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A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

BEHIND-THE-SCENES OF ‘A CLOCKWORK ORANGE’: STANLEY KUBRICK AND HIS DROOGIE BUDDIES  

“I’m going out with my droogs to the cinny to shove a pooshka into the grahzny bratchny.”

A round up of some behind-the-scenes photos from the set of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, 1971.

34 Things You Might Not Know About "A Clockwork Orange"

1. Mick Jagger originally bought the movie rights for $500.

34 Things You Might Not Know About "A Clockwork Orange"

2. Tim Curry turned down the role of Alex.

34 Things You Might Not Know About "A Clockwork Orange"

3. As well as Jeremy Irons.

34 Things You Might Not Know About "A Clockwork Orange"

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4. Contrary to popular claims, the film was never banned in the UK, it was withdrawn by Stanley Kubrick himself.

34 Things You Might Not Know About "A Clockwork Orange"

5. The film was released again in the year 2000 after Kubrick’s death.

34 Things You Might Not Know About "A Clockwork Orange"

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6. Kubrick’s first cut ran almost 4 hours.

Kubrick's first cut ran almost 4 hours.

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7. All unused footage was destroyed per Kubrick’s request.

34 Things You Might Not Know About "A Clockwork Orange"

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8. One of only two X-rated movies to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

34 Things You Might Not Know About "A Clockwork Orange"

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The other being Midnight Cowboy (1969).

9. Malcolm McDowell’s eyes were anesthetized so that he could film without too much discomfort.

34 Things You Might Not Know About "A Clockwork Orange"

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10. Nevertheless, his corneas got repeatedly scratched and was temporarily blinded.

34 Things You Might Not Know About "A Clockwork Orange"

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11. The doctor standing over Alex as he is being forced to watch violent films was a real doctor.

34 Things You Might Not Know About "A Clockwork Orange"

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12. Kubrick had the Korova’s milk dispensers emptied, washed and refilled every hour.

34 Things You Might Not Know About "A Clockwork Orange"

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As the milk curdled under the studio lights.

13. The sped-up sex scene was originally filmed as an unbroken take lasting 28 minutes.

34 Things You Might Not Know About "A Clockwork Orange"

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14. The final scene was done after 74 takes.

34 Things You Might Not Know About "A Clockwork Orange"

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15. Gene Kelly was deeply upset about the way “Singing in the Rain” had been portrayed in the film.

34 Things You Might Not Know About "A Clockwork Orange"

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16. It is often claimed that Malcolm McDowell nearly drowned while being waterboarded. This is not true.

It is often claimed that Malcolm McDowell nearly drowned while being waterboarded. This is not true.

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During this scene, there is a barely perceptible microcut, in which Malcolm McDowell was able to use the oxygen mask that was hidden in the water.

17. It is said that Stanley Kubrick made this movie because of the failure of Waterloo.

It is said that Stanley Kubrick made this movie because of the failure of Waterloo.

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After he completed 2001: A Space Odyssey, he had planned to film a movie about Napoleon Bonaparte’s life, but his financial backers pulled out.

18. The rape scene was so difficult for the actress originally cast in the role that she had to quit.

34 Things You Might Not Know About "A Clockwork Orange"

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19. She was later replaced by Adrienne Corri, who told McDowell: “Well, Malcolm, today you’re going to find out I’m a real redhead.”

She was later replaced by Adrienne Corri, who told McDowell: "Well, Malcolm, today you're going to find out I'm a real redhead."

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20. Pink Floyd’s “Atom Heart Mother Suite” was going to be used in the opening scene.

However, because Kubrick wanted unlimited license to determine what portions or edits of the song he used, the band turned him down.

21. The album cover is still visible on a shelf in the music shop scene.

The album cover is still visible on a shelf in the music shop scene.

22. The band Heaven 17 was named after a fictional pop group in the film.

34 Things You Might Not Know About "A Clockwork Orange"

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23. Stanley Kubrick and Malcolm McDowell would play table tennis while recording the narration.

Stanley Kubrick and Malcolm McDowell would play table tennis while recording the narration.

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And Kubrick never beat McDowell…

24. The film’s synthesized score features the first ever use of a vocoder.

The film's synthesized score features the first ever use of a vocoder.

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25. After the film’s release, composer Walter Carlos became Wendy Carlos via a sex-change operation.

After the film's release, composer Walter Carlos became Wendy Carlos via a sex-change operation.

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26. The doorbell at Alex’s house plays the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

34 Things You Might Not Know About "A Clockwork Orange"

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27. Stanley Kubrick handled the promotional campaign, including the trailer, posters, ads, etc.

Stanley Kubrick handled the promotional campaign, including the trailer, posters, ads, etc.

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28. The car used by Alex and the droogs was the “Adams Probe 16,” one of three ever made.

34 Things You Might Not Know About "A Clockwork Orange"

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29. Nadsat, the fictional language spoken by Alex and his droogs, is a mix of English, Russian and slang.

34 Things You Might Not Know About "A Clockwork Orange"

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Nadsat Dictionary.

30. The snake was introduced by Kubrick when he found out Malcolm McDowell had a fear of reptiles.

The snake was introduced by Kubrick when he found out Malcolm McDowell had a fear of reptiles.

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31. Malcolm McDowell was 27 at the time of filming. Alex is 15 years old (17 in the latter half).

Malcolm McDowell was 27 at the time of filming. Alex is 15 years old (17 in the latter half).

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32. Korova Milk Bar was the only set built for the film.

34 Things You Might Not Know About "A Clockwork Orange"

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This film was shot almost entirely on real locations.

33. Warner Bros highest grossing film of 1971.

34 Things You Might Not Know About "A Clockwork Orange"

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34. There are many references in popular culture based on the film’s story and visual elements.

There are many references in popular culture based on the film's story and visual elements.

What a brilliant masterpiece!

34 Things You Might Not Know About "A Clockwork Orange"

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The End.

34 Things You Might Not Know About "A Clockwork Orange"

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Mods v Rockers! The beach battles that rocked Britain in 1964 – and terrified bank holiday tourists

50 years ago the nation was shocked by violence which accompanied our first true youth culture. One man at the notorious Brighton brawl looks back on the chaos

The bank holiday began with tourists flocking to the coast but ended with them fleeing for their lives as Mods and Rockers turned beaches into battlefields.

Fifty years ago, in the spring of 1964, simmering rivalry between the groups reached a flashpoint as they clashed repeatedly on seaside piers and promenades across the country.

But the worst of the violence was seen in Brighton, as families were trapped in a shocking showdown which sparked moral panic about the state of British youth.

Tony Edwards was 18 and one of the first band of Mods to arrive on the Sussex coast that day. He says: “The Rockers had outnumbered us for years but leading up to 1964 we’d grown in numbers – now it was payback time.

“When we arrived on the beach there were just a few Mods and a big group of Rockers in the middle. Within about 90 minutes the beach filled up with hundreds of Mods.

“Then someone on our side threw a pebble at them and within a few seconds they were just being blitzed. I saw one guy who’d been cut on the head with blood running down his face.

“In the end the police had to charge on to the beach and escort this group of Rockers off the seafront, which must have been humiliating. They were tough men and we were just little kids poncing around in fancy clothes.

“But we weren’t going to take their c**p any more. It was the holidaymakers I felt sorry for. They looked terrified.”

You’re coming with me, son: Police arrest youths on Brighton beach (Image: PA)

Tensions had been rising for some time. The Rockers were usually in their 20s or 30s; Elvis-loving bikers rooted in 1950s Teddy Boy culture.

The teenage Mods’ culture, which flourished in the early 60s, was based on continental clothes, Italian Vespa and Lambretta scooters and the music of soul and jazz musicians.

They first clashed that spring on the March bank holiday in Clacton. At the Essex resort 97 people were arrested and the battle lines were drawn.

After that, trouble flared from Bournemouth to Margate, up to the bank holiday of August 1964. But Brighton’s Whitsun clash was the most notorious, thanks to sensational headlines and its immortalisation in Mod flick Quadrophenia.

Battles ran well into the night but although there were weapons – knives, chains and makeshift knuckle dusters – most scuffles involved fists and boots.

Tony, once branded King of the Mods in hometown Reading, says: “There were quite a few scuffles. I got into a few myself and nearly got arrested.

“I kept out of it most of the time but we would rush over and watch if something did kick off. We saw the action on top of the aquarium, a scene which is famous.

“In the middle were these Mods with deck chairs bringing them down on the heads of Rockers.

“But a lot of injuries came from the sense of panic and all these crowds running around. It was bedlam.

“A Mod got pushed through a window and got so badly cut he was pouring with blood. It was really nasty and there was this copper holding this lad and he was quite emotional: ‘For Christ’s sake, just look at this!’ he said.

“It was an accident, the crowds pushed him through, but word spread that a Rocker did it – and that fired us up more.”

The Mods got much of the blame for the violence but 68-year-old Tony, now a dad of three and a grandad of two living in Cornwall, blames the Rockers and police.

He says: “The police were very heavy-handed. There was panic about Mods but it was misplaced. All we wanted was to have a good time. Music and clothes were our passion.

“There was probably a hardcore of violent people, Mods and Rockers, who just used it as an opportunity for a fight.

“But it was the Rockers who went to Brighton knowing there was going to be trouble. They went there looking for it – and they certainly found it.”

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Sex Pistols funded by KGB

SEX PISTOLS WERE FINANCED BY USSR TO ‘DESTABILIZE WESTERN WORLD’, ADMITS EX-KGB AGENT

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Alexandrei Varennikovic Voloshin, a retired KGB agent, has admitted this week on National Russian Television (NTV) that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was behind the creation of the 1970s punk scene and financed major punk bands such as the Sex Pistols, the Clash, and the Ramones.

The USSR government at the time spent “hundreds of millions of rubles” on this covert operation destined to “create utter chaos” and “pervert the Western youth to nihilist, anti-establishment and anti-American ideologies” he explained in an hour-long interview broadcast on national television.

Famous punk songs of the legendary punk band the Sex pistols were even scripted by a team of psychologists and war propagandists of the USSR.

“I am an anarchist”, “God save the Queen the fascist regime”, “No future” and other nihilist and anti-establishment lyrics were intended to unleash a wave of cynicism towards authorities, promote the use of heavy drugs and entice the youth with revolutionary, counter-establishment ideas.

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The 1970s punk subculture movement was allegedly financed by the USSR, says ex-KGB agent, Alexandrei Varennikovic Voloshin

The retired KGB agent claims the maneuver was extremely successful.

“We understood at the time that music was a powerful means of propaganda to reach the youth”explained the 77-year old man.

“Our mission was to use teenage angst to our advantage and turn the baby boomer generation of the West into a decadent, pro-drug and anti-establishment culture that would create uprisings and bring Western democracies into utter chaos.

We even infiltrated mainstream radios to promote their music and reach millions of people every day” he admitted, visibly proud of the accomplishment.

“For many of us in the KGB, infiltrating the 1970s punk scene was one of the USSR’s most successful experiments of propaganda to date” he acknowledged during the interview.

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Punks burning a U.S. flag in the early 1980s, influenced by the punk music scene which was allegedly financed by the USSR

Some experts openly admit Punk nihilism, which was expressed in the use of harder, more self-destructive drugs like heroin and methamphetamine, pushed United States President Richard Nixon into the War on Drugs, a campaign of prohibition of drugs, military aid, and military intervention, with the stated aim being to define and reduce the illegal drug trade within America and around the world.

Its long been talked about how the Russians and Americans used many tools in the cold war to try to cause destabilisation. In UK extremist groups such as the Irish Republican Army, National Front, Socialist Workers party are all rumoured to have recieved funding from Russia, to create divide and ultimately civil war or revolution.

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Gavin Watson. British Subculture Photographer

Symond. Skinhead Trafalgar Square 1980. Gavin Watson

“What makes Gavin’s photos so special is that when you look at them, there’s clearly trust from the subject towards the photographer so it feels like you’re in the photo rather than just observing’.”

— Shane Meadows

BIOGRAPHY

Gavin Watson was born in London in 1965 and grew up on a council estate in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. He bought a Hanimex camera from Woolworths in his early teens and began to take photographs. Upon leaving school at the age of sixteen, Watson moved back to London and became a darkroom assistant at Camera Press. He continued to hang out and photograph his  group of skinhead friends in High Wycombe.

The ‘Wycombe Skins’ were part of the working-class skinhead subculture brought together by a love of ska music and fashion. Although skinhead style had become associated with the right-wing extremism of political groups like the National Front in the 1970s, Watson’s photographs document a time and place where the subculture was racially mixed and inclusive. His photographs were published in the books Skins (1994) and Skins and Punks (2008), and the director Shane Meadows cited them as an inspiration for his film This is England (2006)

Skinheads Jumping. micklefield Estate. Gavin Watson
Skinheads at West Kensington Tube Station. Gavin Watson
Skinheads at Dingwalls Camden Town. London 1988. Gavin Watson
Wycombe skinheads. The Anchor 1987. Gavin Watson
Ealing and Wycombe skinheads London 1984. Gavin Watson
Skinheads and Rudeboys High wycombe. Gavin Watson
Skinheads High Wycombe. Gavin Watson
Shaun and Kev. skinheads and Rudeboys High Wycombe. Gavin Watson
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Mods Of Your Generation Interview – Gary Shail – 40th Anniversary Of Quadrophenia

Mods Of Your Generation Interview – Gary Shail – 40th Anniversary Of Quadrophenia MODS OF YOUR GENERATION·WEDNESDAY, 10 APRIL 2019

 It is a massive pleasure & honour to feature an interview with English actor, director, producer and musician Gary Shail on “Mods Of Your generation”. Best known for his role as “Spider” in the iconic cult movie Quadrophenia that many of us still admire and talk about today. This year (2019) marks the 40th anniversary of the film which is a massive milestone for everyone involved. The fact that its still talked about today makes it even all the more great. Gary is a great guy who has attended a lot of events over the years in aid to raise money for charity. We asked Gary about his own event coming up called QUAD 40 and about his career and experiences filming Quadrophenia & Jack the Ripper. We also discussed his book “ I think I’m on the guest list” published in 2015 and his Christmas song “ Modding up my Christmas list ” (2017) and more. Gary has done a variety of interviews throughout the years so it was difficult to ask him questions that he hadn’t been asked before, however I hope you enjoy the interview as much as we enjoyed asking the questions. Make sure not to miss out on the anniversary celebration of the movie on Brighton Pier August 25th 2019 for more information go to www.quad40.co.uk#ModsOfYourGeneration

 (1) I have heard you are a huge fan of the Regents a four-piece band based in Essex heavily influenced by the original mod spirt of 1964. Are there any other new bands influenced by the mod scene who you are also a fan of? Yes I’m a big fan of ‘The Regents.’ I’ve known Sea Jays the lead singer since he was 16yrs old and he definitely has the right attitude. Mind you, he has always had the right attitude! Another young band I am really impressed with are ‘The Lapels’ who I saw play in Derby at a MOTM event the year before last. They completely blew the roof off the place, and nobody wanted to go on after them! The drummer was only 14yrs old at the time I think, and I watched them play with his mum! (2) You were just 18 when you were cast to play spider in Quadrophenia. I am sure you have been asked this many times before but did you think Quadrophenia would become the phenomenon it is today at the time of filming.  Of course I didn’t know that I’d still be being asked questions about a film I was in 40yrs ago, but, I think we all knew at the time that it was definitely something special (3) On Christmas 2017 you released a song called “Modding up your Christmas list” to become number one. Have you any plans to do this again in the future. “Very catchy tune by the way LOVED IT” HAHAHAHA..My Mod Xmas Song? Well, I actually got a hell of a lot of flak for doing that by certain people who shall remain permanently nameless. But it was great fun to do, and a lot of people loved it, especially the kids. I had people sending me videos of their children doing dance routines in their living rooms, which was brilliant! But no, I don’t think I’ll be the next Cliff Richard. 

Modding Up My Christmas List- 2017 (Official Video) (4) You have been involved in many MOD and Quadrophenia events over the years. Is this something you enjoy being part of and do you have any memorable moments from any of the events that stand out. Yes I do enjoy all the events I get asked to. Over the years I must have met thousands of people who love Quadrophenia, and it’s always a great feeling when my presence can actually help to raise money for a worthy cause. Some of the funniest memories I have are probably un-printable, but trying to get a kebab in Stoke at three in the morning with Alan May (The Glory Boy Radio Show) doing Withnail & I impersonations sticks firmly in my memory! (5) Your character in Quadrophenia had many memorable quotes in the film. What is the one that fans mention the most? Always the one about getting a gun!  (6) Your book “I think I’m on the guest list” published by New Haven publishing LTD in 2015 was highly regarded and recommended. I found the book to be a very funny memoir of your life and the extraordinary people you have worked with and met throughout your career. Can your briefly describe the book to someone who has not yet read it. The book was actually written because of Gary Holton (The Rocker who beats Spider up) Gary and I became really good mates after Quadrophenia, and actually formed a band together called ‘The Actors.’ But when Gary sadly died in 1985 I never spoke to the press or anyone else for that matter about it. Then I was contacted 30yrs later by someone who was writing a book about him and wanted a contribution from me. I wanted to put the record straight about a few things, so I agreed. The publishers of the book loved what I’d written, so I was offered a publishing deal for my own story. I thought I’d better do it myself before I was dead and some other twat was ‘putting things straight’ about me! It’s certainly not your average autobiography I think, and later on this year I will be doing an Audio Version with a soundtrack, which will be totally different to anything you’ve ever heard I hope. 

 (7) Many fans of Quadrophenia have expressed an interest in a follow up to the film. Is this something that you would support? or like myself do you feel it is best left alone. There has always been talk of a “follow up” But I can’t see that ever happening. It’s always interesting to hear some of the Ideas of what our characters would have been doing in later life though. I think Spider would’ve become a hit-man for Ferdy’s drugs cartel!  

 (8) You are a huge fan of Trojan records, what is your favourite track, album or artist under the Trojan label. Yes I grew up with the Trojan record label, and one of the first artists I remember driving my parents mad with was Desmond Dekker. But I’ve always loved reggae and had a very respectable collection of Jamaican Pre- Releases by the tender age of 13. Last November, I was proudly invited by Neville and Christine Staple to their 50th Trojan Anniversary weekend at ‘Skamouth’ In Great Yarmouth where I actually met ‘The Pioneers’ who were about 100yrs old. They could still cut it though!  (9) This year (2019) marks the 40th anniversary of Quadrophenia (film). To celebrate this, you have organised, and event called Quad 40 in Brighton on the 25th of August 2019. Tell us a little bit about what to expect from the event and where fans can buy tickets. It’s actually on the 25th August Johnny! Yes I have hired Horatios Bar on Brighton Pier from 12 noon ‘till midnight on Sunday the 25th August. And I can tell you now that I never thought I had this much bottle to actually try and pull something like this off. It’s a logistical fu**ing nightmare, but I’m actually really enjoying it. I’ve spoken to almost all of the other cast members of Quad who have all promised to attend (work permitting) but trying to get us all in the same country together is hard enough, let alone on a bleedin’ pier! On that morning before the actual party, Quadrophenia is being honoured with ‘The Brighton Music Walk Of Fame Plaque’ to be unveiled at the pier entrance, so it would be great if there were a few mods about. Tickets and details available at www.quad40.co.uk

 (10) A question received by Jimmy Hemstead follower of Mods of Your Generation and Blogger at MOD TV UK “HI Gary in your younger days was you ever a mod and did you ever own a scooter, can you tell me when and how you got into acting and why please?” Hi Jimmy, love all your art-work by the way!No, I was far too young to be a mod; I was born in 1959, so I was only 5yrs old in 64 and the only scooter I owned was made by ‘Chad Valley.’I never had any ambitions to become a professional actor at all when I was a youngster, but somehow found my way into drama school at the age of 12, thanks to my parents and a couple of Comprehensive High School Teachers who probably just wanted me just out of the way!Quadrophenia was my first professional job when I left. (11) Do you have any plans to release more music, Books etc or what are you doing now that we can look forward to in the future? Yes, I will definitely be writing another book I think, but not part 2 of my autobiography, that would just be a bloody diary. It will probably be about my time working in the advertising industry in the 1990s. You think actors and musicians are crazy? They’ve got nothing on advertising people! Musically though, I never really stop. I had a solo album out last year called ‘Daze Like This’ (see below) which a lot of people liked, and I guested on ‘The Transmitters’ debut album which was great, although I hear that they have now split up. I’ve also recorded a couple of tracks with Steve ‘Smiley’ Barnard which are on his ‘Smiley’s Friends’ albums, and I’m back in the studio in a couple of months with ‘The Regents’ for their new album. I’m always writing though, and will hopefully record some of my own stuff probably next year now.

Title track from the album “Daze Like This” (12) Do you keep in touch with any of the main characters of Quadrophenia 40 years on? Yes, I see quite a lot of Trevor Laird (Ferdy) and I’ve recently been working with Toyah. Hopefully I’ll be seeing the others soon  

 (13) What do you regard as your biggest achievement in your career or what are you most proud of? I actually don’t think like that. Everything that keeps me off of the unemployed statistics is an achievement these days! I am extremely proud of my family though, and very recently became a granddad to a beautiful baby girl called Ellie May. I’m very proud about that! (14) In 1988 you appeared as the tough pimp “Billy White” in the tv series of “Jack the Ripper”. Sir Michael Caine also appeared in the series as Chief Inspector Frederick. Caine was a huge influence on British Culture in the 1960’s and referred to by many as a style icon.What was it like working with such an influential person in British pop culture? Making ‘Jack The Ripper’ in 1988 was like a dream come true, and working on a film with Sir Michael Caine was an experience I shall never forget. He was so interesting to watch, whilst he was working on camera, and I learnt a great deal from him. Everywhere you looked on that set there was something extraordinary going on in the acting stakes. Lewis Collins, Armand Assante, Susan George, Jane Seymour, Lysette Anthony, Ray McAnally, Hugh Fraser, Ken Bones etc etc.They were all giving it their all. I was just glad I gave it mine!  

 (15) Finally, How would you like to be remembered?  Just to be remembered at all would be nice!             Again it was a massive privilege to interview Gary shail and a big thank you to followers of “Mods Of Your Generation”, Please continue to show your support.  Please like & share the “Mods Of Your Generation” Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/modsofyourgeneration/ interview conducted by Johnny Bradley for “Mods Of Your Generation”interview (C) 2019 to Johnny Bradley & “Mods of your Generation”                                         

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Author Andy Morling – “Mod Ghosts”

Mods Of Your Generation – Interview – Andy Morling – “Mod Ghosts”

MODS OF YOUR GENERATION·WEDNESDAY, 11 DECEMBER 2019

 Mod Ghosts a first book by new author Andy Morling who grew up in a working class family in the Suffolk market town of Ipswich. This book resonated with me in so many ways, it is a detailed account from many people who grew up in urban Britain featuring first hand accounts from the people who influenced a Mod Revival together with period and present day photographs. The book explains each individuals account on discovering how mod changed there outlook on life, How it shaped their existence and identity. Showing how it lead them from young teenagers into adulthood. Each persons interpretation of mod is different and it means something different to many who attach themselves to the phenomenon. Each persons account is different but it doesn’t mean its not mod. The book also highlights the places these people grew up in and how modern Britian has changed somewhat forty years on. The thing most interesting thing about the book is how the subculture affected people in many different ways and the different experiences each individual had growing up in the respective hometowns across the UK.  

