde fan was severely beaten. He could not speak he was so badly hurt. I wrote to the local DJ Phil Easton about it the next day and he read out my letter.
The thing is. I could never understand why mods did this.
The original sixties mods were into Small Faces, Booker T, Yardbirds, THe Who, Spencer Davis, ealry Deep Purple with Rod Small or whatever his name was...he became a surgeon. The Kinks, The Yardbirds (Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton), the Who, Spencer Davis (inc Stevie Winwood who later went into the brill smelly band Traffic) were kind of precursors or fathers of Heavy Rock. The new mods had the Who with arrows on their parkas, but their beef was really the era of the music that we liked. Ie Mod music is not diametrically oposed to heavy rock. It is just its precursor. I was amazed at their ignorance.They did not know their music. And there were loads of them.
Now seeing the film, I can see how the film's innaccuracies contributed to this stupidity, which actually lasted a few years. For example, the "rockers" were shown to be almost seventies heavy rockers....long haired people in bikers jackets but surely (save for the Hells Angels?) these didn't exist then. It was the pre hippy era.
So the new mods, it they ahd had their way, would have beaten up Ritchie Blackmore, ERic Clapton, the Who, Stevie Winwood, Status Quo etc not realising that these rock heroes were original mods!
Can anyone help me here. Yes I have too much time....
Last edited by Ste; 22nd-February-2008 at 01:05 AM. Reason: Clarity
this is relay weird, I was talking to 'Mod Chick' in the loo's at SFunk tonight just about this film, and been a mod, in brum.
we were working my dates out, I was a punk in 1977 to about 1980 then had a spell at been a skinhead, and then came mods, or was mods and skinheads at the same time I just flitted between them all?
anyway I went to Weston super mare on the back of a scooter, it had loads of mirrorson it, all at about the same time as Quadrephenia, and we were all ways fighting, I think I spent from 1977 to 1984 fighting some one or another.
This is true , bowling alleys stop you leaving 'old shoes' as many were leaving their old shoes and keeping the red shoes the bowling alley provided
There was meant to be mods v skins type thing going on in Kingston at the time, every monday night. Maybe more civilised then as you had pre arranged dates to beat each other up
I wanted to be a mod but my mum wouldnt let me have a scooter
LOL... I wanted a real bike!! But, I was allowed a hairdryer with wheels. Thankfully, I didn't take up that permission...
Mods V Rockers: GREAT theme... lol...
Mods V Skins?? Did that happen?? Or was it just an excuse?
We had some Grebes (Greebos/Rockers/etc) V Casuals (sons of mods??)stuff. Any other, erm, rivalries??
My friend was driving a car illegally at 16 anyway but mummy said a scooter/motor bike will kill you so if you get one you cant park in the same street as where you live. You wait till your 17 and get a car and kill someone else, something like that
Skin heads and mods were def more of a 'force' in my area
Apart from the famous beaches type stuff most fights seem to break out bewteen mod typs and skin heads
Rockers aways seem bigger and more 'removed'
I like this one [/QUOTE]
The fighting or the fancydress theme?
I wanna be a Hells Angel
Get me a great big bike that does a ton
I wanna have a gang bang
But I can't, cos I get told off by me Mum.
Sung to the tune of.....well, pretty tuneless really come to think of it.
Was a Greasers ditty.
There're the ones like Danny in Grease that do the "hand jive"
I can still remember The Teds in London, they were pretty scary to look at.
The Mods, - what did they wear apart from parkas and hairstyles? Drove Vespas, pretty boring Zzzzz
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