 As mod continues to evolve and many young people discover the scene today each person brings their own adaptation. Despite the book being called “Mod Ghosts” the subculture has stood the test of time were others have faded. I highly recommend this book and its definitely something you need as part of your collection. This book is everything I want to say about mod but don’t have the intelligence, intellect, and vocabulary to explain. I wanted to find out more about the man behind the concept and was excited, honoured and privileged to interview him.INTERVIEW BELOW 

What is the main concept of the book?

 Mod Ghosts is the first product from The Mod Project which I began in 2016. The thinking behind the broader project is to offer a series of slightly different perspectives on the Mod experience. My ambition is to follow up the book with further multimedia sub-projects hopefully including film and the visual arts.To answer your specific question, the idea behind Mod Ghosts was threefold. Firstly my aim was to identify and contrast iconic photos of original and revival Mods with shots taken at precisely the same location in the present day. I’ve always been very attracted to these ‘then and now’ type image comparisons and, as a lifelong Mod, this was a natural choice in terms of subject matter.I’ve been doing this on Twitter for a few years now and, in time honoured fashion, the positive reaction led me to consider publishing a book. As a child of the sixties, my thinking was that books are somehow more permanent than social media. I’m not sure that’s actually true but either way, I really wanted the memory of these places and these people to endure.In addition to the photographic comparisons in the book, I was also lucky enough to secure first hand accounts from revival Mods by way of interview. Each story was unique and fascinating and I hope this adds context and a human dimension to the atmosphere created by the photos. In simple terms, I wanted to illustrate how both the urban settings and the people depicted in the photos have changed over the last four decades.The third and final element of the book is my own commentary on the Mod phenomenon. Quite apart from the external, visible signals of Mod observance, for me, Mod has been a powerful internal driving force. A philosophy. Astute readers of the book will no doubt notice references and quotes from the great Stoic philosophers from ancient history. I’ve long believed that Stoicism captures the very essence of Mod. I would hazard a guess that this is the first time this school of thought has featured in a book about Mod! As a friend of mine said in jest recently, the Romans were the first Mods.I also wanted the book to capture some of the lasting emotional impact of the subculture on me as a person. Sounds a bit introspective and indulgent, I know, but I hope at least some of that resonates with many others. I’m also an opinionated old sod so I had one or two controversial views that I simply had to surface! 

This book highlights how mod changed the life of those who followed it. Why was it important to tell their story?

I’m under no illusion that Mod Ghosts isn’t the first book to tell the story of those who were there during the Mod revival. In fact, its not even the first this year. With the very greatest respect to those featured in the book, what I wanted to do with Mod Ghosts was to focus on the lives of the subculture’s more ordinary participants from across the country.By the start of the 80s, every village, every town and every city supported a population of Mods. These folk made the movement the culture tour de force it was to become. These were the last generation truly to have experienced youth subculture in its purest sense so their experiences need to be recorded. They are also good people whose lives have been shaped to some extent by their experiences forty summers ago.Forging an identity from the assimilation of musical, stylistic and other cultural cues in early adolescence was standard fare for those of us born in the sixties. I think sometimes we fail to appreciate what an unusual trajectory this is for our 21st century counterparts. For that reason alone, I think these are stories worth telling.

The book covers accounts from various people throughout the UK. I imagine this meant a lot of travelling. What was that like and did this become challenging?

Fortunately I was able to carry out interviews by correspondence so travel wasn’t an issue in that regard. Where I racked up the miles was in identifying the locations for the period photos and then taking the present day shot. There were one or two Homer Simpson moments when I arrived home after a day on the road only to find that i hadn’t quite captured the correct angle or, in one notable case, I’d taken a fantastic photo of the wrong house. I’m indebted to John Gale for saving me from having to make a third long trip to Hastings in as many months for a few shots I’d totally messed up twice previously. 

Why was it important for you to tell the story of the people but also the places in which they grew up, discovered the subculture and attached themselves to it?

I think we are all the product of the place of our birth and upbringing. The history and culture of these places imprints itself on our personality, attitudes and beliefs more than we recognise. Location leaves a trace on our DNA. I like to think of it as the human equivalent of terroir in wine production.So in the book I wanted to contextualise the lives of these young Mods by telling a small part of the history of the geographical backdrop of their young lives. I’m particularly fascinated by the spiritual artefacts that attach themselves to certain places. Tens of thousands of special moments lived by tens of thousands of ordinary people leave a palpable feeling in a single place over the course of history. Hard to explain satisfactorily but I find it mind boggling. I particularly enjoyed researching the historical origins of the legendary Phoenix in London’s West End. I don’t think I’ll ever walk past the pub again without thinking of its near and very distant past. 

A lot of books highlight how the mod scene grew in London. Did you purposely choose how the mod scene affected many of those beyond a particular place?

As our political and cultural capital it was impossible to ignore London when writing about Mod. I take my hat off to the influential London based figures that gave the rest of us this wonderful thing and those that have written so eloquently about them.But yes, it was a conscious decision also to focus on the small town Mod experience. I lived my Mod life in nondescript town in Suffolk with fewer than 100 others of a similar persuasion for company. The passion and commitment we provincial peacocks had to Mod’s core principles was in no way diminished as a consequence. I was never a face by any measure, not even in my home territory of central east Ipswich, but I certainly gave it all I had. I think the same can be said for those whose story I had he privilege to tell.

The book demonstrates how the urban landscape has changed over many years. Why was this an important factor to depict through photography showing the places then & now?

As I said earlier, I’ve always enjoyed comparing ‘then and now’ images. The urban environment has changed dramatically in the last forty years, particularly with the slow collapse of high street retail, the decline in the pub trade and the cultural vandalism of the working class home. I wanted to say something about this pictorially. Few of the present day photographs illustrate an improved landscape so I also wanted to stimulate conversations between the generations about why this might be. I don’t have the answers but I hope my book will at least pose the questions. 

Why do you think mod means so much to many different people and why it has stood the test of time from a small group of young teenagers in the 60’s to become a worldwide phenomenon?

That’s a tough question. In the blurb to the book I say that it is the capacity of Mod to change with people that ensures its continuing relevance today. What I mean by that is that Mod remains accessible, even in middle-age, in a way that no other subculture can manage. I enjoy the knowing glance of recognition when my eyes meet those of a fellow Mod on a crowded underground train in London, for example. The signals are generally subtle but we both know instantly. I love that about Mod. It’s not about parkas or patches but about heavily nuanced influences and vanishingly small stylistic cues.I talk at length in the book about the way in which Mod provided a robust platform from which to launch into adult life. From my own perspective, I believe my life would have been very, very different had I not discovered Mod. I think this is the same for many of my peers. The continuing value of a comparatively sophisticated appreciation of music and clothing and a broader sense of style should not be underestimated. 

The book has already had many great reviews in a few short weeks of being published. What has people response to the book been like?

Truly humbling. I’ve been genuinely staggered by the enthusiasm with which the book has been received and the kindness of the comments made about it. As a first time author rather than an established name in Mod literature, an investment in my book was always going to be a leap into the dark financially. I’m extremely grateful to those who are open-minded enough to make that leap and I hope the content of the book repays their faith. My aim all along was to offer something a bit different and something that is beautiful to look at and own. I’ll be more than happy if I’ve managed to achieve those things alone. 

Can we expect any further books, projects or anything else in the future?

Oh yes. I’m already planning Mod Ghosts 2 and as I mentioned at the start of the interview, I hope to take the concept into other areas such as film, television, photography and maybe even poetry and fine art. Watch this space.Despite a healthy catalogue of Mod related books in recent years, I still believe there is more to be said about this thing of ours. I’m less interested in showcasing the razzmatazz of Mod culture and the bigger ticket aspects of the scene. For me it’s all about the ephemera and those beautifully elusive, almost indefinable subtleties that give Mod it’s unique meaning. 

Is there anything else you feel you’d like to highlight about the book?

It would unforgivable if I didn’t thank the wonderful people that allowed me to tell their stories in words and pictures. To John and Ed Silvester, John Gale, Dave Ratcliffe, Billy Drinkwater, John Nicholson and Del Shepherd, I thank you all. True gentlemen each one. Many more contributed original photographs for which I’m eternally grateful.I also really appreciate the opportunity to have this interview and I wish you continuing success with Mods Of Your Generation.

To get your copy of the book use the link belowhttps://modghosts.co.uk/product/mod-ghosts/Like & share there Facebook page belowhttps://www.facebook.com/Mod-Ghosts-202944413598062/  Copyright © Mods Of Your Generation, Johnny Bradley & Andy JM 2019, All Rights Reserved. No part of this review may be reproduced without the permission of the authors.

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Punk To Save The Planet

Chris Packham: “Punk is coming back to save the planet”

The naturalist sees punk pioneers getting excited again – and it’s down to Extinction Rebellion and youth climate strikers. He recalls his youth pogoing to God Save the Queen and draws parallels to today in Forever Punk

It’s April, it’s sunny, and I’m humming…

‘We’ve heard it all before / We’re learning to ignore / You must confess this awful mess /Isn’t just a bore’

I’m unnaturally jovial…

‘It’s more than we could bear / But you don’t really care / Kiss of life to save our life /All you do is stare’

It’s one of my favourite songs from way back in 1978…

‘I’m back in full attack / Never give in until they crack / Emergency’

It’s Emergency by 999, perhaps the most underrated punk band, and I joyously recall vocalist Nick Cash reeling around the stage spitting out this song. So, so good! I’ve always liked the ‘never give in until they crack’ sentiment, and it’s particularly relevant today – because today is all about the biggest emergency ever.

When I reach Extinction Rebellion’s pink boat, moored on Oxford Street [in April], there’s a festival atmosphere and thousands of people are clearly delighted by the DJ’s choice of London Calling by The Clash. The bass is thumping through the colourful crowd, many of whom are singing along. I’m tempted, but I’m no Joe Strummer, so I keep my voice to myself. Well, my singing voice anyway.

When I address the fabulous party and salute their energies and endeavours to put the climate and environment emergency on the map and in everyone’s mind, I finish by asking them to continue to “shout above the noise”, to embrace the musical mantra that has informed, fuelled, directed and given integrity to my life for the last 40 years.

 

Fast forward a few weeks and I’m tiptoeing on tenterhooks into the basement of a North London pub to meet the maker of that essential and integral part of me, Pauline Murray – the vocalist from Penetration who penned that awesome anthem to independence, defiance, self-determination and rebellion.

They say you should never meet your heroes. They are wrong. She is wonderful and nurtures me through my starstruck interview and ends by handing me a handwritten copy of the lyrics. It’s framed now. It hangs prominently in my home and would be grabbed if fleeing from a fire. It will be in the casket with me for the terminal fire. It defines me and what I’ve done and what I do.

You see, for me the attitude and ethos of punk still pumps through my veins. Not just the music, the politics, the fashion, the art, but the method and the ferocious desire to change things – to never take ‘no’ for an answer, to make this a better place, to rail against injustice and always, always challenge authority. And maybe tear it down…

But am I just a sad old geezer trapped in the past, nurturing the nostalgic ideals of a youth, no longer of any contemporary relevance? Worse, am I, Chris Packham CBE, a sell-out, a hypocrite? Have I become the bastard I would have hated when I was pogoing to God Save the Queen?

Is it just me or are there a generation of other spiky old gits out there still angry, still fighting, still fired up by that social maelstrom that ravaged the UK in the mid-1970s? Well, that was my summer’s quest for BBC Four – to find them, quiz them, get the measure of them and then to see if their philosophies have been reborn and empower today’s activists, protesters and game-changers.

Spoiler alert. When I asked my stellar cast of punk’s original playmakers whether their ideology was alive and well, to a man and woman they cited “Extinction Rebellion” and the “youth climate strikers”. They smiled, got excited, shifted in their seats, punched the air – their eyes sparkled.

The consensus was that punk had finally woken from hibernation and was re-emerging to excite a new wave of very angry young people. They might be short of studs and safety pins, but they are not mincing their words and they are not afraid of the establishment.

They are breaking down doors, put ethics before the law, and, critically, these “stupid idiots” are not going to “shut up and go back to school” (that’s what Jeremy Clarkson said about Greta Thunberg). No these “truants” and “uncooperative crusties”(the last insult courtesy of our PM) will suck up such antipathy and use it like kryptonite to detonate essential creative and positive change. They might not know or even like it, but they are punks. I’ll leave Pauline with the last enduring and pertinent words…

‘Silence is no virtue in a crowded world / Where no-onehears / Feast your eyes upon the fools / Who follow theleaders without thought / Don’t let them win / Don’tthem drag you in / Shout above the noise.’

Chris Packham’s Forever Punk is on BBC Four on January 10

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Modern Rap, The New Punk Rock attitude

There are few things more exhilarating than being stuck in the middle of a mosh pit during a JPEGMAFIA show.

On stage at this year’s Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona, the 30-year-old US rapper’s topless body, dripping with sweat, contorts urgently as he channels the aggression of the crowd into brutal bursts of movement that sit somewhere between an intoxicated Iggy Pop and an irate DMX.

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With vocals that quickly shift from gentle to vicious, the artist, real name Barrington Hendricks, raps rapidly like a machine gun, with lyrics, couched in internet speak, that are often scathingly satirical. One of his songs is called I Might Vote 4 Trump, while on his typically experimental new album, All My Heroes Are Cornballs, he raps, as a black man, about wanting to be adopted by Madonna and merrily drinking the tears of “rednecks”.

JPEGMAFIA (Credit: David Hanes-Gonzales)
JPEGMAFIA (Credit: David Hanes-Gonzales)

JPEGMAFIA is a scathingly satirical artist with a sound that incorporates thick waves of distortion and screaming synths

But the fact he does all this over ugly, uneven beats, built around thick waves of distortion and screaming synths, means Hendricks could just as easily be categorised as punk rock as hip-hop. Free the Frail, one of his new LP’s standout tracks, speaks directly to punk’s anti-capitalist values, as Hendricks claims: “I don’t rely on the strength of my image”.

Back in the 1980s, rap and punk were both genres that got frowned upon by the elite just for being what they were – JPEGMAFIA, aka Barrington Hendricks

In Barcelona, as dozens of teenagers enthusiastically bang heads to songs with subversive titles such as I Cannot Wait Until Morrissey Dies and Digital Blackface, it’s easy to draw a parallel between Hendricks and the bold onstage personas of legendary anti-establishment acts like The Sex Pistols or The Clash, artists who also knew how to channel youthful angst into something euphoric and liberating.

Hendricks is happy to indulge in the comparison. “Back in the early 1980s when rappers couldn’t perform in the fancy venues because the police were too racist and scared, it was the punk venues letting them in to perform,” he tells BBC Culture. “I guess race was the big thing separating [rap and punk] in the general public eye, but they were both resilient genres that got [frowned upon] by the elite just for being what they were. They gave a home to outsiders. I [have] always felt like they were just the same thing, but both wrapped up in a different way.”

Growing up, he explains, he was equally enthusiastic about political rappers like Ice Cube and Chuck D as hardcore punk bands like Bad Brains and Fear. “I saw Fear perform live at a young age, so I guess you could say I draw from that same energy.”

Modern punk heroes

Today, JPEGMAFIA is one of dozens of young rappers and rap acts drawing heavily from the DIY ethos of punk rock to create music to be moshed to. The likes of Death Grips, Run The Jewels, Denzel Curry, Danny Brown, Sheck Wes, Rico Nasty, Ski Mask The Slump God, and Travis Scott (who was arrested back in 2017 after the police accused him of inciting a riot at one of his shows) perform with the same transgressive vigour of 1970s punk icons. When Sheck Wes plays the stirring Mo Bamba live, it recalls the renegade firecracker spirit of Nirvana’s iconic Smells Like Teen Spirit video.

In the UK, snarling Northampton rapper Slowthai thrillingly struts around the stage like a modern-day Sid Vicious. He blasts what he sees as the toxicity of Brexit Britain in a way that’s pure punk provocation. It’s no surprise, for example, that he carried around a fake severed head of Prime Minister Boris Johnson during his performance at last month’s Mercury Prize amid ugly beats inspired just as much by Gang of Four as Dizzee Rascal. His punk-ish rap peers include Scarlxrd and Master Peace. On the other hand, you could also point to the hip-hop influence of lo-fi British punk bands like Idles and Sleaford Mods as a sign of the convergence between the two genres.

Slowthai
Slowthai the new face of British Punk Rock

UK rapper Slowthai is like a modern-day Sid Vicious, blasting what he sees as the toxicity of Brexit Britain (

Prolific Long Island producer Kenny Beats, real name Kenneth Blume III, has worked with many of the aforementioned artists, helping shape the punk-rap sound that’s currently ruling the underground. He believes the fact more and more rap artists are gaining a penchant for primal screaming and ugly production is simply a reflection of our times. “The other month I played a show just 24 hours after there were two mass shootings here in America,” he says. “The planet is literally on fire, so what more can an artist like Rico Nasty do but scream? It’s instinctual to rappers at this particular moment. It’s how they process the world.” He says he’s currently producing a record for hardcore punk band Trash Talk “that’s pure thrash with no electronic drums, but that way of working isn’t too dissimilar from when I work with JPEGMAFIA or Slowthai.”

A 21st-Century protest

In this age of social media, where people fire off snarky political opinions every couple of seconds, Kenny believes that anti-establishment protest music can have trouble cutting through. To have a real impact, it’s less about what you say than how you say it. “You need to make people think about society in a less literal and more primal way,” he says. “It’s about using the least amount of sounds to make the most amount of noise and energy, and making a bass stab really feel like you’ve been punched in the face. A lot of the rap I produce really has that kind of punk essence. When I work with JPEGMAFIA he asks me for the worst beat possible as I guess a rapper that makes something that’s raw and ugly and chaotic is definitely going to stand out and feel more human right now, because things aren’t pretty out there.”

Rico Nasty, real name Maria Kelly, is a 22-year-old Maryland rapper every bit as enigmatic and hell-raising live as JPEGMAFIA – the fact she’s pushing similar buttons as a woman makes her, arguably, even more important. On songs like Bitch I’m Nasty and Rage, which are both produced by Kenny Beats, who also guided the music on her most recent album Anger Management, Kelly attacks the gnarly guitars and cutting drums with real venom, every word delivered like she’s face-to-face with her worst enemy. Sometimes she just starts screaming in between bars.

I’ll see straight guys moshing with the gay guys and I love that – Rico Nasty, aka Maria Kelly

Evoking the DC comic book character Harley Quinn, her bold onstage look is about reclaiming the colours white female punk artists wore before her and showing her fans, many of whom feel like outsiders, that they can be anything they want to be. It’s quietly revolutionary.

“If you come to a Rico Nasty show you’ll see all kinds of people, dancing together as one in the mosh pit,” she explains. “I’ll see straight guys moshing with the gay guys and I love that. A lot of these people aren’t able to let out their anger in the real world without being demonised, particularly black women, but they can at my show and to my songs. It’s a safe space to let out all the rage, and that’s healthy. It’s like group therapy.”

In a world with infinite choice, thanks to streaming platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music, Kelly believes fans expect more from their favourite artists – because, if their interest palls, they can quickly move on to something else. By embodying the fearless punk values of her hero Joan Jett, she can ensure she lives up to their estimations, she says. “They gotta see me go crazy on stage or I’m not doing my job! it’s all about showing emotions because they paid good money to see you and they don’t want to just see me stand still. You’re the person who made their favourite song so you should be performing until your voice cracks [like the punk artists voices’ used to do].”

(Credit: Works Of Ace)

Rico Nasty is a 22-year-old Maryland rapper who embodies the fearless punk values of her hero Joan Jett (Credit: Works Of Ace)

It’s something Hendricks very much agrees with. Punk in the 1970s was a reaction to the overly conceptual progressive rock that bands like Pink Floyd and Genesis were releasing. The Sex Pistols’ two-minute songs, which used a minimal amount of chords played as shoddily as possible, were in stark contrast to the stadium rock that some young people found pretentious.

Similarly, Hendricks believes the reason rap with punk sensibilities resonates right now is because the melodic ‘trap’ sound that has dominated the radio for so long is also starting to become stale. Hip-hop fans could be looking for something to counter the neatly produced club trap anthems by stars like Drake and Migos, which means music that’s more unhinged and doesn’t read from a script, and artists who enjoy giving their all on stage and are comfortable making people feel, well, uncomfortable.

“So much of rap sounds the same, and that’s okay, but that means some people want something that can be the complete opposite too. We’re entering an era where you have to leave a part of yourself on the stage and really make the crowd move. People aren’t going to just accept your presence or you miming to a song; you have to really do your job, you know? Maybe that’s where [punk-rap] comes in. I feel like this is the only time this sound really has a chance to break through into the mainstream.”

Two genres united

But if punk-rap makes sense for this particular cultural moment, it’s hardly a new phenomenon. As John Robb, the author of Punk Rock: An Oral History – and a rock legend in his own right as lead vocalist in post-punk band The Membranes – points out, rap and punk first became intertwined in the 1980s, a time when The Clash experimented with a rap edge on The Magnificent Seven.

He believes Public Enemy were the first band to really bring the two different audiences together, with their rough, hard-hitting boom-bap sound resonating with both black kids in the inner cities and white kids in the suburbs. The fact that, in the 1980s, iconic producer Rick Rubin would split his time between producing new albums for hip-hop acts like Run DMC and The Beastie Boys and hardcore bands like Slayer and The Cult, also helped to create links between the two cultures.

“Public Enemy were really the first band to resonate with both camps,” says Robb. “Chuck D was a huge fan of The Clash and I know from speaking with him, he studied all of the punk bands. I saw them on the Anthrax tour and Public Enemy blew this hardcore band right off the stage. I’m sure every white punk fan in the audience became a rap fan after that.”

These kids live in such a distorted world that the music is lying if it isn’t distorted as well – John Robb

As the 1990s arrived, hip-hop’s punk sensibility was further enforced by in-your-face acts like Ice Cube, DMX, Onyx, and Rage Against the Machine. Then, although he’s easy to mock now, Atlanta rapper Lil Jon also spliced genres to innovative effect with ‘crunk’, his southern rap take on punk, which prioritised uncomfortably loud horns and repetitive screams. It’s no surprise that Denzel Curry, one of punk-rap’s most prominent artists, channelled Lil Jon’s trademark “what” screams on his 2018 song SUMO | ZUMO. “Lil Jon was definitely a pioneer for some of the punk-rap acts we see now,” agrees Kenny Beats. “He showed you could scream on a song and still have a hit on the radio. He even sampled [US heavy metal guitarist] Randy Rhoads, so it was obvious he knew what he was doing.”

But Lil Jon was hardly an anti-establishment renegade, more just someone who found a sound that stood out from the norm. It was around a decade ago that punk-rap really returned with a vengeance, via authentic anarchist acts like Tyler the Creator’s Odd Future collective. The Los Angeles group weren’t afraid to release incendiary singles where hooks were built around calls to burn schools, among other things, while beats were both manic and minimalist. They lived the punk life they rapped about, hanging out at skate parks and dingy clubs in three-day-old clothes. This DIY spirit made them feel like the black Sex Pistols. And Kanye West borrowed punk elements for his brilliantly bleak 2013 album Yeezus. On it, he took Odd Future-style industrial sonics and made them more palatable for the mainstream, sampling post-punk bands such as Section 25 and offering up riotous tirades like Black Skinhead.

(Credit: Alamy)

Kanye West also went punk on his brilliantly bleak 2013 album Yeezus (Credit: Alamy)

But Kenny Beats believes one of the most important songs in this new age of punk could be Look At Me by XXXTentacion – the controversial Florida rapper, real name Jahseh Onfroy, who was shot dead last year at the age of 20, while facing multiple criminal charges. The 2017 song features uncomfortable levels of distortion and unhinged vocals as Onfroy, then just a teenager recording in his bedroom with a cheap microphone bought on eBay, refers to himself as the new Kurt Cobain. Peaking at 34 on the Billboard 100, it was the moment punk-rap showed it could really be a force on the pop charts.

“Whatever you think [about the person and the allegations], there’s no denying Look at Me was one of the most punk-rock moments in a long, long time,” says Kenny Beats, when asked why the song resonates so much with the current generation of rap fans. “You play it in a room and people are ready to riot. XXX sounds like a scary cult leader rapping over the worst sounding MP3 I’ve ever heard, but everything about that song bottles this idea of being young and not giving a damn. It’s the reason why you hear distorted drums on an Ariana Grande song or people putting out two minute singles. Its influence is everywhere. It doesn’t have a message, but that’s what makes it have one somehow.”

People get upset that the old rock ‘n’ roll attitude doesn’t exist anymore, but it’s right there in front of them – JPEGMAFIA, aka Barrington Hendricks

As conversation rages around Brexit, Trump and global warming, there is a feeling among some young people that they are paying for the sins of their parents and have inherited a world that is teetering on the edge. It’s in this context that the darker punk-rap sound has resonated deeply, says Robb. “These kids live in such a distorted world that the music is lying if it isn’t distorted as well.”

However, he’s keen to point out the impact of the internet in making this style of music popular too: “You’ve got to remember that genre boundaries don’t really exist like they did before. With streaming, every genre cross-pollinates into the next and you just hop from one thing to another. That makes it easier for punk-rap to thrive than it could in the 1980s or 1990s, as back then, everything had to be a hit on a radio. Now, you just put it on Soundcloud and it gets a million views and kids will treat like you like a rock star.”

So often, Hendricks says, he reads “lazy” articles from white music journalists speculating when guitar-driven punk is going to make a comeback and “save music”. Yet he believes this is a blinkered question founded in racism – critics are unwilling to acknowledge that punk never went anywhere, but its spirit is now embodied by hip-hop, and phallic guitars have been replaced by dusty 808 drums.

“[Rock music] is stagnant, yet here we are in 2019 still clinging on to this old idea of what rock ‘n’ roll is. People get upset that the old attitude doesn’t exist anymore, but it’s right there in front of them: we’re the new rock stars”.

  • By Thomas Hobbs
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British Actor – “The Original Daddy” & “King Of The Rockers” – John Blundell

Mods Of Your Generation – Interview – British Actor – “The Original Daddy” & “King Of The Rockers” – John Blundell

MODS OF YOUR GENERATION·SATURDAY, 14 DECEMBER 2019John Blundell is a Britishactor, best known for playing ‘Daddy’ Pongo Banks in the controversial production Scum and its film adaptation.Blundell played Banks in both the banned 1977 BBC version and the cinematic remake of the production two years later. His character was the ‘daddy’ (i.e., the self-appointed head inmate via use of force, violence and intimidation) of the institution until he was overthrown in a bloody attack by Carlin, the lead character played by Ray Winstone. He also appeared in Quadrophenia as the Leader of the Rockers (again in a film with Ray Winstone). He is an absolute gentleman, Mods Of Your Generation wanted to find out more about his role in these two iconic films. Its a privilege to call him a friend and an honour to have him as a Mods Of your Generation follower. 

What fond memories and amusing stories can you remember from the filming of Quadrophenia?

I spent three weeks in Brighton on the set. One of my fondest memories is that the whole cast stayed in the same hotel, and you could come down in the morning for breakfast, and hear the then unknown Sting, playing the piano, and Phil Daniels playing guitar, along with Toyah jamming, and at that time , being so young, just taking it all for granted. 

Did you enjoy working with Phil Daniels and Ray Winston again after filming with them in Scum?

Ray, Phil and I had filmed the original Scum, 4 years earlier, which was a Play for Today for the BBC, and banned by Billy Cotton. We then went on to make the film SCUM, 6 weeks after QUADROPHENIA. In those days, we all hung about together, and all got on really well. 

You played Pongo Banks in Scum & the leader of the rockers in Quadrophenia they have both become British cult classics. How does it feel to be part of these timeless iconic movies?

I have been very lucky and privileged to be part of both Scum and Quadrophenia. Obviously not knowing that up to date, they would have stood the test of time, and become iconic films.

How did you get into acting and was that something you always wanted to do growing up?

It was never my intention to become an Actor. However at 10 years old, my primary school drama teacher Anna Scher, started the Anna Scher Children’s Theatre, of which I was a Founder member, for Children who could not afford Stage School like Barbara Speake’s, Italia Conti etc. , charging us 50 pence a lesson, and free for the Children, who could not afford that. When word went around the film industry, that there was a Drama Club in Islington. The BBC came around along with the Children’s Film Foundation, to name but a few. So that is where it all began and took off. 

What can you recall working with Quadrophenia director Franc Roddam?

Franc Roddam the Director of Quadrophenia, came to Ann Scher, to watch our group performing improvisation, on a class night. And that is where he saw Phil Daniels, Trevor Laird and myself. A few weeks later, Franc asked me and Actor Ray Burdis, to meet him at Pinewood Studios, to do some improvisation with a guy that he has found from a modelling advertisement, called Gordon Sumner. Afterwards Franc, asked us about our opinion about this guy, as he thought he would be great for the part of Ace Face. We said he looked unusual m. Little did we know that we had talked ourselves out of a part. A few later, this guy called Sting would hit no. 1, with his group the Police, and become a global Superstar. The rest was history. 

I heard from a mutual friend that they were a few accidents riding the motorbikes in Quadrophenia. Can you tell me about some of the stories?

There was one big accident, involving myself and the rest of the Rockers, in the scene where we chased Chalky off the road. After the film crew cleared the lane, where we were filming, a farmer pulled out his lorry out onto the road, unbeknown to the film crew. So at 35 miles an hour, Gareth Milne, the Stunt man, who was to my far left, rode straight into the truck at full speed, which caused a domino effect, of all 30 Bikers crashing.I myself drove into a big bush, to protect myself and my Biker girl Linda Regan, who was riding pillion. Leaving the both of us with only sprains, but other with much more serious injuries. Hence Linda up till this day, still tells everyone that I saved her life, which is a really lovely thing to say. Franc to this day, still says he wishes he had kept the footage of the crash.

Where you a fan of The Who and had you listened to Quadrophenia before being cast in the movie of the same name?

I was not really a Fan of the Who, at that point, but after meeting Roger Daltrey and Pete Townsend, I found them to be, down to earth and just a couple of the lads, who just happened to fly into Brighton beach by helicopter. Lol.

Apologises if this ruins your hard man reputation as the “King of The Rockers” and the original daddy but I heard you’re a northern soul fan. If this is true tell me about some of your favourite records and some of your other musical tastes?

Yes that’s right I do enjoy Northern Soul, for eg. listening to Legendary artists like Frank Wilson – Yvonne Baker- Tobi Legend. My taste is pretty varied, and I also like a lot of Rap Music. Snoop Dog, Dr Dre era. Giving away my age there. 

What other acting roles have you been involved in that fans may not be aware of?

From my early years aged 10 I had done so much work, I cannot remember, as i never kept track. The only ones I can remember are on my IMDB. I also do so many Commercials that at one time, my Agent Anna Scher named me ‘’The Commercial King’’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgRnNx7J1mQ&feature=youtu.be

2019 marked the 40th anniversary of Quadrophenia, you were invited to join the celebrations at an event in Runcorn. How was it reuniting with some of the cast 40 years on and what was fans attending the events response to meeting the king of the rockers?

I have always over the years, bumped into the Quadrophenia boys, who attended Runcorn. And it is always as if we had only seen each other yesterday.As I was the only Rocker, at Runcorn, I was not sure, how I would be welcome by the Mods. But to my surprise, I was blown away by the love and respect, that was shown to me , by everyone who attended. I could not have asked for more. I would like to say a special thank you to Rob Wright, who organised the event, and took such good care of me and Mercina. We had not met before, but we are now friends. 

What are your plans for the future and are you working on anything we can look forward to?

I enjoy writing Comedy scripts, simply as a hobby. But the best thing about being retired, is as you all know by now, for anyone who has read my Facebook page, is that I get to spend 24/7, with the love of my life Mercina.

Copyright © Mods Of Your Generation, Johnny Bradley & John Blundell 2019, All Rights Reserved. No part of this review may be reproduced without the permission of the authors.
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The Isle of Wight International Scooter Rally Site move announced

VFM, the organisers behind The Isle of Wight International Scooter Rally have announced today (read the press release below) that the August Bank Holiday rally will be relocating for 2020. The main hub of the rally has been at Smallbrook Stadium for the last two decades but the redevelopment of the site and the granting of planning permission for a new multi-million-pound ice rink (to replace the perfectly good existing one located right in the heart of Ryde town) at the site means it’s no longer able to cope with the size of the rally.

Sandown Airport

Isle Of White Scooter Rally main site moves

It’s a positive move though, the rally will be held at Sandown Airport, located just 1.2 miles out of the pretty seaside town. The huge grass field site boasts plenty of room for campers (and camper vans etc), hardstanding for the trade area, a cafe, an aircraft hanger (which will be utilised as a northern soul room), there will also be a marquee for the main evening entertainment and the site will also have the best washing and shower facilities brought in for the weekend.

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Moving to that side of the island (it’s just 6 miles from Smallbrook) will also mean there’s more chance of getting B&B or hotel accommodation, as long as you get in quickly. Get on to Booking.com as soon as you’ve read this, there’s also a Premier Inn in Sandown. Coaches will be laid on so rally goers can explore this ‘new’ town and still get back to site, although it is within walking distance.

We’ll bring you more information as we get it but hopefully, this move will get people excited for August Bank Holiday once again. It may still be the same little island across The Solent but it’s a whole new place for most of us to explore.Click here for the latest on Booking.com

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Madness have a dig at Boris Johnson and the Eton elite

FIRST PUBLISHED IN NME

“The Eton Boys are undefiled/ The Bullingdon Boys, running wild”

Madness
Suggs and co. have a dig at Boris Johnson in the lyrics to their new song. CREDIT: Getty Images

Madness have released ‘Bullingdon Boys’, their first new song in three years – and it features lyrics aimed at Boris Johnson and his Eton cohorts – listen to it below.

The pioneering ska band’s snap release is a “barbed swipe at the charlatans, rotters and chancers at the top of the tree who have done their best to take the shine off 2019,” according to a press release.

Inspired by the fact that 19 of the 54 UK Prime Ministers have come from Eton, the new song takes aim at Johnson, who was educated at Eton College before going on to study at Oxford, and his peers with anti-Tory lyrics.

“The Eton boys are undefiled/ The Bullingdon Boys, running wild,” Suggs sings on the chorus. “And England slides into the mist/ No hope they’ll cease nor desist.

Other lyrics include: “They’re making England Great Again/ But make way for the bagmen/ When everything’s been sold and bought/ We’ll soon be off the life support.

The song’s artwork features what is assumed to be a group of Eton students donning a variety of masks, including Halloween villain Michael Myers and Porky Pig. It includes the tagline: “Don’t get bullied by the Bully Boys.”

Madness

Accompanied by a supercut video that features scenes from Clockwork Orange, the Batman TV series and The Riot Club, you can listen to ‘Bullingdon Boys’ below:

Earlier this month, Madness performed a show in London where fans were given the chance to pay the same entry price as they did 40 years ago.

Madness Electric Ballroom 2019. Credit Symond Lawes

The Camden Town legends played the Electric Ballroom on November 17 – 40 years to the day since they launched the legendary Two Tone Tour at the very same venue. Tickets were just £2.50 (plus booking fees).

There’s nothing new about musicians having a go at Eton EliteWill Lavin “meanwhile, Boris Johnson has received a backlash for declaring that he’s a fan of The Clash.

The revelation came from a new general election campaign video in which the Prime Minister is seen walking around the Conservative Party headquarters answering questions.

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Camden Skinhead

rollingstone Somers Town Skinheads London

Hello. I want to share with you my recollections and memories of the skinhead scene that I have always been a part of. At the moment I am recovering from falling off some scaffolding, so this has given me time to get to grips with modern technology and given me a chance to reflect for the first time on the subject of Skinhead culture and share with you some of the stories and memories of the past from like minded people which has been prompted by hearing the interview with Symond Lawes on the Brighton skinhead reunion recorded some time ago.
I will start by telling you about myself. I’m a 50 year old skinhead and bricklayer now living in Wendover, Bucks. I grew up around the Camden Town/Somers Town area of London.
When I was a kid, kicking a ball around at night, my mum always said: ‘Be home before the Mods come out!’

This was around 1969, she was referring to the lads, who would have been Mods, who had inherited the same patches outside the local pubs that their elder brothers hung around some years earlier.My parents still called them Mods, and I always thought of Mods as being the the elder statement of skinheads. These were previously the 7/6d’s, that have now come of age. We knew which families they came from, and who they were, and our families knew their families and so on. There were some real tough families in the area at that time. By this time the groups that my parents remembered were growing up, getting married, they were joining the Army and working for Her majesty ( GPO) or staying at one of her Hostels. (HMP Pentonville was near my home)The GPO tower was looming over us, like a calling card, it was a respectable career to aspire to and a lot of us did end up going to Mount Pleasant GPO, after being kicked out of school.
But a further aspiration, was to join the local gang. I was way to young for this at the time but I would look out of my bedroom window, with envy watching this group, evolve from 1968 onwards. I will never forget the sound of the the light buzzing of scooters as the gang rode their inheritance from their older brothers. They were a group of lads who had this tough but smart look about them, They wore mostly denim jackets, with Crombies ¾ length coats, boots and braces. The gals didn’t have the skinhead feathered hair cuts, like they did later. Some of them looked a bit like the Toyah Wilcox character in Quadrophenia. Most of the girls had Crombies but looked feminine but they still looked like Sixties Mod girls, with kilt type minis, they wore their hair in a shoulder length style that hinted at skinhead look. It was a bit like a flat mullet, with a fringe, that looked like it had been cut around a saucer template.
You always looked out for “Names” on the skinhead scene. “Names” who were hard enough to have been kicked out of the local boxing gyms. The word got out amongst the scene. They were always tough Jamaican offspring kids, and they were ALWAYS part of the group. These kids where always in the mix, as some of the top boys, but in many ways smarter. “wiv the threads” a right proper mixed bunch who always fought and hung around together, Skinheads or mods, peanuts, however they were, they were the was the only group you would ever see with blacks kids.

In 1870-72, John Marius Wilson’s Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described Somers Town like this:

SOMERS-TOWN, a chapelry and a sub-district in St. Pancras parish and district, Middlesex. The chapelry is a compact portion of the metropolis; lies between New Road, the Regent’s canal, and the Great Western railway, 2 miles NW of St. Paul’s; occupies ground which was mainly unedificed so late as 1780; and has a post-office‡ under London NW, and an S.-Police station. Pop., about 14,500. The living is a p. curacy in the diocese of London. Value, £300. Patron, the Vicar of St. Pancras. The church was built after designs by Inwood, at a cost of £14,291.—The sub-district extends beyond the chapelry, and comprises 184 acres. Pop. in 1851, 35,641; in 1861, 39,099. Houses, 3,907.

Some of the lads dressed smarter then the others, the way they dressed reminded me of the slick character in the 70’s TV show “Please Sir” some of the black lads had the Tennis Fred Perry shirts, and braces with “Peyton Place jackets. My mum wanted to see me dress like that, as she fancied the film actor Ryan O’ Neil.
She seem eager to see me in one of those outfits, more then any other form of attire. Later on most of the Jamaican kids were smartly dressed in tonics and loafers especially on music nights and at that time they had the same inner London accents as most of them had come over in the 1950’s when they was babies and a few of the younger lads was born in the UCH the same as me.
On youth club nights I would hear the sound of the club in the Cumberland Market down in NW1. This was mixed with the turn out of the dads and older lads coming out of the Kings Head opposite my house. At the time I didn’t know what the stuff they were playing was, but it had such a infectious bounce to it, and it echoed all around my room at night. I used to tuck my head under my eiderdown. I felt so spellbound by the rhythms and beats. So much so, that I would wake up with it almost resonating like an exact recording in my head the next morning.

This would stay with me for life. Later on I discovered exactly what it was and that it was the ska/rocksteady music. The ska would be played at the early part of the night just as it was getting dark, and the sound would be taken down a level later in the evening with the Rocksteady beat. At the time I was too young to get involved and my nearest encounter of rubbing shoulders with this crowd, was seeing these older kids break away from the group and go on the march to Highbury, on Saturdays. The older lot headed for the boozers and then the North Bank, while we went to the West Stand with my dad,and my mates who all had older brothers in the ranks so with that and the fact that there parents knew mine and who’s boy I was!
As I got older, I would go around me mates gaffs, a lot of their elders had left home to start families. It was almost the unwritten law at that time, that the elder brothers room should remain untouched, and that included record collections. For me, at the time that was heaven. I understood that ska was the main stay amongst Skinhead record collections, although a lot of skinheads at the time, did listen to other stuff apart from reggae there was a popular local band called “The Action” that locals still followed also nearly everyone of them had “Who” and “Small Faces” poster or disc, and also would you believe: “A Kind Of Blue” by Miles Davis. which his brother always called his “Shagging music.”

Madness have become the most successful band to have come out of the Skinhead Subculture, From Camden Town, inspiring a Ska movement worldwide

 

I thought it was a kind of dance at the time and I remember being glad to see those records and posters as it kind of blessed what I thought was a guilty secret of mine, my love of “The Who.” In a way it wasn’t that strange, as we all gravitate to a kind of group or music that attracts us and that was the whole Mod ancestry! It wasn’t quite the mainstream but it was heavy enough to be called Geezers music but it never crossed over to hippiedom which I always thought of as being “THEM” the group you never want to be with. I inherited a hatred of them, not so much the music coz there was a lot of “Blues” which I always loved, and that’s when I started to get more knowledgeable about this kind of music, as I knew that it was the root of ska, a Jamaican take on the blues that they had heard from the Southern states. So this also gave it a blessing to like “The Blues” as well.

My dislike for hippies came from the fact that they all seem to talk posh and they always seemed to be moaning in middle class accents and I despised those military wing greasers.The music consisted of “geezer rock” or white English men who played “Soul” and “Blues” that came out of “Rock” getting it slightly wrong. This was a style that developed by mistake. This clashing together of styles seem to repeat itself later on with Punk which I embraced quickly as soon as I was old enough to welcome it all but I had always being a Skinhead or Suede head since the time I tried to dress like guys from 1968 and 1969.

I have never been anything else as my age stopped me being a Mod. Then Punk came along and there was no way I was going to wear flares and attend concerts with the hairy ones on ice at Wembley!!! I’m pleased to say, that I have lived my life as a skinhead, and never succumbed to wearing flares no matter how out of step I was with the early to mid 70s.
I would also like to touch on something that Skinhead/Suede head discussions seem to overlook, This is when I started to hang around music venues the remainder of Skinheads from early days to the early mid 70s suede heads, were influenced by “Glam Rock” although it was from the less feminine side such as Mott the Hoople and Steve Harley. There seem to be the pre- punk, side which was full of the skinhead types, and that was “Pub Rock”. There were so many of us in our group, we would make our way up to Tally Ho boozer in the north end Kentish town, to see the bands that played there, that included all of us and those who were old enough to get in “legit”.

We were all part of the old gang of would be skins. This time more of them were wearing DMs, and crombies, with either a No2 or slightly grown out suede head haircuts. This was still the family “Skin” very much so, and this was the heavier aggressive sound that was for working class inner Londoners, or any other cities youth. We could relate to it.. it was our Generations “The Who.” I sounded out all of these bands, pre-punk even trying to get down to that London in Essex hotspot which was Southend. I thought Dr Feelgood were fucking magic. My mates started to hunt through those record collections to find stuff like it and in hindsight we enjoyed Kersal Flyers Brinsly Shultz etc….. I loved all that stuff. By then of course we’d turn up trying to get in to gigs (I was still too young by the way) to any gigs that we thought was of that ilk, but once we got to them and heard them there was something more unhinged about some of those bands: “London SS” and the “101ers” need I say more that was my introduction into punk and then for a year or two I indulged my self into it.
I met up with mates all over London, that I knew from Boxing Gyms by way of boxing, regular trips down to the Bridgehouse, when it was in Barking Road also it was only a short walk down to the “Roxy” it was close to us and we used to just to hang out there. We Heard that “Dee Generate” out of “Eater”, was our age so we thought: “Let’s ave some of that.!” Some of the punks were a bit creepy, and a bit too arty, for my liking, but I went with it. There was some crumpet, but the girls were all weird wiv suspenders and stuff, and their knockers were sticking out of bin liners!
This was great for a kid my age, especially the at the “Roxy” the mighty Menace at “The grope and wank her” (Hope and Anchor yes we used to think it was funny!!!!!!) We would chat to Charlie Harper at the George Roby,there was this lesbian down the west end. We used to go and hang around with her with an added idea I was gonna cop an eyeful, but that turned out to be the only place a lot of bands were able to play, thanks to the then Tory run GLC so although I did do a lot of growing up in experiencing ways of female flesh. It wasn’t the lesbo orgy I was expecting.
I will like to add, that at times we could feel a change happening, felt a ruck coming on, there were more swastikas, appearing with some of the punks. My jeans were scruffier but I still wore my black “Peyton Place” jacket and me Fred Perry tennis shirt we used to call em, not polos, they was well cheap then down Petticoat lane or Roman road. I always wore me DMs, and my hair was a bit above No2, I was a punk, but I always stayed a skinhead,too so the Swastika was a symbol that we despised. We grew up with parents and grandparents that had experienced it.

Half the streets were still corrugated fenced up, from Bomb sites, back in the days of me observing original skins I used to read read battle picture library and War picture library, those booklets, you know the kind of thing I mean. I used to have dreams of single handedly wiping out Nazis. I used to go to bed thinking that there was an army of rapist, Nazis hippies and coppers, and Narkie Grasses. and how I can dispose if them.It also was a symbol of The Grease, another reason why we hated them, because of their treachery of wearing what Nazis wore. although we hated “The Filth” and any establishment figure,, we were still working class British people and we was not that rebellious. So I resisted wearing that stuff but we was always up for a ruck people tend to think or want to believe it was the far left that was bovver boys when it was the opposite. I hate politics in music or subcults ,that’s why I don’t hold wiv no S H A R P stuff, but I will say this, we never saw a Tory never mind supported them.

Everyone came from Labour voting working class families,, so we knew what we wasn’t, but never dwelt on what we were or what we were going to be. I hated politics and what’s great about being a skinhead then and at now my age is that it’s like being in stir “You don’t ask questions.” The nonces will be found out and dealt with at some point, and a skinhead gathering is the same for anyone on both sides. Both far extremes will feel marginalised eventually and this it started out as a youth sub culture, and we have taken it with us. It’s what you feel, being a skinhead is all about, and it is what brings us together. As it’s the furthest thing away from being a 14 to 15 year old Mod. Skinhead, Rude Boy in the 1960s, suede head 1970s is politics. Thats what your mum and dad talk about, and as I still haven’t grown up nor do I want to I am a old but proud pathetic old git, and I won’t never change!
Going back to attitude. Well, We did speak in a way that isn’t talked now, but even your hard line trade union lefty activist would be slaughtered by the speak Gestapo now!!! it was another time, there was paki – bashing by gangs of mixed black and white youths especially after the arrival of Ugandan Asians not because of colour but because they were new and strange and our ignorance wasnt enlightened by the lack of integration and not willing to embrace, the culture,, unlike the Irish around our way which was a massive wave of families and for young people the West Indians shared there fashion and music it was ignorance and for us, the it was an overwhelmingly important pastime of fighting. This could be amongst any inner city youth Asians were just another group to ruck with, nothing more or less, as far we were concerned! As a group, privately who knows or cares what your views was away from the the lads was,, there was and there wasnt, least among us anyway and especially skinheads who were the hardest lot of the roughest manors, but I am sure Teds, Rockers, fuck even some working class hippies that went along for the trip as it were spoke like that,or picked on someone or something they didn’t understand that they felt weary of amongst not just kids but everyone at that time.

Most skinheads got a bashing from other skinheads most people amongst us was working class, and most of them were skinheads, or related to skinheads. I recall skinhead battles tales amongst the groups , and later on, about area gangs, they didn’t think in terms of London boroughs, just London areas and it was all very Territorial, for example there was Somers town, were I was, Kentish town, Upper Holloway Archway,Clarkenwell ,Shorditch/Hoxton/ Dalton, Queens Crescent, Camden town, then going eastwards there was Stoke Newington, Clapton and then the East End, Bethnal Green, Mile end , Wapping, Stepney, go further east and you get Canning Town, or West Hammersmith, Chelsea Fulham and Shepherds Bush.

Or you might know guys from these areas from work in the centre or boxing club circuit, or gigs, and you would talk and have a laugh but if you were meeting for a ruck then you be knocking shit out of each other if they were representing the area, and further to that, you might have a West Ham or Chelsea supporter in your local gang who would fight with you if you were called out by another manors lot but as they were mostly Arsenal around our way any friendship went at for that fixture. same goes for an Arsenal supporter from Fulham he’d be rucking his mates at football and come Saturday you looked at the scarf not the person that’s what how mad it was I have been told about it from older skinheads that I used to admire when I was looking at them from my bedroom window, fuck some of these guys are in there 70s now.

It was slightly different when I turned the age to shag and ruck but not that far off, but you get me gist !!! so I think Asians at the time got more of ribbing then a hiding it was other groups but most people would unite if they saw greasers setting on a skinhead or what you deemed as one of your ownAs for the Hambourgh tavern I’ve got my own views on that I was there although not for long we couldn’t get to it, but I remember feeling so fucking angry, to see skins that look like they were on the side of the the filth again it was whipped up by both right and left, press and lay politicians and more so the music press who hated the thought of working class council kids being a force, I don’t blame the Asians, they were young fuel filled lads protecting their area or what was force fed to them,they were young like us and was up for a ruck, like any group of whipped up teenage lads, we wanted to go down here or there and make some working class noise and have a few pints. I’m not a conspiracy weirdo, but there was so many reasons why the fucked up middle class left, the fucked up Nazi right wing plus the broadcast media and music press caused that, as the latter didn’t like something that was based around youth led pastime angst and they didn’t like something that they didn’t make or break because it was real and not manufactured, it was something that we could enjoy and dictate what happened with it. It served our purpose, it gave birth to the boneheads that have soiled a working class culture and ruined the fledgling stages of young rock n roll bands,And took away a good deal of their income at a time when they should of been making it good. We could enjoy a good few years of live working class punk rock, seeing as it was taken away from its own manufacturers and given to people who could enjoy it it started going down hill after the Clash signed to CBS it was salvaged and put to good use but the press wanted it dead. These days we can relax with it as our first love and enjoy the Ska and rocksteady that we adopted, and still love, through our own choice as Middle Aged skinheads, that the music press didn’t intend us to love and there’s fuck all they can do about it!!! I’ve got through a whole pack of 20 smokes, in the time it’s taken to do this, didn’t realise the time, that’s more then i get through in three days, but I have enjoyed sharing this with you all…. as you can tell I can go on for ever about this…

Those days were right proper heady,, faces were on stage,in bands that you knew from  seeing them around the chippy/ newsagent in tobert street,,or the youth club, and you know faces from school ,, punk , Arsenal ,especially (Arsenal/Highbury grove ) school , most of the locals around our way went to William Collins ,, I was expelled from secondary schools,, St George’s in St. John’s wood, Highbury grove, ect , only two weeks at William Collins,
I was used to seeing loads of local faces being on telly,, in bands, you took it for granted,(Pauline’s people then Grange Hill)  70s corona drink ads,ect ,, i stopped noticing,,
people from Anna Scher and all that!!! and so on,,but I know who your talking about now ,Low Numbers, they were in the Dublin castle,,i recall ,seen em with Madness,( or invaders, cant remember what stage they were at, the time) loads of us started bands, we loosely played,,,,but nothing proper,,, some bands went further then others,,we were called THE St Pancres Chronical   after the local Rag, but we were shit,,, I played guitar but every time I picked i it up , I just ended up playing Blues,,,bending notes,,,and sounding to much like Heavy Rock?,, I was fine with it, but it pissed the rest off,,,so we decided to stick to being in the crowd watching/ listening,
,,coz I knew people from other  schools in other manors , we kind of broke away from Cumberland market faces , except for four mates in  Robert st,,,and The Crown Flats,local people became  just another face  ,,you recognised ,and the families they came from,,, and who your dad and grandad drank with,
,There was a local crooner  type who  went of to the Army,,, geezer called Gary Driscoll,, he was the first local I knew off, that was dragged up there!! To get noted,,
,my ole man used to be mates with the landlord,of the Dublin castle ,then a Irish fella called Barney Finley,,I was. Mates with his boy Raymond,, they passed it on to the present family,,in the late 60s ,we used to run about in there  after lock up,  two o clock on Sunday afternoons, coz we’d often go to  av sunday dinner with them!!so it was only right I would later make that me local,, so  i witnessed the start of all that too,,was lucky Spose living between West End and Camden Town,
,,I was able to get into clubs in soho,,in the late 70s coz me dad knew all the faces and names ,Jimmy  and Rusty Humphreys  ect,, that’s why I was able to hang about  the latest clubs, being younger,me dad ran an electrical repair /retail shop ,,in Berwick street,called Friel and Francis ,with me uncle Bob (pic,on the front of oasis album), would you believe,, the first parking metre in Westminster was unveiled outside the shop,and  a young spiv that hung about in and out was Alan Suger came down  parked his van with hilivery   A .M .S .TRADING,,marked on the side,coz he knew the press would be snapping, me dad used to sell his car Ariels,(cute ,, got to love that)  anyway they  used to rig up the sound in Ronnie Scott’s,
I used to bunk of whatever school I was in ,to work on Berwick street market,,,
,we used  wheel the sack barras to pick up the veg  and stuff from around what was to become the Roxy before the fruit and veg moved across the river,, John Holt used to have something to do with it ,  I remember , it was converted  from that,,,so that’s why I familiar  to it to hang around there,,later,,, coz I was a cocky little shit, and coz Eaters drummer was from the sticks and was our age , we dint want him to out do us ,to be part of it all.. ,  i knew Id be looked after,,by someone that would be to hand,,if it got to heavy we could UP any older punk that snarled at our presence,,when they did, we was quick to take of our young punk head , and say “we ain’t fucking punks were skinheads”,,,you tossers,,, although we were at the time,,, lot of the older punks were from the sticks,, so when we got snarled at ,, we’d give it  our “( we’re from here,you ain’t  and you don’t know what’s around the corner on the way out ,)
,,the other local connection was my grandads drinking buddy ,who liked drinking with riff raff,was Constance Lambert, he used to live up Park Village East and come down to The Victory ,in Albany St ,he used to drink like a gooden apparently , corse he pegged it before I or the The Who was born,so he dint see his sons  success ,!

 

‘Skinheads & Cherry Reds’, Gerry Stimson, Rolling Stone, July 26 1969, pp. 22-23

This is from the UK edition of Rolling Stone, the American music paper. There are plenty of misspellings and typos, these are from the original. There’s also some racism expressed.

They are the people you may see on the fringe of things, at free concerts shouting out for their favourite football team when everyone else wants to listen to the music, hanging around outside of the Roundhouse trying to annoy people with long hair, or you may see them just hanging around on the street. They are the kids who have short cropped hair, wear boots and levis with braces. They don’t really have a name as such, outsiders call them crop-heads, prickle heads, bullet-heads, spike-heads, thin-heads, bother boys, or agro boys.
The lack of a name is strange, for most groups of people with an image of their own eventually get a name, Mods, Rockers, Hippies, Heads. ‘We are not mods really. Some people call us Mohair Men because we wear suits at the weekend, mohair men waiting for the agro. We’re just sort of stylists really because we keep in with the styles.’
The thing that they are known by is the gang and the area they come from. Like Mile-end, the Highbury, the Angel. The gang will have a hardcore of members with the rest of the bullet heads in that area supporting this gang against gangs from other areas. ‘There’s about 30 of us here from the Town (Summerstown), you know, King’s Cross and all of them areas. If we ever got into trouble, the geezer’s down there’d back us up; like there was 120 over the Hampstead Fair, geezer’s we knew, and everyone would back us up if we was in trouble.’
Trouble is the key activity of the gangs. Known as a ‘bit of agro’ – a bit of aggravation. Trouble can start at some event such as a football match, a free concert ‘like up Parly Hill’ or at just about any other time. At the Hampstead Fair ‘all the rival gangs, they all meet up there. Holloway, Highbury, and all them mob, like, and they all stick together, they’re all one mob and we’re the other mob.’
Trouble starts in several ways. It may be planned days ahead over some rivalry between two gangs, or it may just break out over some small incident. ‘You just see a face you don’t like. You know, I mean we get a bit of aggravation with the guys up there. All you hear all the time is the Holloway’s looking for you, the Highbury’s looking for you: and everytime we go there and pull someone about it and say ‘what’s all this trouble with the Town?’, no-one knows nothing about it. So every now and again, like, when people say ‘we hear the little Holloway turned you over’ we can’t have that like, so we have to go up there and turn them over.’
Each gang seems perpetually on the alert for some trouble. Sometimes months will go by without a fight, then suddenly there’ll be a fight every night. ‘We are friends with no-one, no joke. There was a time when we couldn’t go out of our area like unless we were thirty handed. We fucking hit every crew from right round here, up that way St. John’s Wood, The Edgeware Road, Tufnell Park, Archway, Burnt Oak, Mile-end, Kilburn, Holloway, Highbury, just sort of everywhere. We just sort of, about eighteen months ago, went made didn’t we, for about three weeks, getting into fights and whacking crews. We whacked someone from nearly everyone of them areas and they was all after us. There was a lot of agro then.’ That was the time when someone in a car came after the Town with a shotgun. There was some uncertainty as to whether it was a shotgun or an airgun, and if it was a shotgun, whether it had real or blank cartridges. ‘The guy with the gun thought we’d all run like and hide but he came a bit unstuck ‘cos we didn’t. We stood there and fucking waited for it. We he can only shoot two of you can’t he.’ The outcome was that they threw dustbins under the car making it skid up the pavement into a brick wall, then threw bottles. ‘The geezer with the gun, got knocked out, and they says they’d never come down no more, cause they’re all made down that Town.’
Some of the action is centred around football, for most of the gangs support some team. But little of the fighting is with other supporters of London teams; instead it is with supporters of teams from the North and Midlands. The Shed boys are those who support Chelsea (see the slogan ‘Shed’ painted on the walls) who watch the match from the Shed, one of the stands on the ground. Any who is not a Shed boy goes into the Shed is liable to get a kicking. Some of the fighting with other supporters takes part after the match, like at Euston when after a match you can see the crowds of bullet heads roaming in the streets nearby. Other things may follow the match, like kicking in shop windows and taking the cigarettes, or the time a crowd went up to Parliament Hill after a match and threw bottles at the Fleetwood Mac.
The clothes and the walk all fit in with the hard image. The usual gear is levis worn short with braces, tee-shirts, v-necked sweaters or cardigans in blue, khaki, brown, mustard or green. An innovation is the v-necked short sleeved sweater that doesn’t quite reach the waist so there is a hint of braces. Sometimes there are tattoos and sometimes gold signet rings worn two or three at a time. The cropped hair started coming in about three years ago and is probably copied from the spade haircut. And then there are the boots, the most important part of the gear. There are different types of boots and the styles change just as they do with shoes. Members of one gang tend to buy the same kind of boots. The boots probably arrived because a lot of bullet heads were wearing them for work, along with levis, and they’d come home from work in these clothes and what’s the point of changing if you are only going to stand round on the street corner. Then a style developed. ‘Like me, I didn’t start wearing them, we not really, because I thought, well I couldn’t half land a good kick with them, I bought them because everyone else did.’
The boots are one of the symbols of the hard image, and of course are very useful for fighting with. If you go out in your boots you are wearing a very handy weapon that is not so obviously a weapon like a knife. Even when the gang gets dressed up in their mohair suits on a Saturday night the boots are still worn, but then they will be highly polished. The trousers of the suits are worn short like the levis in order to leave room for the boots.
The boots are different colours and the favourite ones change over time. When it first started everyone was wearing tuf boots, Big T with the rubber sole, ‘then these boots came out, they call them Cherry Boots, Cherry Reds, with a toe cap like and sort of yellow trimmings. Then the black ones of these, then Monkey Boots which lace all the way up, and then Doctor Martins came out. Now there’s some new ones, with high backs, they’re just called Stompers, big steel toecap and everthing.
The walk too expresses the toughness. Its a sort of bouncy swagger with the shoulders spread broad. Its a ‘here I come stand out of the way’ walk. When there’s a group going somewhere walking is done in a long crocodile in single file, all hunching along behind the guy in front.
Most of the time seems to be spent waiting for something to happen, a bit of aggravation or a ‘caper’. During the week there is little else to do but hang about on the street, in cafes or Youth Clubs (if they haven’t been barred). Usually its the case that a few members of the gang have been barred from a club and so the rest don’t go because they don’t want to split up. The weekend is when it all happens. Those that are working have money and so maybe there is drinking or dancing at clubs. Clubs are not so popular as they used to be a year or so back. Then it was the Tiles and the Scene and other clubs round Wardour Street. A few now may make it down to Birdland. The weekend may also be the time for a caper down to the coast, Southend, Clacton or Brighton. Sundays it may be the Lido for swimming and a film in the evening if there is something on that they fancy, like a cowboy. Clint Eastwood goes down big. Strangely so did The Graduate. Tough films are liked best. Sometimes there are parties when peoples parents are away. Drinking mainly and the occasional smoke or pills.
The thing is that most do not have money to do much, especially during the week. If you’ve got a job and you’re not drawing just your £2 10s. 0d., from the Youth Employment the wage is likely to be around £10 or £15 a week, in labouring, apprenticeships and unskilled jobs. It is like they are in between everything. Not long out of school with a bit of money but not enough to go drinking in the pub every night, and in any case there is the age problem in pubs for most are between 15 and 17. To young and not enough money to buy cars or scooters. Sometimes someone will have a firm’s van which will be used to bomb off to the coast at the week-end. Too old to get much out of youth clubs. The girls they grew up with are now going out with older guys and only a few of the gang have girls. In some gangs girls are important. Squabbles over another gang’s girls may be a source of aggravation. But with other gangs girls are conspicuously absent and if some gets a girl he spends more time away from gang activities.
So the excitement comes from the action. But even that is avoided by some who can’t afford any more nickings. ‘Like that’s why we don’t go down the coast at the holidays no more. We’ve got too many up against us as it is. If you’ve got a lot of previous you’re doomed you are. If a copper gets hold of you and he recognises that you come from the Town you’re doomed to a fucking good hiding before you ever get near that nick.’ Like other groups there is the feeling that you get caught for the wrong things. That the bust is always the phoney one when you are not guilty. ‘We used to be really fighting all the time and they could never get any of us. Then they really started coming down, nicking you for just being there. Then a lot of it died down cause we gave a couple of them a good hiding. These two blokes came at us so we went at them, then one starts shouting that he was a police officer. It was too late then.’ The arrests are for insulting behaviour or assault. ‘I got one for using an offensive weapon. I got a good hiding off all these students and I got a nickering for it. I threw a bottle at them when they run. One of the geezer’s got his nose cut off.’

The Great Skinhead Reunion Brighton


As well as the gang fights there are fights between just two people. In a team fight between gangs anything goes but if two people fight and it looks fair they are left to it. ‘You get one geezer fighting another geezer, it’s a straightener like, he might be looking for so and so and he might go up and say ‘right you, a straightener, then we leave ‘em alone.’
Some of the gangs like the Highbury and the Angel have leaders but many of the smaller gangs have different leaders for different activities. Some people are listened to more if an event is planned. Someone will organise something ‘like going to Southend for the weekend or a crew going out and whacking someone.’ Then of course there are those that are the best fighters. ‘There are fighters and then there are cranks, madmen. Like Tony. Everytime we have a fight some cunt he just wants to stomp them into the ground. He goes mad and starts shouting ‘Stomp Stomp’. You know that cunt what was on the floor at Ally Pally. Tony had this huge broom pole and was stomping him for five minutes.
‘We had a bit of agro up there like.’ There are other targets as well as rival gangs. The targets are other easily identifiable groups such as students, Pakistanis and Greeks. Weirdos and students they cannot understand. ‘What I hate about weirdos is that the majority of them is students. We’re paying for them to go to their colleges to get educated so they can help us run the country, it may not be my taxes but everyone contributes like, if it weren’t for them your tax would go down even if it was just a penny. Then those fucking peace demonstrations. The’re all shouting about fucking love and peace and that then they go down Grosvenor Square smashing windows and we get a bill from the Americans; we fucking owe them enough dough as it is.’ The feeling is that if weirdos want to dress strangely and be dirty ‘they’re right states they are, right two and eights’ then they are entitled to get done over. One way to get a weirdo is to jump him if he does not move off the pavement out of the way of the gang, or to wait in the entrance tunnels of the tube and to rush at him and jostle him. Sometimes landing a few kicks. ‘Weirdos is no fun to jump though because they don’t fight back, they just curl up while you kick them.’
Weirdos are also hated because they are friends with foreigners – Bubbles (Bubble and squeaks – Greeks) and ‘them Black Irishmen from the north – Pakkis.’ ‘We can’t stand the Pakki’s – we all went down Drummond Street one night, down the road that is, like its all infested with Pakkis. About fifty of us went down fucking putting bottles through their restaurants and that was a good laugh that was. It got in all the papers, how the Pakkis were asking the police if they could arm themselves and form vigilante groups.’ And of course the Irish. ‘I don’t know why we don’t fucking give them back Ireland if they give us back Camden Town.’
Strangely they don’t dislike West Indians. It might be because they dig the West Indian Music and dance their dances. Double D – Desmond Decker, Arthur Connely, Roland Owl, Otis Redding, The Ethiopians, The Skatallites, Buster, The Untouchables, and Max Romeo. Sometimes a bit of bubble gum creeps in but mostly its Blue Beat, Ska, Rock-Steady and Reggae music. The Blacks are admired by the gangs. ‘Like they were the first with the short hair. They’re alright the Rude boys. Rudies hang out with Rudies mostly, and with white girls, and Black fight Blacks and Whites fight Whites and that’s it.’

 
 
 

 

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Great Skinhead Reunion Brighton Information

BUY TICKETS

Great Skinhead Reunion Brighton 2022 Line up

Line up so far 9-10-11-12 June 2022

Established in 2011 The Great Skinhead Reunion Brighton was designed to bring Skinhead back home to where it was born in the 1960´s When the Mods and Rockers came to Brighton and hit the headlines, establishing their own youth culture. From those early Mods came the Skinheads, who embraced the new music coming in from Jamaica known as Ska. The Jamaican immigrants to the UK mixing with British working class kids with style and attitude, to form a new youth culture.

The Great Skinhead Reunion poster

The second wave of Skinhead began to build in the mid 70´s with the birth of Punk Rock in 76, this time musically the Skinheads adopting the Punk rock sound and aggro of the football terraces, Working class bands forming and putting out their own angry antisocial messages in music, frightening the media into a frenzy of misinformation, who promoted the image of hyper violent bootboys and girls on the loose. This was a time of major political unrest in the UK and extremist groups tried to recruit within working class culture, often targeting Skinheads and football supporters, in the hope of win one, win them all pack mentality.

By 79 The skinheads were on the fightback and in London with bands like Madness and Badmanners, linked with British Midlands such as Coventry bands The Specials. The Selector and The Beat and created the 2tone label, which firmly mixed black and white youth together against this media onslaught.

In 1981 came the next wave. Oi! music was unleashed by Sounds magazine, bringing back the angry streetpunk energy and protest into the Skinhead subculture, once again giving the media and movie makers something to chew on.

Over the years the pendulum swung back and forth, but against all the odds Skinhead in its genuine form found its way across the world, connecting the Working class of Britain with mainland Europe, during the cold war even into communist Eastern block, then across to USA, South America, and in modern times, Indonesia to pretty much every westernised nation.

At the Great Skinhead Reunion Brighton you will find the most genuine, real and very friendly welcoming event in Skinhead history. Real people who have lived the life, mixing with new faces just coming in. We actively search for new acts to showcase and tour. We reunite old bands and give them a stage to play, we encourage scene DJ´s from across the worldwide scene, to play and network. Together all of us taking the scene forward, learning from previous mistakes, without selling out our principals of a true Working class subculture. The reunion invites everyone to attend, be you a skinhead or just someone wanting to be part of the event, interested and wanting a great fun weekend. We also actively support charities every year.

United We Stand!

TICKETS

FULL 3 DAYS EVENT, YOUR WRISTBAND IS VALID THROUGH OUT, YOU CAN USE IT FOR AS LITTLE, OR AS MUCH AS YOU WANT. THE EVENT WILL SELL OUT.

WRISTBANDS GIVE YOU FULL ACCESS TO ALL THE EVENT, THREE FULL DAYS AND NIGHTS OF ENTERTAINMENT, 12 BANDS, 10 DJ’S PLUS A  SPECIAL PRE PARTY  BEACH BBQ ON THURSDAY PRE PARTY

The line-up maybe subject to change, as so many band members and dj’s are involved, alcohol, world wars and famine can be unforeseen, but the Great Skinhead Reunion, is more about coming to Brighton to see all your friends and making some more, for 3 full days of mayhem.

SKINHEAD ONLY HOTELS .

Add to your experience, by getting a room in our Skinhead only hotels. Conveniently located, with a short walk to the venue, and no moaning neighbours to worry about. The rooms vary in size and cost, to fit your needs. all within an easy walk to the skinhead reunion venue. We have hotels exclusive to the Great Skinhead Reunion guests and bands.  Party party !! please email subcultz@gmail.com with your requirements, to be booked into the Skinhead Hotels

For those on a low budget, its worth checking Hostels and campsites, but my advice, is to get in the reserved hotels, for a nice stress free, clean and comfortable holiday in Brighton.

TRAVEL INFORMATION

Brighton is situated on the south coast of England, approximately one hour from London. London Gatwick is the nearest airport. There are regular direct trains and National Express buses. The next nearest is Heathrow, We Strongly advise NOT to fly to Stansted or Luton as this is a long way and expensive UK public transport, but if you have no choice then use National Express buses from those airports, which you need to book in advance to get cheaper rates, and you risk losing valuable drinking time

The nearest ferry port serving mainland Europe is Newhaven -Dieppe . Newhaven is about 20 min drive to Brighton. Dover is about 2 hours to Brighton

PARKING ZONES – one of the worst aspects of Brighton, is a lack of affordable parking. my advice is to use street parking on the suburbs of Brighton, its a reasonably safe place. a good bus service will take you into brighton centre (churchill square) and a short walk from there to the sea front. worth allowing the extra hours work, to save yourself serious parking charges. Wilson Avenue is about the nearest free street parking to the venue, jump on a local bus back into town.

All Event Enquiries email Symond at subcultz@gmail.com. phone (uk) 07733096571

The Facebook community group Facebook group

Facebook page

Brighton can lay claim to being a big part of the birth of Skinheads. During the Mods and Rockers battles of the 1960’s when London lads would descend on the South Coast for bank holidays to Peacock and cause ‘Bovver’ the term Skinhead was born, to describe the short haired Mods.

Becoming probably the biggest and longest standing of all the youth fashion subcultures, Skinhead has matured and now become a worldwide community. Distinctly recognized by almost military shaven head, boots and braces. The real skinhead is a working class product of the British council estate ‘salt of the earth character’ fiercely proud of his identity,with an obsession for clothing, style and music, equaled only with his love of beer.

On the first weekend of every June, since 2011, Brighton has seen an ever increasing number of Skinheads and their lovely Skinhead Girls invade Brighton. Boots, Braces, pristine clothing and a cheeky smile. Attracting scene members from right across the globe, to Madeira Drive, overlooking the beach. A full three days of Skinhead related entertainment is laid on. DJ’s playing hyper rare vinyl, from the early days of Jamaican Ska, through to modern day Street Punk and Oi. Live bands hit the stage of the Volks bar each night. With various aftershows happening until the early hours, to keep the party buzzing.

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Mods Of Your Generation Interview – The Electric Stars – “Beautiful Music For Beautiful People”

Mods Of Your Generation Interview – The Electric Stars – “Beautiful Music For Beautiful People” MODS OF YOUR GENERATION·SUNDAY, 1 SEPTEMBER 2019What can say about The Electric Stars that hasn’t already been said?Formed in 2011 the band have featured in countless magazines and had many glowing reviews, with their album “Sonic Candy Soul” making the Top 12 of 2012 best albums in ‘Scootering Magazine’ alongside the likes of Paul Weller. Recently front man Jason Edge featured in the September 2019 issue of Scootering with an incredible two pager. They have the incredible ability of taking inspiration from all the best music from any era and blending it together to create original, new modern music. Their Psychedelic Rock n Roll sound and their upbeat soulful vocals sets them aside from others. They have one mission and that is to make “Beautiful Music For Beautiful People” and that is exactly what they do. Personally i would like to thank them for providing an alternative. I believe “music is the soundtrack to our lives” If you agree then you need the Electric stars in yours. To find out more about the band continue reading below

 The band formed in 2011 how did it all happen? We formed while we were in the studio recording Sonic Candy Soul. The Album was already written & as myself, Keef & Andy went in to record we didn’t have a drummer. We used a guy who was hanging around with us & began laying down the tracks. The whole concept began to fall into place, the sound, the look, the vibe and the name, while we were recording. As soon as we finished it, that’s when we found our drummer, Johnny. 

 You signed to Detour Records in February 2012 and released a single in March. Then released your debut album ‘Sonic Candy Soul‘ in September. What was the reaction to the single and album? Once we had the Masters of the Album we started to look for the right label. Dizzy at Detour has always been great with us. He has great History on the Scene and is a Fab guy! The first single came out & got a brilliant response. In fact you can’t get a copy of that anymore! When the Album came out, I think we were happy with it, well most of us were ha ha, but you never know how the public will like it. But the response we have had since day 1 for the Album has been fantastic. Wherever we go around the UK now people have it, play it and talk about it. It’s a great feeling to know that people dig our songs.

THE ELECTRIC STARS Blind Album Sonic Candy Soul How did you come up with the name of the band – ‘The Electric Stars’? The name.. A lot of people ask about it! When we were in the studio everything was kind of in a melting pot. The image of the band is very important. We are very influenced by the late 60’s early 70’s sounds. So it is natural we dress that way. Lots of colour, vibrant imagery, psychedelic patters ya know. The name is suggestive. Like our music & vibe The Electric Stars suggests something! I’m not a fan of dull music & dull clothes. I like my Rock n Roll Stars to look Godlike! Local pub bands might dress in jeans & t shirt. The Electric Stars dress to kill. 

 The album was featured as one of the Top 12 albums of 2012 in ‘Scootering Magazine’ alongside Paul Weller. That must have been amazing, Tell me bout it? One of the 1st reviews we got for Sonic was in Scootering and it was Ace. We were a bit shocked but blown away with the write up! Then at the end of the year, they do a round up of the best Albums & Sonic Candy Soul is in there alongside Paul Weller… Totally Cosmic! In fact now you’ve reminded me about that, It’s brought back the way we felt & it was very humble. To get a review like that makes you appreciate every bit of support from everyone! 

In 2014 the band recorded their own version of Belfast Boy, A song first released in 1970 by Don Fardon. Tell me about the reasoning behind releasing the track and how the idea developed? Belfast boy came about from a chance meeting I had with Eamon Holmes. He is a massive George Best fan like me. We got chatting about music and fashion. He is a big fan of The Electric Stars. He reminded me of the Don Fardon song and said that he didn’t think that anyone had ever recorded it since. We got in touch with the GB Foundation and the MUFC Foundation, both said they were behind the idea! Then we got a load of Players & Celebs to write about Georgie in the sleeve notes. It was a bit of an ambitious release but it got to Number 15 in the BBC Indie Charts.. Nice! The most pleasing thing for me is the B side. I wrote The Brightest Star about one of my Heroes and to have his sister say it is one of the best things ever recorded about George means more than the chart placing.

Belfast Boy – The Electric Stars | George Best Charity Single  ‘We Love You’ released in 2018 & ‘Sunshine’ released in 2017 are two of my favourite tracks. Which songs do you like performing live from your incredible repertoire? We Love You and Sunshine are both on the new Album – Velvet Elvis, The Only Lover Left Alive! To be honest I like all our tunes, we don’t let any bum songs get through quality control ha! Picking favourites is tough because they all mean so much to me. 136 is special.. It was written over in Florida & I really wanted to get the message across about this new band.. What we were.. Where we had come from.. What the message was going to be! Music for me is not just going through the motions. I can’t stand what is happening to music in 2019. Beautiful Music for Beautiful People is what we try to do. That lyric sums up The Electric Stars. We are trying to keep the flame burning and that’s important! 

The Electric Stars – Sunshine ☀️ You headlined the ‘100 club’ which had an incredible response. Tell me about the night and what is was like performing at such an iconic musical venue? The 100 Club is a wonderful venue. Probably one of the most Iconic in the world! Most of my Heroes have played there and to go on last to a sold-out crowd was off the scale! All the bands on the night were Fab. Turner, Darron J Connett, The Sha La La’s all played out of their skin. It was a bit of an experience for sure. I hope we get to play there again as it’s a special stage to be on.On the back of the gig we got loads of press & our good friends at Scootering gave us a Fab double page spread. The support they have given us since day 1 has been Brilliant. 

The Electric Stars – 100 Club – 2016The new single has been released ‘The only lover left alive’ where can we buy or download the album? The new album should have been out so long ago. Just down to laziness on the bands part I guess! The Only Lover Left Alive, Sunshine, We Love You & Loaded With Regrets are all on the new Album. Its gonna have a more stripped back feel to it.. More acoustic & less polished I think. More like the live Stars & less produced.

The Only Lover Left Alive – The Electric StarsDescribe the bands musical style and would you compare it to another? Mmmmm, well we are not ashamed of our influences. Retro, yes for sure, but with our own songwriting style! You can hear plenty of Who, Stones, Kinks, Faces for sure. But you can also hear Bowie, Bolan, Beatles & Floyd. I love American music, so Hendrix, Velvets, Doors & Love. Mix it all up with Blues & Grooves.. What do you get? Beautiful Music for Beautiful People! 

Who are your musical influences as individuals or as a band from any era past or present? The Record Collection is huge man. But if you’re going to push me.. The Rolling Stones! I will gladly fight anyone in the car park who tries to tell me they are not the Greatest Rock n Roll Band in the world. There is a little bit of Stones in everyone & there is a little bit of everything in the Stones. 

 The Electric Stars are a Manchester based band, the city has an incredible history of producing many great artist and bands. Did this inspire you to get into music and to take up playing your instruments? Manchester is a wonderful city. We are great at most things. But, when it comes to Music, we are quite Spectacular! It’s a working class city that is big enough to challenge London and small enough to create its own culture and swagger. Being in a band in Manchester is something we just did! The Hollies, 10cc, Buzzcocks, Joy Division, Mondays, Roses, Oasis.. Not bad is it for a bunch of Mancs ha ha!  

 British actor & musician Gary Shail is a huge fan of the band and asked you to perform at the Quad 40 event on Brighton Pier. What was it like to be asked to perform at such an iconic event celebrating the 40th anniversary of a timeless cult film Quadrophenia? We met Gary a long time ago at a gig. He loves live music and used to be in a band before he was an Actor. He liked our sound and we became friends. Last year he called me up and said “Jay, I’ve got an idea & I want the Stars to be part of it”. What an idea it turned out to be! Quad 40 was absolutely Fantastic! To be asked to be part of the Anniversary of one of the most Iconic British Films ever made.. WOW It really was a Brilliant event. Still buzzing from it to be h honest. 

 Do you have anything you would like share with all your supporters? I think if I’m going to finish on something it’s just to say a huge thank you to everyone who has supported us. The people who come to the gigs & buy our music. The people who write about us & book us to play all over the UK and Europe. We write our own material and we never take it for granted that people prefer us to cabaret. We want to make a difference & in 2019 that is getting harder than ever! Thanks to you Johnny for giving us the opportunity to tell people about the band & see you all soon!

The Electric Stars – We Love You   Copyright © Johnny Bradley (Mods Of Your Generation) & The Electric Stars, 2019, All Rights Reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced without the permission of the authors.

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Mods Of Your Generation Interview – The Electric Stars – “Beautiful Music For Beautiful People”

Mods Of Your Generation Interview – The Electric Stars – “Beautiful Music For Beautiful People” MODS OF YOUR GENERATION·SUNDAY, 1 SEPTEMBER 2019What can say about The Electric Stars that hasn’t already been said?Formed in 2011 the band have featured in countless magazines and had many glowing reviews, with their album “Sonic Candy Soul” making the Top 12 of 2012 best albums in ‘Scootering Magazine’ alongside the likes of Paul Weller. Recently front man Jason Edge featured in the September 2019 issue of Scootering with an incredible two pager. They have the incredible ability of taking inspiration from all the best music from any era and blending it together to create original, new modern music. Their Psychedelic Rock n Roll sound and their upbeat soulful vocals sets them aside from others. They have one mission and that is to make “Beautiful Music For Beautiful People” and that is exactly what they do. Personally i would like to thank them for providing an alternative. I believe “music is the soundtrack to our lives” If you agree then you need the Electric stars in yours. To find out more about the band continue reading below

 The band formed in 2011 how did it all happen? We formed while we were in the studio recording Sonic Candy Soul. The Album was already written & as myself, Keef & Andy went in to record we didn’t have a drummer. We used a guy who was hanging around with us & began laying down the tracks. The whole concept began to fall into place, the sound, the look, the vibe and the name, while we were recording. As soon as we finished it, that’s when we found our drummer, Johnny. 

 You signed to Detour Records in February 2012 and released a single in March. Then released your debut album ‘Sonic Candy Soul‘ in September. What was the reaction to the single and album? Once we had the Masters of the Album we started to look for the right label. Dizzy at Detour has always been great with us. He has great History on the Scene and is a Fab guy! The first single came out & got a brilliant response. In fact you can’t get a copy of that anymore! When the Album came out, I think we were happy with it, well most of us were ha ha, but you never know how the public will like it. But the response we have had since day 1 for the Album has been fantastic. Wherever we go around the UK now people have it, play it and talk about it. It’s a great feeling to know that people dig our songs.

THE ELECTRIC STARS Blind Album Sonic Candy Soul How did you come up with the name of the band – ‘The Electric Stars’? The name.. A lot of people ask about it! When we were in the studio everything was kind of in a melting pot. The image of the band is very important. We are very influenced by the late 60’s early 70’s sounds. So it is natural we dress that way. Lots of colour, vibrant imagery, psychedelic patters ya know. The name is suggestive. Like our music & vibe The Electric Stars suggests something! I’m not a fan of dull music & dull clothes. I like my Rock n Roll Stars to look Godlike! Local pub bands might dress in jeans & t shirt. The Electric Stars dress to kill. 

 The album was featured as one of the Top 12 albums of 2012 in ‘Scootering Magazine’ alongside Paul Weller. That must have been amazing, Tell me bout it? One of the 1st reviews we got for Sonic was in Scootering and it was Ace. We were a bit shocked but blown away with the write up! Then at the end of the year, they do a round up of the best Albums & Sonic Candy Soul is in there alongside Paul Weller… Totally Cosmic! In fact now you’ve reminded me about that, It’s brought back the way we felt & it was very humble. To get a review like that makes you appreciate every bit of support from everyone! 

In 2014 the band recorded their own version of Belfast Boy, A song first released in 1970 by Don Fardon. Tell me about the reasoning behind releasing the track and how the idea developed? Belfast boy came about from a chance meeting I had with Eamon Holmes. He is a massive George Best fan like me. We got chatting about music and fashion. He is a big fan of The Electric Stars. He reminded me of the Don Fardon song and said that he didn’t think that anyone had ever recorded it since. We got in touch with the GB Foundation and the MUFC Foundation, both said they were behind the idea! Then we got a load of Players & Celebs to write about Georgie in the sleeve notes. It was a bit of an ambitious release but it got to Number 15 in the BBC Indie Charts.. Nice! The most pleasing thing for me is the B side. I wrote The Brightest Star about one of my Heroes and to have his sister say it is one of the best things ever recorded about George means more than the chart placing.

Belfast Boy – The Electric Stars | George Best Charity Single  ‘We Love You’ released in 2018 & ‘Sunshine’ released in 2017 are two of my favourite tracks. Which songs do you like performing live from your incredible repertoire? We Love You and Sunshine are both on the new Album – Velvet Elvis, The Only Lover Left Alive! To be honest I like all our tunes, we don’t let any bum songs get through quality control ha! Picking favourites is tough because they all mean so much to me. 136 is special.. It was written over in Florida & I really wanted to get the message across about this new band.. What we were.. Where we had come from.. What the message was going to be! Music for me is not just going through the motions. I can’t stand what is happening to music in 2019. Beautiful Music for Beautiful People is what we try to do. That lyric sums up The Electric Stars. We are trying to keep the flame burning and that’s important! 

The Electric Stars – Sunshine ☀️ You headlined the ‘100 club’ which had an incredible response. Tell me about the night and what is was like performing at such an iconic musical venue? The 100 Club is a wonderful venue. Probably one of the most Iconic in the world! Most of my Heroes have played there and to go on last to a sold-out crowd was off the scale! All the bands on the night were Fab. Turner, Darron J Connett, The Sha La La’s all played out of their skin. It was a bit of an experience for sure. I hope we get to play there again as it’s a special stage to be on.On the back of the gig we got loads of press & our good friends at Scootering gave us a Fab double page spread. The support they have given us since day 1 has been Brilliant. 

The Electric Stars – 100 Club – 2016The new single has been released ‘The only lover left alive’ where can we buy or download the album? The new album should have been out so long ago. Just down to laziness on the bands part I guess! The Only Lover Left Alive, Sunshine, We Love You & Loaded With Regrets are all on the new Album. Its gonna have a more stripped back feel to it.. More acoustic & less polished I think. More like the live Stars & less produced.

The Only Lover Left Alive – The Electric StarsDescribe the bands musical style and would you compare it to another? Mmmmm, well we are not ashamed of our influences. Retro, yes for sure, but with our own songwriting style! You can hear plenty of Who, Stones, Kinks, Faces for sure. But you can also hear Bowie, Bolan, Beatles & Floyd. I love American music, so Hendrix, Velvets, Doors & Love. Mix it all up with Blues & Grooves.. What do you get? Beautiful Music for Beautiful People! 

Who are your musical influences as individuals or as a band from any era past or present? The Record Collection is huge man. But if you’re going to push me.. The Rolling Stones! I will gladly fight anyone in the car park who tries to tell me they are not the Greatest Rock n Roll Band in the world. There is a little bit of Stones in everyone & there is a little bit of everything in the Stones. 

 The Electric Stars are a Manchester based band, the city has an incredible history of producing many great artist and bands. Did this inspire you to get into music and to take up playing your instruments? Manchester is a wonderful city. We are great at most things. But, when it comes to Music, we are quite Spectacular! It’s a working class city that is big enough to challenge London and small enough to create its own culture and swagger. Being in a band in Manchester is something we just did! The Hollies, 10cc, Buzzcocks, Joy Division, Mondays, Roses, Oasis.. Not bad is it for a bunch of Mancs ha ha!  

 British actor & musician Gary Shail is a huge fan of the band and asked you to perform at the Quad 40 event on Brighton Pier. What was it like to be asked to perform at such an iconic event celebrating the 40th anniversary of a timeless cult film Quadrophenia? We met Gary a long time ago at a gig. He loves live music and used to be in a band before he was an Actor. He liked our sound and we became friends. Last year he called me up and said “Jay, I’ve got an idea & I want the Stars to be part of it”. What an idea it turned out to be! Quad 40 was absolutely Fantastic! To be asked to be part of the Anniversary of one of the most Iconic British Films ever made.. WOW It really was a Brilliant event. Still buzzing from it to be h honest. 

 Do you have anything you would like share with all your supporters? I think if I’m going to finish on something it’s just to say a huge thank you to everyone who has supported us. The people who come to the gigs & buy our music. The people who write about us & book us to play all over the UK and Europe. We write our own material and we never take it for granted that people prefer us to cabaret. We want to make a difference & in 2019 that is getting harder than ever! Thanks to you Johnny for giving us the opportunity to tell people about the band & see you all soon!

The Electric Stars – We Love You   Copyright © Johnny Bradley (Mods Of Your Generation) & The Electric Stars, 2019, All Rights Reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced without the permission of the authors.

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Mods Of Your Generation Interview – The Touch – They’re back after 40 years with their new album – Lost and Found

Mods Of Your Generation Interview – The Touch – They’re back after 40 years with their new album – Lost and Found MODS OF YOUR GENERATION·TUESDAY, 2 JULY 2019· 

The Touch are back after 40 years with their brand new album ‘Lost and Found’They were a mod revival band in the 70’s recording one album which was confusingly released by their record company under the wrong name. as well as know track titles or any other information about the band.I was kindly given a copy of the NEW album before its release and became instantly hooked to find out more about the previous album and the confusion around the first albums release. There may of been confusion around the previous album however there is no confusing who they are now. Whether your a fan of great music or a new fan of The Touch, whether you just like the Mod revival, or brilliantly written creative and relatable music. I suggest this album needs to be part of your collection.I was so excited about the new and old album that i immediately needed to interview them to find out more. I am also incredibly intrigued to see what they do next.

(1) Where do you find inspiration for your song lyrics & music? The music usually starts with an idea that magically arrives’ in the head, either as a riff, or a melody. It’s rare that one starts out with the idea to create a particular progression, and more often the rest of the music gets built around that one idea. Lyrics are a different matter. They are almost always either autobiographical or about something we’ve observed. For example, we must have been in the depths of teenage misery when we wrote Grey Day and I’m a Stranger as they are certainly based on real events. On the other hand, Walk in the Park, and Stop Stop are social commentaries. (2) How and when was the band formed? An early version of the band (The Flames) came together as a unit around 1976 with Son Jack on lead guitar and vocals, Gerry on rhythm guitar, Charlie on drums and Jim Henebury on bass. When Jim left, for a while we were 2 guitars and drums, weird but it sort of worked. We used to rehearse at Alaska Studios in Waterloo round the corner from the famous Wellington pub where many of the great early mod revival bands used to play. The studio was owned by ex-Vibrators bassist Pat Collier, and it’s thanks to him that we got started properly, but more about that later. 

(3) When & where was your first gig? As The Flames our first gig was the Rochester Castle, Stoke Newington November 3, 1977 opening for the Stukas. We also supported them every other Thursday that month. As The Touch, our debut was at the Nashville on Dec 29, 1979 supporting the Bishops. 

 (4) Has anyone played a major role in your music career? We’d have to say that Alan May, Dizzy Holmes, and Albert Cummings are the three kings for us right now as they are responsible for us being back together. Another big shout out goes to Pat Collier who got us started in the first place. We were a scrappy 3 piece called The Flames rehearsing at his Alaska Studios in London in ’77 when he helped us out playing bass, booking our first gigs, and helping us with promotion. Having him produce this album was brilliant and brought things full circle. (5) Your new album was recently released. What has the reaction been? We’ve been blown away by the comments and overall reaction, really, just staggering. You usually expect a spread of opinions in the feedback and so far it’s been just amazing.

(6) What were the biggest challenges in doing this album? That’s easy. Time. Son Jack lives in the states, Dave is in Devon, and Charlie and Gerry are in London, so trying to find time when we could all be in the same place at the same time was hard. It’s amazing we managed to get together as often as we did, and over a 6 month period Son Jack flew to London 5 times to get this done.The second biggest challenge was re-learning songs that none of us had touched in 40 years. This involved converting lots of old dusty cassettes into MP3’s and hunting through old boxes of lyrics to track down the words and song structures. (7) Where can fans buy or download the old & new albums? Pretty much everywhere! There are a bunch of options:1/ Via Paypal (UK and Europe only and incl s&h) send £13 to g.czerniawski@uel.ac.uk2/ Worldwide CD fulfilment via CDbaby at https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/thetouch43/ For streaming and downloads it’s on Amazon, iTunes, Spotify, Google Music, Deezer, Napster, Pandora, Shazam, Tidal, Youtube Music and a bunch of other places. 

 (8) Have you got any future gigs coming up and what’s next for the band? We have just one more gig on the books at the Mod Weekender in Brighton on August 24th. We’re at the Hope and Ruin in Queen Street and are playing a double bill with the Teenbeats. Last time we played together was at Marquee in ’79 I think so this will be a very special gig. We’re also pricing it for the fans at £13 on the night, or £10 in advance at http://bit/ly/TouchTeenbeats.

 (9) What’s the story behind the first album being released under the wrong name? We have theories but would risk getting sued for defamation of character if we shared them J. Let’s put it down to being young, naive, and star-struck at having an album at the age of 18. Twenty/twenty hindsight and all that. 

 (10) Can we look forward to another great third album? Haha! Mate, we’ve just finished this one and that took 40 years! Seriously though, it’s too early to tell but if we think we can do a knockout third album, and there’s demand for more then we’ll definitely consider the idea. (11) After the band disbanded after confusion over release of first album, what did each of the members go on to do musically or other? Son Jack: I didn’t play for over twenty years. It was only after moving to the states that I got the blues bug, and started trying to learn how to play it. I started out playing solo, then duo, then full on 4-piece band and enjoyed a 10 year career playing blues all over the world and recording 4 albums. Best part was getting to meet some amazing people like BB King, and we even got to open for Chuck Berry in the legendary Duck Room in St Louis.Gerry: I spent a few years playing in different bands including the tail end of The Fixations, Bad Karma Beckons, Waving Not Drowning and Mojo Hand. I’ve got a ‘day job’ but the music side of things has never really left my soul so keep my hand in one way or another. 

Charlie: Although I played on the early demo’s included on the Detour release, I had left the band before the first album was recorded so didn’t actually play on it. Instead I went back to education and retook some exams. Played drums for garage band called Bad Karma Beckons with Gerry, they released an album, Mutate and Survive, in 1986. Currently also playing in a couple of active London bands namely The Phobics and The Beatpack.”Dave: After the touch I played in a number of new romantic groups in London including The Marines, and concentrated on learning the keyboards and developing my song writing. In 2000 I spent ten years living in Catalonia and during that time played in a popular dropzone band. 

(12) When did the band decide to get back together and why? We got “re-discovered” through an insane set of unlikely events about 2 years ago. It’s a really long story but in short, Alan May and Dizzy Holmes tracked us down. Alan urged us to consider getting back together, and Dizzy wanted to do an official re-release of the original album on his Paisley Archive label. Alan also put us in touch with London promoter, Albert Cummings, who offered us a gig. So basically, everything was lined up and we had a reason to get back together. Without Alan, Dizzy and Albert I don’t think we would have bothered so we’re incredibly grateful for their support and encouragement. (13) Where would you like to see the band in a few years and what can we expect from you in the future? We’d LIKE to see us being waited on hand and foot on a private Island in the Caribbean but that probably isn’t going to happen. We’re in this for the love of it, not the money so we’re not on the career path that the younger more ambitious acts are. As long as we’re making music together, even if occasionally, that will be a beautiful thing. (14) Do you have a message for fans and a response to the reaction the band has had from the new album? That’s an easy one. THANK YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF OUR HEARTS! You’ve made a bunch of old geezers feel like teenagers again. 

 (15) How would you describe the bands musical style if you were to compare it to another band? That’s a tough question as our musical style doesn’t easily fit one definition, as it evolved over time. We started out playing rock’n’roll (Gene Vincent, Johnny Kidd, Chuck Berry etc) in Charlie’s basement around 1973, and then when punk rolled around we got into that for a couple of years. Then we did the whole mod revival thing which also blended with Power Pop. So, you’ll hear elements of all those phases in the songs. 

Images from The Touch archives

 Interview conducted by Johnny Bradley for Mods Of Your GenerationInterview (c) Johnny Bradley & Mods Of Your Generation 2019

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Mods Of Your Generation Interview – Irish Jack Lyons – 40th Anniversary Of Quadrophenia

Mods Of Your Generation Interview – Irish Jack Lyons – 40th Anniversary Of Quadrophenia MODS OF YOUR GENERATION·FRIDAY, 28 SEPTEMBER 2018· Mods Of Your Generation conducted an interview with the legendary “Irish” Jack Lyons to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Quadrophenia the film. The man who inspired Pete Townshend to create the film, We would like to thank Jack for his contribution to Quadrophenia and to the Mod scene. Also a massive thankyou for answering some questions for the MOYG Community. To conjunct with the filming in 1978 which is the 40th anniversary of FILMING not film release, Irish Jack started having meetings with Franc Roddam until just after the end of August. Moon died on 7 September while he was taking a week’s break back in Cork, He flew back the next morning. He started writing scripts for official screen writer David Humphreys round about the second week of September. The first camera ran on 28th September and the legend of Quadrophenia begun. 

 (1) As many Quadrophenia Fans are aware Jimmy the main character from Quadropheina was based on you. Were you similar to Jimmy in the 1960’s and do you think Phil Daniels played the role well? Yes, I’m a lot like Jimmy. Speed-freak skinny and a born chatter-box. More than 10 have said there’s a facial resemblance. As you will remember from the article you posted about my meeting up with Phil Daniels at Lee International production offices in Wembley, he hadn’t a clue about Mods and he was honest enough to tell me. All he wanted to know was now that he had been casted to play Jimmy/Irish Jack, all he wanted to know was had I ever slapped a copper. Jimmy was a bit of a failed mod. Yes, he had the scooter but like a lot of us at the time it took a rocker friend to fix it for him and he couldn’t hang to to his girl…AND he couldn’t fight. I was a lot like that. Girls scared me to death cos I never knew what to say and I got in a scuffle actually with another mod and I discovered that I didn’t have the right body shape to fight. Not everyone can fight. When I’d be on French Blues I could talk to any girl all night as long as the conversation was about Pete Townshend or The Who. Mod was not always about being the Ace Face, Mod had a lot to do with young guys trying too hard to fit in, lacking in self-confidence and asking themselves the eternal question…’What’s gonna happen to me?’

 (2) Quadropheina has played a major part in many people’s lives and many young people can relate to Jimmy’s Character growing up. Who could you relate to growing up and what movies or bands influenced you? I bought my first record when I was 13 in 1956. I was back in Cork then and attending school. My mother bought me Elvis Presley’s ‘Hound Dog’ with ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ on the b-side. It was a thick ’78 and if you dropped it it smashed into a thousand pieces. I used to be in awe just watching the RCA label rotating on our old record player. My dad was a classical violinist and of course as you’d imagine if he thought his eldest son was playing the devil’s music and using a sweeping brush with string as a guitar he’d have turned purple. I could only play it while he was out. Living in Cork back then in 1956 there wasn’t really any bands or films affecting me, I was by then only a year in long trousers having made my Confirmation the year before. I did spend a lot of time then recording my father on our old Bush tape recorder…wide spools and control buttons the size of piano keys playing classical pieces on his violin. I was 13 and I was an unpaid sound engineer! (3) When moving to London from cork were you a mod before moving and was there a mod scene in cork at that time? No, there was no mod scene anywhere. I moved back to London when I was sixteen-and-a-half in August 1960. Mods didn’t appear until late 1962. (4) What is your favourite genre of music? I don’t have a favourite genre of music. I’m affected by all strains of music. Like a lot of people, I fall in love with certain songs and then something else comes along. For years I was hung up on Jarvis Cocker’s Disco 2000, his biographical account of Deborah, the way he made it sound so personal just threw me across the room. I learned later that Deborah is actually a real person…like all good songs. Common People by Jarvis (well, Pulp) is just another of his great songs. It’s the way he narrates those two songs into biographic form, he is a brilliant song writer….AND story teller. I’m not a fan of rap the way it’s turned young people into rapping about rival neighbourhoods and knife crime. I can’t stand the way these gang rappers refer to their girlfriends and women in general. I think it’s a form of misogyny. (5) If there was a Remake of Quadrophenia who do you think would be a good fit to play Jimmy from today’s young actors. If there was a remake of Quadrophenia I’d turn in my grave. The acquired dictum is..’If its not broken – don’t fix it !’ Nobody is capable of bettering Franc Roddam. Nobody is capable of bettering Phil Daniels.

 (6) How would you like to be remembered. How would I like to be remembered? With a blinding obituary in the Guardian (7) Is there other characters in Quadrophenia that were based on anyone from The Who. I don’t think so. Gary Cooper’s job as a sheet metal fabricator was obviously a nod to a younger Roger Daltrey who was a sheet metal worker for Chase in Shepherd’s Bush. (8) Do you like the track “Irish Jack” by The Who and how did you feel about a song being written about you. The problem with ‘Happy Jack’ was that you couldn’t dance to it. Pete wrote it when he was living in a top floor flat on the corner of Brewer Street and Wardour Street. I used to go up there. In those days you could park a car unlocked. Pete had a fabulous open top1963 Lincoln Continental which he’d leave outside the door overnight and it would still be there in the morning untouched. It’s strange to be answering questions about how I felt about a song like ‘Happy Jack’. There was no escaping it. It has never made me feel special. In 1973 I celebrated my 30th birthday having dinner with Pete at the Five Bridges Hotel, we were playing later at the Newcastle Odeon. I had far too much to drink and should’ve slowed down on the expensive French wine. At some stage I found myself playfully chinning Townshend and almost in the same motion playfully grabbing him by the lapels and saying….’Why the fuck didn’t you write…’And he lived in the sand in the Republic of Ire-land’…Pete grabbed me close to his face and snarled….’Because I couldn’t make it fucking rhyme….’ Loads of people have asked me about that song. Y’see, the problem with muse is that you absolutely don’t do this : ‘What a lovely afternoon. It’s supposed to last until tomorrow. Oh, by the way, I’m writing a song about you.’

 (9) Is there anything else you feel should of been added to the film that was not captured by the scene at that time? Yes there most certainly is….before production finished I went to considerable lengths to impress upon Franc Roddam how cool it would be to end the credits with a list of names of the Mods who had frequented the Goldhawk as a tribute to them. We had dinner somewhere near the office in Beak Street and I had made a list of about 30 names that stood out. Franc’s response in that lovely Cleveland accent of his was that it was a master stroke and would give the film actual authenticity – like a roll of honour. He took the piece of paper away with him and I never saw it again. (10) Is there anything you would like to share with “Mods of your Generation” Community that they may not know about Quadrophenia, The Who and Your Relationship with them. Go to YouTube, type in the bar…’Modrophenia the legend of Irish Jack’ 

Modrophenia – Irish Jack  copyright by Mods of Your GenerationImage – Credit to Irish Jack LyonsInterview conducted by Johnny Bradley for Mods of your Generation

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Anti nowhere League lead singer Animal attacked with Glass

Anti nowhere league ‘Animal’
Animal. Lead singer of Anti nowhere league attacked by glass wielding thug

CCTV images have been issued of a person we would like to identify in connection with a serious assault in #TunbridgeWells.

It is reported that at around 6.20pm on Friday 2 August 2019 a man aged in his 60s was struck with a glass in an area of The Pantiles.

The victim sustained injuries and received treatment at a local hospital.

Investigating officers are continuing to carry out a number of lines of enquiry and are now able to release images of a man who may have important information about the incident.

Tunbridge Wells glass attacker
Man captured in CCTV just before attacking singer with a glass

Anyone who recognises him is asked to call us on 01622 604100 quoting 46/152946/19.

Alternatively, contact the independent charity #Crimestoppers anonymously, by calling 0800 555111 or using the anonymous online form at Crimestoppers-uk.org

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Mods Of Your Generation Interview – Author Claire Mahoney – Welsh Mod: Our Story

Mods Of Your Generation Interview – Author Claire Mahoney – Welsh Mod: Our Story MODS OF YOUR GENERATION·FRIDAY, 28 JUNE 2019

This is a first book from Claire Mahoney and a first about the roots and the revival of the mod subculture in Wales with stunning photography and stories from the people who were influenced by it. Welsh musicians, fashion designers, film directors, DJs, record collectors and scooter enthusiasts as well as some well-known ‘Faces’ give their first hand accounts about what mod means to them and how it has changed their lives. It covers the 60’s through to the present day.Although it is about the mod scene in Wales its very much relatable to many other parts of the UK and the rest of the world. Mods Of Your Generation is honoured to feature such a talented Journalist, Director & editor in an interview and wish her all the best in her future endeavours.Buy it here www.welshmod.co.uk 1) The book has been released approximately 6 months now, it has had a lot of great reviews and gained a lot of interest. How has people’s reaction to the book felt and is it as you expected. The reaction to the book has been brilliant really. Quite overwhelming at times. Even 6 months after the initial publication it is still ongoing. I think in part because we have kept it going with the social media side of things. That has been really important in keeping people involved with the whole story of the book. 2) You are a huge fan of Paul Weller and recently he endorsed the book. The Jam was very influential in your teenage years. How did it feel to have Paul Weller’s encouraging and positive comments about the book and to even receive a picture of him holding it? To me getting a pic off Paul and knowing he likes the book is the ultimate accolade. I was and still am a massive Jam fan and have followed Paul’s career since I was 13 years of age. I still have to pinch myself when I look at that pic. Seeing him holding a piece of my work is really something else. 

3) When was the first time you saw The Jam perform and what was it like? The first gig I ever went to and the best gig I ever went to. Jam gigs, as any fan will tell you, were something else. You spent most of the gig off your feet as the crowd would move as one mass of sweating singing people. The energy was incredible and I’m so glad I experienced that even though I was only 14 – it marked the start of a long journey that has resulted in this book. The title page quotes The Jam Lyrics “True its a dream, mixed with nostalgia” and that pretty much sums up how I feel about it all really. 4) What inspired you to write the book and why did you feel it was important to tell the story in the view of a welsh mod? Being Welsh inspired me first up, but also being part of the scene here and seeing the passion and love of mod in all its incarnations and re-incarnations in the people I met. I think there is a Welsh take on mod that is more down to earth and grass roots because of the surroundings here. It was always a struggle for people in Wales to be recognised for anything. Try being a mod in a valleys town – it ain’t Soho I can tell you! Plus no-one outside of Wales tended to take you seriously – you would be judged on where you were from first. We tend to try that little bit harder down here as a result and I think it shows. Plus we know how to have a good time! 

5) You grew up in Cardiff in the 80’s where music & fashion was continuing to evolve and seemed to be an exciting time to be a teenager with a wide array of styles and subcultures. As a lot of new fashion and music came to the forefront of teenage life. What was it that stuck out about ‘MOD’ that resonated with you? It was the music and the attitude of the music and its message that chimed with me. It was all about being part of something, being different, going one better. The mainstream music of the time was awful and the fashion did nothing for me. Thank god I found bands like The Jam and Secret Affair as without them I might never have discovered so many fantastic other artists such as The Small Faces, The Action, Modern Jazz and soul music. 

 6) When people discover that I am a mod, I regularly get asked “What is a mod?” I try to do my best to explain what it is and what is about but feel I never give it justice. For me it’s exactly that a feeling. Everyone has their own story to tell and what inspired them to get into the scene. Can you describe what mod means to you? On a very basic level mod to me is about good taste I think – good taste in clothes, music, art, design. Its about being smart not just in the way you dress but the way you think. Having a bit of pride about things and always being open to new ideas. 

7) The book documents the roots and revival of modernism in Wales however do you think other areas of the UK & the rest of the world can relate to the movement and the stories told within. Absolutely – in Scotland, Ireland, The Midlands – you could probably tell the same stories. Mod in the suburbs or the provinces is always going to be a little different from mod in the city. 8) The book features many interviews with very significant Welsh born people from the 1960s -1980’s including award winning welsh writer, Actor and film director Jonathan Owen amongst others. Who else is featured in the book? We have Jeff Banks the fashion designer, musician Andy Fairweather Low from Amen Corner, Wyndham Rees from 60’s mod band The Eyes of Blue, Bryn Gregory from 70’s/80’s mod band Beggar and film director Jonny Owen who got into mod at the tail end of the revival and on into the Brit pop years. 

9) The book features stunning images and photography from BAFTA Cymru winning cameraman & photographer Haydn Denman. Where can people find more of his excellent work and are there any photos taken that didn’t appear in the book? We are currently creating an archive of the many pictures that didn’t appear in the book on the website. www.welshmod.co.uk. But Haydn has travelled all over the world photographing and filming. But he is very keen to work on projects that relate to Wales. You can see more of his work at www.haydndenman-photography.com 10) You used a crowd funding website called kickstarter to make the book a reality. What advice would you give aspiring authors using this way of funding their work? Going the Kickstarter route is tough and nail-biting. My advice – set your target as low as you can to cover your costs and plug the hell out of it on social media. 

11) Claire you are a journalist, editor and broadcaster with over 25 years’ experience in media. You have written a lot of articles about the mod scene for Mod Culture and The New Untouchable websites. What other work have you done regarding the scene or anything else you have been involved in? I have featured on BBC Radio Wales several times talking about mod and 60s music. I contributed the forward to the first book on mod girls called Ready Steady Girls, I’ve been involved as an interviewer for The Jam Literary Event and will be featured in the 2nd Modernist Literary Event which takes place this September in London and is a must attend for anyone interested in mod culture. https://www.thecockpit.org.uk/show/the_2nd_london_modernist_literary_event 12) The Mod scene is constantly evolving as many young people discover the scene today. Is there a vast number of young people getting immersed into the scene living in Wales? I think there are more and more people here who are looking for something a bit different and who are looking back and discovering the music and style of the 60’s for sure.

13) You had a launch party to celebrate the release of the book. It had every generation enjoying everything mod together under one roof. Which is very much what Mods of Your Generation is about. Can you tell us about the atmosphere, the party and the people & bands who attended? It was brilliant. It certainly spanned all the generations and it was a great celebration of the music and style that has brought so many of us together. It felt like one big family really – still does. I’ve made some great friends through this project. The band that played was called River who came from Spain – the reason being their frontman – Steve Garland now lives in Spain having moved there many years ago. He was and still is a real ‘face’ in terms of the Welsh mod scene, so it was a real home-coming gig for him and loads of people turned out just to see him. 14) Are you a fan of any mod inspired bands making a name for themselves in the music industry today? The Spitfires are great and definitely have that energy about them, plus there is a Swansea band called The Riff that are making waves and again a mod look about them and their sound 15) Welsh born Fashion icon and designer Jeff Banks was keen to be involved in the book. How was it meeting with such an important fashion figure becoming British designer of the year in 1979 & 1981? I interviewed Jeff over the phone and he was gracious and enthusiastic and his memories of being a mod were pure gold for the book. I still have more of that interview which I’ll publish on the website. Jeff loved the book and his office ordered 10 copies! So I was really chuffed about that. Interview conducted by Johnny Bradleyinterview (c) Johnny Bradley & Mods Of Your Generation 2019

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Mods Of Your Generation Interview – Director & Artist Devlin Crow – Being Film

Mods Of Your Generation Interview – Being Film – Director & Artist Devlin Crow

MODS OF YOUR GENERATION·TUESDAY, 19 FEBRUARY 2019Devlin Crow is a film director and artist, who has made a series of renowned, award winning short films. Has worked with Pete Townshend, Nick Cave, Sir John Tavener, Christopher Lee and among others.Brighton Palace Pier unveiled a commemorative plaque to celebrate his most recent film Being, that has a nod to The Who’s Quadrophenia and shines a light on young carers and the neurological condition Multiple Sclerosis. BBC filmed the event and covered it in news. The film has received many positive reviews and as myself and many others look forward to the Follow up go for it girl. We asked Devlin Crow if he would kindly do an exclusive interview for the Mods Of Your Generation community.

(1) As you have said before in various interviews your inspiration for writing a film about Multiple Sclerosis was caring for your wife who suffers with the condition. Was this a difficult process as the subject was so close to your heart?

When you have to dig deep and open you heart to something close, moments can be difficult as your tapping into the uncomfortableness of grief, the remembrance of your love one struggles with the daily condition and what has been taken away by M.S. These times are never without sadness as you writing about emotional experiences the ups and downs of caring and witnessing the cruelness of the neurological condition. Though through the adversity there is always a crack of joy and fleeting happy memories that challenges the darkness of the subject, I think this is conveyed in the writing and film, and in-turn a truth, honesty and a humanity wins out.

(2) Is there a reason why you choose The Who, Quadrophenia and the mod scene as “Buddy’s” escape from caring for his mother “Margaret.”  I wanted to make a film that acknowledged the importance Brighton, Modernism and The Who had on my youth and to “Quadrophenia”, the soundtrack that was central to my adolescence. It seemed right to make Buddy a Mod, who is into the whole 60’s scene, his mum Margaret would naturally passed on her love for the style, music to him. Buddy is also an individual, a bit of a loner and whom does not follow the crowd and popular trends. I think Buddy is like Jimmy in as much, that he’s angry and confused and in away lost. Though with Jimmy drugs and manic bipolar are his demon, for Buddy its feeling trapped as his life is on hold due to caring. With Jimmy, Modernism, scootering and Brighton became marred and the magic of the bank holiday bubble burst and disillusionment set in, for Buddy the Mod ride out saved him and gave him purpose a break from responsibility and demands, allowing him to experience joy and lost youth.

(3) Devlin you have directed a series of renowned, award winning short films, including Expelling The Demon, The Anatomist Notebook, Word Made Flesh:Sir Peter Blake, Little Whispers, Monstrous Creature & Of course Being. Did you face any challenges directing Being that you did not face with the other films?  Being was based on a real life situation and moments plucked from home life, whereas with the others they were fictional and had a element of the fantastical. Or in the case of the programme “Word Made Flesh” presented a portrait of the artist Sir Peter Blake.  (4) You have Worked with Pete Townshend in the past. What did you work on together and how was it?  Kennedy my partner and I worked on documentary on the English Pop artist Sir Peter Blake, Pete Townshend loved the film and composed an original score. He worked for a week on it, it was a very special moment to work with someone you admire and respect for his artistry and grew up listening to. I will never forget him playing a bit of Baba O’Rilely on the guitar to both of us, as he used some of this in his opening arrangement. 

(5) Being has had many positive reviews and I am looking forward to the follow up and so are many others. Can you give us a sneak peak into the plot for Go For It Girl? Or will we just have to wait?  At this stage all I will say is that Margaret, Buddy’s mum get politicised and starts fighting for her rights. Also there going to be a strong Mod element running through feature, fans of “Being” will not be disappointed.  (6) Many people have been inspired by Being and it has highlighted two important issues. Can we expect the same from Go For It Girl?  Yes “Go for it Girl”, will be topical and will cover some important issues, though I stress the film will celebrate the importance of friendship and loyalty. Increasingly in this fractured world with so much hurt we need uplifting stories to highlight some beauty and love.    

(7) You have said on Social media that you have happy memories meeting with Mark Wingett at Bar Italia “drinking good coffee.” Did Mark Wingett have much input into the storyline and what influence did he have on the making of the film?  Mark Wingett did not add to the story, this has already been finalised. We spoke about logistics of filming scooter scene, he put me in touch with Trevor Laird for his guest appearance and we spoke about the issues film raises. Over good coffee we spoke about the Quadrophenia shoot and The Who, it was special to hear Mark’s stories, he’s a raconteur when it comes to a tale. We will have to return to Bar Italia prior to “Go for It Girl” going into production seems only fitting to keep up the tradition.  

photo (c) Devlin Crow – Being 2019 (8) When should we expect Go For It Girl to be complete & will it also feature on Blu-Ray.  The script has been written and I will be approaching a digital channel and private backers hopefully for finance, rather than the Crowdfunding route. You need a largest budget for a feature, I know how much love there is for “Being” and public are willing to support as they want the feature to get the green light. However I could not expect financial support through Crowdfunding for it will be a three figure sum. When it is released it will come out on Blu-ray, DVD and will be streamed. If Being Buddies keep sharing news on “Go For It Girl”, following and liking its social media sites, we can gain a strong media presence for a theatrical cinema release. Im sure you would love that!  

photo (c) Devlin Crow – Being 2019  Thank you for agreeing to do this interview and I look forward to the feature of go for it girl.Mods Of Your Generation Community- Please like and share the interview far and wide. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who likes the MOYG page and to invite you all to like the Being film Page & I also encourage you to join Being Buddies Group to keep up to date about latest news on “Being” and “Go For It Girl”.Being Buddies GroupBeing Film Page

Photo (c) Being 2019       Photo (c) to Devlin Crow & Being film interview (c) Johnny Bradley & Mods Of Your Generation copyright by Mods of Your Generationinterview conducted by Johnny Bradley for Mods of your Generation

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Mods Of Your Generation Interview – Tina Freeman -Stinger The Book

Mods Of Your Generation Interview – Tina Freeman – Stinger The Book

MODS OF YOUR GENERATION·MONDAY, 22 JULY 2019

I came across ‘Stinger’ after seeing a post on Facebook an illustrated book based on Quadrophenia. Intrigued by the beautifully painted images I wanted to find out more. I discovered that it was a kickstarter project and Immediately wanted to show my support and pledge. I then discovered Tina Freeman the lady behind the idea to find out more about her and the wonderful book. I asked her if she would like to feature in an interview to help promote it. We spoke on the phone and instantly hit it off as if we had known one another for years. We discussed Nicky Weller’s involvement as collaborator of the book and many of our common interests such as music and fashion. It was so exciting to hear all about the characters in the book and who they were based on. Tina described them to me with absolute passion & love for the project.As a father of three young children I am often asked ‘Dad what is Quadrophenia about?’ as it has been referenced many times at home. My children are not old enough to watch the film, therefore I was immediately excited to share this book with them. I felt extremely privileged to receive a soft back copy of the book from Tina. I sat with my children and read the book pointing out the many references to Quadrophenia and the mod scene as they eagerly listened to find out what adventures awaited ‘Stinger The Bell Bee’I highly recommended this book to anyone with a passion for the 60’s and Quadrophenia. This book is a great way to share your experiences and love for music & fashion with your children or grandchildren and inspiring the next generation. I hope you enjoy reading the interview as much as i did asking the questions.

1) Where did you grow up and how old were you when you discovered the mod scene? I grew up on a very 60s Housing Estate in Birmingham, lots of Flats, Maisonettes and lots of concrete ‘the planners dream gone wrong.’ There were a few cool Mod lads wandering around after the 79 Revival which intrigued me. I became a little Mod girl at the young impressionable age of 13. I got my first scooter, a Lambretta LD 150 before I was even old enough to drive it. 

2) At what age did you discover you had a talent for drawing? Very young really, I used to copy all the Disney characters from my “Now I Know” comics from the age of three. 3) Who are your favourite bands or artists and the most influential to you as a teenager growing up? I had an infant school teacher who loved The Beatles, so I think my interest and love of the 60’s came from this. The first Mod band I listened to was The Jam. I loved the energy and passion, still do.Then I went through a blinkered phase of only listening to original R&B and soul. I think the bands most influential to me as an artist have to be The Small Faces and The Who. 

4) What bands or music do you listen to now? I have much wider tastes these days. I think we are incredibly lucky under the “umbrella of Mod” to have so much to choose from. I think I would have got bored and moved away from the scene if we didn’t have that ever evolving attitude.Even if you just take Wellers’ life body of music, there are enough songs here to suit your ever changing moods, see what I did there?I paint to music; I really think it adds the magic to the process.At the moment I have True Meanings on my turntable, by Paul Weller. I am like a teenager again, playing it over and over, absolutely love it. I seem to be playing The Beatles a lot too, perhaps that is just because of my “A Bee Road” painting in my book.I also have a CD player (I know! how very modern of me) to listen to ‘Georgie the brightest star’ by The Electric Stars. It is a beautiful hymn about George Best who features in one of my future stories. 5) In the 90’s you shared an art Studio on King Street in Manchester and worked as a freelance illustrator. You also worked as a portrait artist for Manchester United. Tell us a little bit about your art studio and some of the footballers you did portraits of? I relocated to Manchester after working in North Wales. The studio was seriously cool, with a lovely old balcony overlooking King Street. I worked for some great Ad agencies and The Royal Mail as well as Man United. Along with other merchandise I did limited edition portraits of Ryan Giggs, Eric Cantona and Peter Schmeichel. 

6) When did you draw the initial illustrations for the book and what inspired you to come up with the concept basing it on the mod scene and Quadrophenia? As a freelance illustrator I had worked on The Red Devil mascot character and Billy the Butlins Bear. I started thinking of a cool Wasp character to drive around on a Vespa.I had already produced a Who Collection of paintings and screen prints and had a few meetings with Trinifold Management. It was a bit of a light bulb moment for me when I realised, I could call the character ‘Sting’ and tie it into my love of Quadrophenia.I had two versions which I explained to Robert Rosenberg, one of a generic Wasp character tootling his way around Britain in The Sixties, the other very much based on Quad, using iconic scenes from the film which ultimately if animated should be very music driven. 

7) Many of the characters in the book are based on members of your favourite bands & the Quadrophenia cast. Can you tell us a little bit about each character and who they are based on? Without wanting to give too much away, you can meet characters from Ace Mod Dog bands “The Whoof” and “The Cool Faces” with Ste Merrimutt. When I showed my portfolio of original paintings to Pete Townshend I was quite nervous. Luckily he liked his character “Pete Houndshend” and has been really encouraging. I am yet to meet Roger, although this is very much part of my wish list. 

8) You showed Franc Roddam the director of Quadrophenia the illustrations and your idea to base the book on Quadrophenia. What were his thoughts and was he supportive of your plans?  This was about 5 years ago, a very important piece in the jigsaw. I met Franc down in Brighton where he was doing a Q&A. He had mentioned that he had a two year old, and it would be a long time before he would get to know of Quadrophenia. I told him it might be sooner if he liked my story and showed him the first few watercolour paintings. I asked Franc if I could dedicate the book to his son, which he agreed.The story line and character evolved over the next few years, changing the name from Sting to Stinger to avoid copyright issues. I then made the decision to change him from a wasp into a much more lovable Bee Character. It felt right then, with him coming from Manchester, and having much more heart. 

 I met up with Franc again at The Teenage Cancer Trust event this January, where he introduced me to Sting, who just so happened to be sat at our table. It is very rare for him to attend a Quadrophenia event, so I was incredibly lucky. Sting loved the character and gave the book his full blessing, which was fantastic. 

9) You met Nicky Weller at the Cunard Building in Liverpool, in the first few days of the Jam exhibition ‘About The Young Idea’. Can you explain how this led to collaborating with her to publish ‘Stinger’?  I went along to The Jam exhibition as a fan and ended up being invited in to sell my ‘Quadrotina’ artwork in the shop. The next day was my birthday, and I had a surreal experience eating cupcakes with Nicky and Ann Weller. My “Quadwoofenia” collection of Dogs on Scooters sold really well, so I introduced a Bruce Foxtail, and Rick Boxer to the set. We had such a laugh over the 14 weeks coming up with new names and characters.It was at their literary event that I mentioned that I had a children’s book based on Quadrophenia. I sat down with Nicky and Den Davis who ‘got it’ completely, especially the concept of having it animated as a kids’ TV series or feature film. 

10) Nicky introduced you to her brother Paul Weller. What were his thoughts on your artwork and your ideas and what other things did you discuss? The first time I met Paul he came into the shop at The Jam exhibition, for a cup of tea. Nicky showed him my “Paw Weller” Quadwoof pic. It was hilarious, not at all how I imagined it would be if I ever got to meet him. I met him recently at his studio with Nicky. He asked how the book was going on Kickstarter. In fact the night before we had smashed the target of over ten thousand pounds pledged. It was lovely to tell him the news; he seemed genuinely really chuffed for us. I told him how much I had enjoyed the walk through Delamere Forest for his gig the previous week. We chatted about the success of his latest tour, and the wonderful supporting Stone Foundation. He asked about my kids which meant the world to me. 

11) What is the vision for Stinger? As I believe this book is the start of a series of books based around the 60’s and the mod scene. Stinger is the first of this series. I have this idea where different characters from Quadrophenia are developed and will have their own spin off adventures. I have had such fun with this concept, including what we know has happened to the actors after Quad. I would love different cast members to narrate the books, in the same way Phil Daniels recorded Stinger. To me Pete Townshend’s’ musical score is what really drives Quadrophenia. We are brilliant in this country at animation; just imagine combining a series with fantastic music and how much more it would connect with kids, hopefully watching with their parents and grandparents.I often find myself trying to explain what “a Mod is” to young children. It was easier for me to illustrate the concept of being ‘the best that you can be’ through Stinger. You never know, we might have a new little revival on our hands. 

12) What was it like for you meeting Phil Daniels and the cast of Quadrophenia? Firstly can I say what an honour it is to know, and now work with some of the cast. Quadrophenia was my coming of age Teenage film, and certainly helped shape me as a young Mod, scooterist and artist. My friend and I would hire the video out most weekends and knew it word for word. Imagine how that feels now for me to be not only talking to but sharing my ideas creatively with my heroes. 

I met Phil Daniels first, with Garry Cooper (aka Fenton) and Trevor Laird (Ferdy) at a brilliant Quad event in Widnes where I was invited by Rob Wright to sell my artwork. I showed them the initial ideas for Stinger and asked if they would consider doing the voice over’s playing their characters if I got it as far as an animated project.

I kept in touch with Trevor, who has been so kind and generous with his time, helping me to meet other actors such as Lesley Ash, Toyah, Gary Shail and Mark Wingett to move forwards with this dream.

 13) When will the book be available to purchase and where can people get hold of it? Now we have reached our target, we have to get the hard backed collector’s edition version printed and have the record pressed with Stinger narrated by Phil Daniels.Those wonderful people who pledged to get the book printed will be the first to receive their copies. After that we will be holding a few special events such as an official launch with readings and signings. 

 If you keep an eye on the website, and social media we will be putting out information and dates. Check out stingerthebellbee@gmail.com and https://www.stingerthebook.co.uk

14) What message would you like to give to those who have supported the book and to those who have pledged? Nicky Weller, our close knit team of designers Anthony Mulryan , Phil Dias and I am so very grateful to each and every person that pledged, shared our posts, and supported us through our first experience of Kickstarter.I always knew that I would have to come at this project from a different angle. A children’s book on Mods would be seen to have a very limited audience in the eyes of a publisher. I have been amazed how many normal (“Wot is normal then?”) fans the book has, of people of all ages and walks of life. I initially wrote it for Mods to enjoy with their kids and grandchildren, but found it has a much wider appeal.I think anything really written from the heart will find that connection with people, whether it be a shared love of music, scooters or just the pretty pictures.  

    Interview by Johnny Bradley for Mods of your GenerationInterview (c) Johnny Bradley & Mods of Your Generation 2019 

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Harrington Saints: A Thousand Pounds Of Greatness

The Harrington Saints are an amazingly talented bad with members who all have other massive side projects. Up until now most of their songs have been about your classic punk and skinhead topics. You know? The same “rah rah we are West Ham” coming from some guys in California is a bit hard to grasp. What I bet you didn’t know behind all the mod influence and skinhead style music. There is a lot of heart and emotion that comes out of this band. I’ve been a fan for a bit and “1000lbs of Oi” is one of the best albums of it’s genre in the last five or so years.

“State Of Emergency” is something you would expect from Bad Religion not Harrington Saints, and that is NOT a bad thing. The song is about gun control and the lack of empathy Americans have for dead kids. It seems more important they have their guns. Instead of sugar coating it behind flowery language like Bad Religion does often. This is a raw as a nerve end track.

There are some classic oi songs, like the title track. These guys are not small humans so the “1000lbs of Oi” is a little bit tongue and cheek. I love it personally as a somewhat larger lad. Rock N Rolla is a splitting oi track that brings you back to the 1980s.  However the highlight to me was the song “Fremount Train” about a very real incident that happened. This isn’t your typical “fuck Nazis” song. It’s about beating the fascists up, and walking away with a smile with blood on your hands because you know you’re in the right. One of the most poignant lines being “why is the right wing always on the wrong side of history? Why is this a lesson we still have to teach today?”

If you don’t have a copy of this record it’s available on bandcamp, iTunes as well as Pirate’s Press Records…..or you know where ever awesome records are sold.

Check out this awesome tune

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How Twiggy Changed The World

Back in the mod ’60s, when Twiggy conquered London and fashion changed forever, the waif of a teen with huge eyes, a boyish bob and long legs craved the glamour and curves of a different icon.

“Whether you’re thin, fat, small, dark, blond, redhead, you wanna be something else,” said the world’s first boldface supermodel. “I wanted a fairy godmother to make me look like Marilyn Monroe. I had no boobs, no hips, and I wanted it desperately.”

What she wanted was all around her: fuller-figure models with names nobody remembers, many of them middle-class or upper- crust older girls biding their time before landing husbands. Absent any of that, what Twiggy had was extreme youth, a thirst for fashion and triple-layered false eyelashes that fed her right into the decade’s social revolution alongside the Beatles and pop art.

Now 60, she remains a one- name wonder with a joyous laugh, a gift for chat and a homegirl cockney accent. She’s achieved, slightly, some of those coveted curves, but she hasn’t lost her edge. The singer, dancer, actress and author isn’t done just yet.

Twiggy will soon hit HSN with an affordable line of skinny jeans, ruffled blouses, gypsy skirts, jackets and accessories in bold colors and price points of under $100. That, she said, would have pleased her younger self, who saved up spending money to splurge at London’s popular Biba boutique.

“I’ve always had the strong belief that fashion should be for everyone, not just for wealthy people,” said Twiggy, lounging on a white hotel settee between Union Jack accent pillows. “Lots of people can’t afford to spend lots of money on clothes, and they should have nice things, too.”

Lots of people who wear lots of different sizes. The “Twiggy London” line will be available up to around size 20, said the creator, who cites genes — not starvation — for the rail-thin look that made her the face of 1966 at age 16.

It’s not the first time Twiggy has indulged her interest in design, or remote shopping. Her “Twiggy Collection” of last decade was sold online through the portal Great Universal.

There were other home- shopping ventures as well. Back in the ’60s, she put out a line for teens but left it in the dust of some bad business partners after three years.

“We were very green then. We’re a bit wiser now. A little bit older, a little wiser,” she said with a laugh.

The youngest of three girls, she was born Lesley Hornby in north London’s Neasden to a carpenter dad and a factory- worker mom who also worked a Woolworth’s counter to earn extra money. At 5 feet 6 inches — short for a model — Twiggy weighed only 91 pounds when she exploded into the culture.

Working Saturdays as an assistant in a hair salon, she met Nigel Davies, who became her boyfriend and manager, changing his name to the flashier Justin de Villeneuve. They arranged for a hairdresser to engineer her androgynous ‘do for photos he put up in his salon. The shots were spotted by one of his clients who wrote for the Daily Express and splashed Twiggy across two pages to launch her career.

By 1967, she was on the cover of Vogue, jetting around the world working six days a week and spreading the London look to America, where knee-length hems and pillbox hats inspired by Jackie Kennedy were still the norm when she made her first visit to the U.S. that year.

Before she was discovered, she was already painting on tiny lower lashes — “my twigs” — to help make her eyes look as large as tea saucers. Her look was perfect for emerging unisex trends and ever-rising hemlines, but it opened the debate still raging over whether skinny models promote an unhealthy body ideal, especially for young girls.

“It was debated when I hit the headlines and I always came out and said that I was very healthy, which I was, and always ate, which I do. I love my food. I just come from a lineage. My dad was very slim, so it’s kind of in the genes really,” she said.

In today’s crowded model marketplace, where competition is far more fierce than when Twiggy came up, girls have died as a result of starvation. She thinks the publishers of fashion magazines, booking agents, modeling agencies and designers all share responsibility.

“They ask for these girls. It’s gotta stop. I don’t know how you go about it, so the debate goes on,” she said. “The agencies have to protect these girls.”

Twiggy’s interest in fashion design was stronger than modeling ever was.

“I didn’t plan to be a model. I thought the world had gone stark raving mad,” she said. “I was used to being teased at school for being so skinny and I thought I was really funny looking, but I was obsessed with clothes.” She retired from modeling in 1970 after four years, joking at the time: “You can’t be a clothes hanger for your entire life.” She moved on to stage, films, TV and singing, earning two Golden Globes and a Tony nomination. The ultra-skinny look remains dominant in fashion.

“Twiggy will be an icon until her dying day and beyond,” film director and writer Ken Russell, who cast her as Polly Browne in a musical adaptation of “The Boy Friend,” told The Biography Channel in 2007.

Twiggy spent four seasons as a judge on “America’s Next Top Model.” There was also a memoir, a book on looking good at 40 and a return to modeling in 2005 for the British department store chain Marks & Spencer.

And there was her daughter, now 31-year-old Carly, a textile designer for Stella McCartney who made a scarf in a repeated hummingbird motif for her mother’s HSN line that launches Saturday.

Twiggy cites teen innocence and solid supervision for not succumbing to the more destructive aspects of the era that made her famous.

“My dad was always a very strong presence in my life. He instilled a kind of being down- to-earth, being sensible, especially when this whole thing happened to me,” she said.

How does she see it now, looking back over the last 44 years? “It was just so weird,” she said. “I was this funny little kid from working-class London. It could have gone horribly wrong.”

Associated Press: 2010

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The New Pornographer: A Richard Kern Interview  John-Paul Pryor

The New Pornographer: A Richard Kern Interview
John-Paul Pryor , May 24th, 2010 08:42

The cult photographer and no-wave filmmaker Richard Kern talks to John-Paul Pryor about Lydia Lunch, Sonic Youth, self-harming super-freaks and the search for a new kind of beauty.

There are few people who have captured the naked female form in the eye of their lens as much as long-time Sonic Youth and Lydia Lunch collaborator Richard Kern, sharp-shooting star of the upcoming Vice-produced documentary Shot By Kern, wherein he travels Europe in search of young girls to shoot in their birthday suits. The Quietus caught up with him at his home in New York to find out how a provocative no-wave film director – who brought us lo-fi celluloid fare such as FingeredStray Dogs and You Killed Me First – turned into a polite, self-effacing 55-year-old on a quest to shoot a new kind of beauty (albeit via Hustler shoots, Kenneth Anger conventions and drug-crazed fans with a taste for blood).

What made you want to pursue the life of a photographer?

Richard Kern: I would have to say it was Blow-Up. When I saw that movie as a kid, I thought that it just looked like a really perfect life. I mean, the character was rich, he was driving around doing cool stuff, and he had girls come over that he would shoot.

Did Blow-Up also inspire you to start making films?

RK: I would love to make a film like that because there is so much thinking going on in that movie – you can actually see it on the actor’s faces – but Blow-Up didn’t have much to do with my films. My early films were more closely related to Russ Meyer or John Waters, or even the slasher films of the era. I also used to go to as many of Kenneth Anger’s film screenings as I could to try and hear him speak, but he never spoke, he would just wander silently around the crowd.

All your films featured some pretty intense people, such as Lydia Lunch and the incredible Lung Leg. What was it like to work with those extreme personalities?

RK: Lydia was a completely ‘take charge’ kind of person who would say, ‘I want to do this and this… and this!’ Fingered was easily the most successful of all those films and that was pretty much just Lydia saying, ‘Let’s go to California and shoot a film!’ That’s how it actually got done. She also introduced me to Sonic Youth, bringing me in on the ‘Death Valley 69’ video to do special effects. Lung Leg was just… well, I had never met anyone like that before. I think I was 30 by then and I had met a lot of people, but I had never met someone as weird as her.

Lydia Lunch

I find Stray Dogs the most bizarre of all your films…

RK: [Laughs] That was one of the Manhattan Love Suicide series, which were all about getting so hung up on your relationships that you just couldn’t do anything else. When you’re young you are so overwhelmed with all these emotions that are centred on your relationship – your life at that age is not about what you are doing but about who you are going out with. All the movies in that series were about people who just get so hung up on it all that they kill themselves. When you are older, it seems like the stupidest thing to be suffering so much: to feel that you have to die for love.

You have shot spreads for Hustler in the past. Would you say there is a line to be drawn between pornography and erotic art?

RK: There’s definitely a line. If you go on the internet and look up porn it’s not going to look like my movies or photos, it’s going to look like something else, and the people involved are going to be a lot uglier. There was a period of about five years when I was shooting for skin mags. I would go out to Los Angeles and see the LA Hollywood star system and the LA porn star system – two parallel universes that operate side-by-side – and that was just depressing. Lots of the people you come in contact with don’t realise that they are making these decisions that are going to determine the rest of their lives. Even the little brush I had shooting stills for magazines still comes back to haunt me. I wouldn’t say I regret it, though, because I produced an incredible library of stuff. Even though I am not a big fan of it at this point, I will probably look back at it in twenty years and see some good stuff in there.

Can you tell us a little about your early zine Heroin Addict?

RK: Well, I put together the zine when I was still young and living in North Carolina. I was listening to Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground and thinking, ‘Wow! That sounds so cool!’ So I decided to do this magazine and I think the tagline for it was The Magazine For People Who Are Too Chicken To Do Heroin. Then I moved to New York and saw the real thing, got involved in the real thing, and then got out of the heroin scene.

Why do you think heroin gets such a hold on people?

RK: I would say it’s definitely physiological, and once you get the hook it’s tough – you can get heroin out of your system but then this mental thing keeps coming back; this kind of hopeless despair that doesn’t go away for a couple of years. That’s the part you have to live through.

https://youtu.be/y2Gf0MmRz9g

Have you ever shot anything that you decided was too extreme to show?

RK: There was once a girl from Tokyo who wrote me and said she wanted to model, and after I replied that I thought she looked okay, she got straight on a plane. When she showed up at my house the next day, I said, ‘Wow, you’ve got a lot of cut marks on your arm,’ and she just replied, ‘Oh, I just do that sometimes.’ I said, ‘Well, let me shoot you doing that.’ She just started slicing herself up. It was fucking gross, man. I never showed that stuff. She also had this gigantic bag of all kinds of pills with her, and she would be taking like, ten pills at time.

Would you say you were attracted to that kind of energy?

RK: I am attracted to the weirdness but not to the energy. I fucking hate it. These days, if someone has that kind of tweaked-out druggie energy, I can’t even be around them. I’m shooting way more pastoral now. I’m looking more for beauty and nostalgia than those kinds of extremes. I’m reaching for something new that I haven’t seen before.

Now you have the Shot By Kern about to be screened over here. Why do you think so many girls were keen to be shot by you for that show?

RK: I don’t know. I think with the documentary, it’s maybe just that they want to be on the show. I think women of a certain age are just really interested in trying something new – they want to try something different, just to see if they can do it; it’s like that thing of, ‘I wanna see if I can bungee jump off a bridge, so I’m gonna try it.’ Personally, I would never try it. I would never jump out of an airplane and I would probably never go and model for someone either, but these girls seem to really want to do it.

There is an exhibition of stills from Shot By Kern at Kenny Schachter Rove, 33-34 Hoxton Square, May 21 – June 26

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Keith Flint: Prodigy Legend dies aged 49

Keith Flint: Prodigy

vocalist dies aged 49

Singer with band found dead at his home in Essex on Monday

Keith Flint of The Prodigy
True Punk Energy and creativity Keith Flint of the Prodigy

 Originally a dancer with the group, Flint performed the vocals on The Prodigy’s No 1 hit singles, Firestarter and Breathe. Photograph: Andy Sheppard/Redferns

Keith Flint, vocalist with the Prodigy, has died at the age of 49, after being found at his home in Essex on Monday.

The Prodigy released a statement confirming the news, saying: “It is with deepest shock and sadness that we can confirm the death of our brother and best friend Keith Flint. A true pioneer, innovator and legend. He will be forever missed. We thank you for respecting the privacy of all concerned at this time.”

Liam Howlett, who formed the group in 1990, confirmed his death was a suicide. “The news is true, I can’t believe I’m saying this but our brother Keith took his own life over the weekend,” he wrote on Instagram. “I’m shell shocked, fuckin angry, confused and heart broken ….. r.i.p brother Liam”.

An Essex police spokesman confirmed that a 49-year-old man had died. “We were called to concerns for the welfare of a man at an address in Brook Hill, North End, just after 8.10am on Monday,” he said.

“We attended and, sadly, a 49-year-old man was pronounced dead at the scene. His next of kin have been informed. The death is not being treated as suspicious and a file will be prepared for the coroner.”

With his punk aesthetic of piercings, spiked hair and intense stare, Flint became one of the UK’s most iconic musical figures in the 1990s. He joined the Prodigy as a dancer, later becoming a frontman alongside rapper Maxim. Aside from their 1992 debut, all of the group’s seven albums have reached No 1 in the UK, the most recent being No Tourists, released in November 2018.

Flint performed the vocals on the Prodigy’s best known singles, Firestarter and Breathe, which both went to No 1 in 1996 – the former became their biggest US hit, and the group are often credited with helping to break dance music into the mainstream in the country.

Prodigy Front man found dead

The Prodigy: ‘we should be as important as Oasis or Blur’

 Read more

Firestarter’s black and white video, featuring a headbanging, gurning Flint, was banned by the BBC after it was screened on Top of the Pops, with parents complaining that it frightened children. The self-lacerating lyrics – “I’m the bitch you hated / filth infatuated” – were the first Flint had written for the band. “The lyrics were about being onstage: this is what I am. Some of it is a bit deeper than it seems,” Flint told Q magazine in 2008. The track sold over 600,000 copies in the UK, with

Speaking to the Guardian in 2015, Flint lamented the state of modern pop music. “We were dangerous and exciting! But now no one’s there who wants to be dangerous. And that’s why people are getting force-fed commercial, generic records that are just safe, safe, safe.”

Tributes have been made from his musical peers, including Ed Simons of dance duo the Chemical Brothers, who called him a “great man”. Beverley Knight said the Prodigy were one of “the most innovative, fearless, ballsy bands to grace a stage and Keith was perfection up front. We have lost a Titan.” Sleaford Mods, whose frontman Jason Williamson collaborated with the Prodigy on 2015 track Ibiza, tweeted: “Very sorry to hear of the passing of Keith Flint. Good night mate. Take it easy,” while drum’n’bass producer Friction said “I wouldn’t do what I do without him and the Prodigy in my life.”

Shadow education secretary Angela Rayner also paid tribute, saying “R.I.P. Keith, you leave so many great memories behind”.

As well as his success with the Prodigy, Flint also founded the successful motorcycle racing outfit Team Traction Control, which made its debut in 2014, and went on to win multiple Supersport TT titles.

Really terrible news, such a legend of British music, a cross over from Punk Rock into dance music, This band defined a time of the raves of 89-90. I first saw them in a tent at an illegal rave, then worked with them while with the Mean Fiddler in the 90’s. My kids would run round the room shouting ‘Smash my picture’

Raw energy and talent

The Punk connection was very apparent with the inclusion of Gizz Butt of English Dogs on guitar

I am completely gutted over this. when the raves broke out in 88-89 it was the tail end of the skinhead days for me. violence was escalating to such crazy levels that we were just banned from everywhere. My mob had started drinking in the estate pub as we couldn’t go many other places, i broke up with my first real love live in girlfriend, i had gone on a crazy one around town and attacked 5 -6 people for no reason, i had been badly bottled, blood rolling down my face, but my girlfriend had betrayed me. Police were chasing me, i was having to hide, but because of the blood, no one would take me in, they made me go to the hospital to get stitched up. i was arrested for violent affray. The following week i was called by some mates for a big kick off, as one of our skinhead girls had been raped by a guy from an opposing mob. tooled up we went on the war path…. things were getting out of hand, chains, batons and one bloke had a gun.. i knew it couldn’t go on, but where was i going, how was i going to change direction, my mob, the wycombe skinheads were my blood, i was never going to back away, never abandon them, it was all or nothing… then as i stood at the local pub a week later waiting to see if anyone was coming up for another round of violence, it was like a siege mentality. but 12 years of being in the crew had lead us from those fun days of 2tone, through Oi! past the skinhead fashion, into a mob, crew, firm…

Then a camper van pulled up, some of the skinheads had been asked to go help at a rave, back up against drug dealers, so fuck it, why not, i got in the van and we headed to Slough Centre. The older lads, of The Woobo and the The Xtraverts crew were  running the Rave, they greeted us with warmth, told us what was happening, and if we could be back up if it came on top. As i walked through a tunnel of white sheeting i found myself in this big warehouse, music i had not heard before called Acid House, lazers and dry ice filling the room, packed full of sweaty bodies and a repetitive electronic music thumping. Something completely different than i had ever seen.

Out of the haze came the most beautiful girl i have ever known Lizzy Mitchell wearing a bikini, her long blond hair to her waste. she came and kissed me on the lips, hugged me, and put her tongue in my mouth, and pushed a pill down my throat, 20 minutes later life would never be the same again, my days of violence were over, as the love rush just sent me higher than any cloud i could ever imagine.

At that Rave were all the local Punks, all the Rastas, Soul boys, Casuals, and above that the same mob we had been smashing fuck out of eachother for the last few months, one came up to me a black bloke called B he spoke in my ear, ‘So good to see you here mate, you know you lot are an army and we know we were never going to beat you’, I looked at him and could feel no anger, no aggression. I said in return ‘Well you lot are all cousins, we had no chance either’, to that we both laughed, he was clearly flying as well. That was the summer of 89.

For the rest of that year we were on the magic roundabout, raving round the fields of the M25, then off to Ibiza in 1990. i saw this band back then in the small tents at the raves, in the middle of some crazy days. and watched them grow into becoming a huge part of British music when i was backstage management team for The Mean Fiddler at Leeds Festival, Glastonbury etc. The Prodigy really were the band that spoke to me, like many of us early ravers, we came out of the crazy violence and punk rock of the 80’s to a new era, a new time, but more punk than punk, this was fucking the system off in a way that had never been done before 20,000 people illegally in a field loved up and jumping about to huge sound systems waking the entire home counties up. When my kids were little they were obsessed with the Prodigy, running round the house shouting ‘smash my picture’ they found out years later it was ‘Smack my bitch up’, RIP to a man, a music and a time 🙂 xx

Symond Lawes Subcultz

Keith Flint death: The Prodigy frontman died by hanging, coroner hears
The Prodigy's Keith Flint performs in 2015
The Prodigy’s Keith Flint performs in 2015 ( EPA )

The Prodigy frontman Keith Flint died as the result of hanging, an inquest has heard.

The 49-year-old was found dead at his home in the Essex hamlet of North End on March 4.

Coroner’s officer Lynsey Chaffe told a two-minute hearing in Chelmsford on Monday that Flint’s provisional medical cause of death is hanging.

She said: “Police attended, all protocols were followed and his death was confirmed as not suspicious.”

A post-mortem examination was carried out at Broomfield Hospital on March 7 and the provisional medical cause of death was recorded as hanging.

Ms Chaffe said this remains under investigation while toxicology reports are awaited.

Senior coroner for Essex Caroline Beasley-Murray opened and adjourned the inquest until July 23 for a full hearing.

  • For confidential support, call the Samaritans on 116123, visit a local Samaritans branch or go to samaritans.org

• In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or emailjo@samaritans.org. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org. Topics

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The Specials Encore 2019

The Specials: ‘Respect people. Be kind to people. What else have we got?’

Miranda SawyerYou ask the questionsThe Specials

On the eve of their first album in decades, 2 Tone’s finest talk to Miranda Sawyer and, further down, answer questions from readers, and famous fans including Richard Curtis and

 

1

The Specials (left to right, Lynval Golding, Terry Hall and Horace Panter).
 The Specials (left to right, Lynval Golding, Terry Hall and Horace Panter). Photograph: Suki Dhanda/Observer

In an east London photographer’s studio, one man is dancing and two men are not. Beres Hammond is playing over the speakers and the dancer – Lynval Golding, guitarist – freeze-frames for the camera shutter, but otherwise is in constant motion. Bassist Horace Panter, determinedly non-dancey, stands dead still, chin jutting, as though he’s ready to punch you if you get too cheeky. And in between them is singer Terry Hall, who doesn’t move much. Hall’s face, though, is always changing, flicking between exasperation, resignation, wry amusement and a withering teenage side-eye. His left hand sticks out. It looks as though there’s a gap for a cigarette in between your fingers, I say, and Hall says “You’re right”, and goes outside to smoke.

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These three men are the Specials, 2019. The Specials started in Coventry in the late 1970s, a mixed-race ensemble playing a thrilling mixture of ska, reggae and punk, with pointed, politically sharp lyrics. Originally, there were seven members – the three here today, plus band founder/songwriter/keyboardist Jerry Dammers (creator of the 2 Tone record label, to which the Specials were signed), as well as singer Neville Staple, guitarist Roddy Radiation and drummer John “Brad” Bradbury. Much of the Specials’ impact back then was collective: a group of street-tough individuals, the band as gang. Their gigs were raucous, confrontational affairs, occasionally marred by far-right elements wanting to cause trouble with a group that had both black and white members.

In 1981, after their scorching single Ghost Town went to No 1, Hall, Golding and Staple left to form the Fun Boy Three. The remaining Specials added more members and continued as the Special AKA, before splitting in 1984 (though Dammers was held in a record company contract until 1987). Since then, there have been various Specials reincarnations. People have been in and out (30 members since 1979: Wikipedia has resorted to a graph). Panter was an art teacher for special needs children for a while, Golding moved to Seattle. He and Hall didn’t speak for more than a decade. Neither Dammers nor Hall rejoined for years. Hall was focused on his solo career. Dammers – who started the group and owned their name – tried to restart the Specials in the late 00s on the condition that they play new material. They got as far as two rehearsals before everyone fell out again.

Watch the video for Vote for Me by the Specials.

The most common question from the Observer readers concerns whether Dammers will ever rejoin: when I ask it today, Hall, Golding and Panter give answers that are noticeably varied. Is the door open for him or not? Dammers himself, when I speak to him later, says that he was served with a legal letter and forced out of the band.Advertisement

“There was never a long-term plan,” says Panter. “But once we got ourselves established, the obvious thing to do would be to make a new album. It was just getting the right consensus between the individuals.”

As you can imagine, embroiled as they were in legal battles, this consensus took time. From 2009 on, the Specials, sans Dammers, toured, and then toured, and then toured again. According to Panter, it wasn’t until 2012-13 that there was a settled membership: but then, in 2013, Staple left, due to ill health, followed by Radiation in 2014. This left Hall, Golding and Panter, plus Brad, the drummer. But then Brad died, in 2015, and, once more, things were put on hold. Until last year. “We were in California playing with Neil Young and the Pretenders,” says Hall, “and I remember thinking: ‘Well, they’re writing new stuff, why don’t we?’”

Now, much-loved reggae and jazz drummer Kenrick Rowe has joined them to play live; Steve Cradock (Ocean Colour Scene, Paul Weller) is on guitar; Nikolaj Torp Larson plays keyboards and, along with Hall, Golding and Panter, wrote and produced the new album, Encore. And it’s the release of new material that changes everything. “All this,” says Panter, gesturing around the studio. He means photoshoots and interviews. “You forget, that’s what albums do.”

Encore is strong, musically, with an unexpectedly broader palette that takes in disco, funk and oompah as well as reggae. For original fans, there are callbacks. The lead single, Vote for Me, opens up with ascending Ghost Town-style chords, and there’s three covers: of the Equals’ 1970 track, Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys, of Blam Blam Fever (Gunfever) by the Valentines (1967) and of the Fun Boy Three’s The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum. Prince Buster, a huge influence on the band (Gangsters, their first single, was a reworking of Buster’s Al Capone), is referenced in 10 Commandments, featuring the words and vocals of activist Saffiyah Khan. It’s a clap-back to Buster’s 1966 track that, for the benefit of any Buster-fancying woman, listed his 10 jokily chauvinistic lady friend requirements. (Prince Buster also made Princess Buster’s original 1967 answer track.)Advertisement

Lyrics take on the personal and the political, the US and the UK, though more ambiguously than the Specials’ original precision attacks. On BLM (Black Lives Matter), Golding talks us through three racist experiences from his past. And then there’s Vote for Me. Golding points out that the Specials’ (as opposed to the Special AKA) last release was Ghost Town, so it seems right that the next release, 38 years later, is Vote for Me. Hall agrees: “With Ghost Town we didn’t say, ‘This is the right way, this is the wrong way’, we just said, ‘Things are pretty shit, really’. And we’re saying the same with Vote for Me. I find it difficult to vote on anything, really. Whereas before, we were staunch Labour. Now, I feel like I don’t trust you, I don’t like your face. On a personal thing with Corbyn, I definitely can’t do it any more. But what are the alternatives?”

It must be strange to make a comeback now, to return in your middle age at a time when Britain itself appears to be determined to return to the more depressing parts of the early 80s.

“Well,” says Hall, “if we’d released a record at any point in the last eight years it would have been relevant. Because not a great deal has changed. There’s different names for it, like Brexit, which sounds nuanced, but isn’t far from the one called ‘unemployment’ and the one called ‘racism’. Look, we didn’t plan it. We didn’t say: ‘Let’s get a mix done quick, because Brexit’s out at the end of January.’”

There are non-political songs on the album. The penultimate track, The Life and Times, addresses Hall’s depression. Though his unsmiling demeanour has always been part of Hall’s appeal – “God, people saying, ‘Cheer up’ and ‘Why don’t you smile?’… I get fed up with saying, ‘Fuck off’” – a resting bitch face is far removed from the actual terror of depression.

The Specials on stage, June 1980 (l-r): Lynval Golding, Neville Staple, Roddy Radiation, Terry Hall, Jerry Dammers, John Bradbury.
 The Specials on stage, June 1980 (l-r): Lynval Golding, Neville Staple, Roddy Radiation, Terry Hall, Jerry Dammers, John Bradbury. Photograph: Ray Stevenson / Rex Features

 

“With every record I’ve done, I’ve made reference to it,” says Hall, “but this is out-and-out. I was diagnosed with manic depression and schizophrenia about 11 years ago and that diagnosis made a big difference, because then I started taking medication. And the change in me, to be able to function… I couldn’t have done this 12 years ago. People used to say to me, ‘Why don’t you try yoga? Or St John’s wort?’ But there’s a massive difference when you’re in a deep depression and feeling shitty with the world, and the stage that I got to, where you want to give yourself a lobotomy, it’s that bad.”

Medication – “lithium, hardcore drugs” – has really helped. Hall knows that his episodes are cyclical and he can feel when a depression is coming on. “And before, I used to have to give in to it and people would say, ‘You’ve been in bed for three weeks’, and I thought it was 10 minutes. But now I can feel it coming and I can also feel the medication, it blocking it. It’s brilliant. Recognising you’re blocking it is amazing. It’s really weird. It’s like looking at a bruise develop on your leg.”

The album’s final track, We Sell Hope, is uplifting musically and lyrically, a contrast to all the excoriation that comes before.

“Well, in the end,” says Hall, “if you’re talking about each other, all you can offer is love. To respect people, and be kind to people, and hope that they give it back. They sometimes don’t but they sometimes do. But there’s that sense of hope. What else have we got?”

The photo session is done. The dancing and non-dancing are over. Hall has another cigarette and then we gather around a table to answer questions from Observer readers and famous admirers. There are more than usual. “Hmm,” says Hall. “I bet you say that every time.” (There are; I don’t.) “Fire away…”

Encore by the Specials is out now on UMC

Questions from famous fans

Gurinder Chadha
 Photograph: Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP

Gurinder Chadha

Film director

What moment from your height of fame are you most proud of, the moment that provides the legacy of the Specials in years to come?
Horace: Ghost Town getting to No 1.
Terry: Yes, I’d go with that. It was an unbelievably brilliant finale to what we’d done for a few years, and every band should fold after Ghost Town really, because what else are you going to do?!

Richard Curtis
 Photograph: Mike Lawrence/Getty Images for Gates Archive

Richard Curtis

Film director

I remember going to see you in concert and you getting about 10 seconds into Ghost Town and stopping dead and pointing at some guy in the crowd, and saying: ‘If we don’t get those Nazis out of here we’re not going on with this song.’ And then waiting until they were removed. Am I imagining this? Did I dream it?
Terry: It used to happen every night, didn’t it?
Horace: It wasn’t that much of an occurrence but it did happen, I remember a couple or three times where we’d stop a show because of the NF.
Terry: They would be sieg heiling during the show. That doesn’t really happen any more. The closest thing to that was in Nottingham [2014] where somebody threw a bottle at Brad and I couldn’t do anything until he’d been taken out. It’s important to stop stuff [like that] if you see it.

Joe Talbot

Joe Talbot

Advertisement

Lead singer, Idles

Is pop much worse now than the early 80s or am I blinded with nostalgia? Now it seems really dull when we glance at the mainstream…
Terry: I’m actually going to see Joe in a couple of weeks, his band. I don’t know. We get asked that a lot. “What are you listening to now?” And what I’m listening to now is a Grateful Dead album, because I never heard it first time round… 
Horace: I’m sure there are some things that are great out there but I don’t know where to look for them. I haven’t got the time to spend a fruitless three hours ploughing through YouTube.
Terry: The last thing that I saw that I really, really liked was the Fat White Family. They were funny and everything you wanted. Bit druggy, funny, they look really good. 
Lynval: There’s one band that I like. Easy Life. They’re a young band from Leicester, I saw them on Jools Holland, they’re really, really good. If I could have a vote for a band to be with us on any bill, it would be that little band. The kid’s got the right attitude. He’s a star.

Lauren Laverne
 Photograph: Dean Chalkley/BBC

Lauren Laverne

6 Music presenter

When are you happiest?
Horace: Most of the time.
Lynval: With me, when we made the album, to get up and get on a train and go to work every day, come to the studio, that was really weird – but when we finished the record, I was completely lost. I didn’t know what to do with myself. We had so much fun doing this record. We’d take it in turns to sleep on the couch. Wake up, “Oh, that’s nice, yes,” and go back to sleep.
Terry: Probably happiest when I’m watching football. Even through all the shitty times, five minutes before kick-off you think: “This is great.” But in the last week or two do you know what’s made me happiest? In our bathroom, on the floor there’s mosaic tiles and one was lost. It’s white so I tried putting Polyfilla in, but I couldn’t get the grouting to look good. Then I thought: “Well, why don’t I look in the vac bag?” So I got the bag out and put my hand in and I found the tile. Honestly, that made me really happy. A great moment.

Richard Russell
 Photograph: Jason Alden/Rex

Richard Russell

XL Recordings boss

For Terry. You’re one of my favourite lyricists of all time. Who are yours?
Terry: Joe Dolce [who wrote Shaddap You Face]! No, obviously people like Leonard Cohen, and bits of Jeff Buckley, and almost all Daniel Johnson and the Roches.

Ady Suleiman
 Photograph: David M Benett/Getty

Ady Suleiman

SingerAdvertisement

What are your best memories of 2 Tone?
Horace: The Bilzen rock festival in Belgium in summer 1979. We’d just signed our record deal with Chrysalis, we were unknown, and we still had all this equipment that we’d begged, borrowed and stolen. We were on a bill with the Cure, the Pretenders, the Police and AC/DC. Nobody had heard of us, and we went on stage and just destroyed the place. There was a big fence, 12 foot in front of the stage and during the performance it got ripped down and everyone surged to the front of the stage. For me, that was the most amazing experience ever, that music could do that was incredible.
Terry: Because of bands like UB40 and the Beat too, we were doing something that wasn’t in London. It was a sense of pride in where we were and wanted to make some sort of change. Lyrically, I think what we were doing was all very similar. We were all in the Midlands, and the only band I remembered from the Midlands was Jigsaw, who blew it all sky high [chuckles].
Lynval: Lieutenant Pigeon.
Terry: Frank Ifield. All of a sudden, something was happening. Kids were connecting with us and it just felt really important.

Diane Morgan.
 Photograph: Linda Nylind/Guardian

Diane Morgan

Actor

You wrote a song about a Ghost Town, but have any of you actually seen a ghost?
Lynval: I was born in Saint Catherine, Jamaica…
Terry: And he’s off…
Lynval: This man was crippled and he sat in front of this house in the village, where I come from, this brownstone house, on a mat. He died and I went down to the river with my sink pan on my head to fetch the water. It was broad daylight. I’ve got the water, I’m walking, then suddenly there he was, sitting in front of his house on his little mat. My mind just went, “Wooah, wooah,” and the sink pan of water has gone off my head. I just run. And often now, I don’t believe that I saw him, but I saw him. I still can’t grasp it.
Terry: Weed’s a funny thing, isn’t it? I definitely haven’t seen a ghost, no.

Jason Williamson
 Photograph: Richard Saker/Observer

Jason Williamson

Singer, Sleaford Mods

One thing I find with accomplishment is that it can feel so insignificant overall, but I know that’s something to do with bouts of depression. Do you feel this sometimes about what you’ve done and still do as musicians?
Terry: It does matter, really, and even when it doesn’t matter, it still matters. People see success as getting to No 1 and being platinum. I don’t see that at all, I never have. I think the success is getting something inside, out, and getting someone to listen to it. That is success. For the first 20 years of my life, nobody would listen to me. Nobody. At school, jobcentres, they just didn’t listen, they were never bothered. But then you say something and somebody says, “I agree, I disagree”, and so wow, somebody’s listened. That’s success.

Questions from readers

Left to right: Lynval Golding, Terry Hall, Horace Panter.
 Left to right: Lynval Golding, Terry Hall, Horace Panter. Photograph: Suki Dhanda/Observer

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In my opinion you’re the best band to grace this world. Which song do you still love banging out the most?
Lee Griffiths, via email
Lynval: I like Nite Klub. It’s a bit of a naughty one: “I won’t dance in a club like this/ All the girls are slags/ And the beer tastes just like piss.” It’s what we guys, when we get together, we talk about. We don’t shout it out loud to people. I quite enjoy that.
Horace: Yes, I’ll go Nite Klub too. There’s a version of it on the deluxe edition of the album and it’s fantastic, I love it.
Terry: I quite like stuff from the second album. International Jet Set and Stereotype. Just because I’ve always had this thing about people seeing us as a ska band. We don’t play ska music, and if you look at International Jet Set, you couldn’t be more removed from ska. On the second album, I couldn’t pick one song, but I could say with that album: “Wow, something good is happening here.” And then we split up!

remember hearing Gangsters for the first time in 1979 when I was in an amusement arcade on my school holidays. The energy of that song stopped me in my tracks and the Specials have been my band ever since. What’s your music moment that’s stayed with you?
Angelina Jones, via email
Terry: I’d go with Gangsters. When we did it on Saturday Night Live in New York. Because it felt so alien to the people on the show, the ones working there and the audience, and that was the first time I thought: “Something good’s happening here.” We took off the shackles when we did it, people were just roaming on and off stage. And it felt really like the right song at the right time. I remember doing photo sessions and people thinking we were like, a gay choir, because we all had short hair. Either ex-marines or a gay choir.
Lynval: Remember when we did it in Chicago? When they got the audience to throw these fake dollar bills on the stage? Because… gangster, yes?
Terry: Al Capone.

Miranda Sawyer: But can you think of a song that isn’t yours where you thought: this changes everything?
Horace: I was delivering car spares to a store in Birmingham. This was about 1990. And this song came on the radio, and I was standing there with this box, and this bloke was going, “Come on, give me the box,” and I go, “Shh.” And it was Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana. It was the first time I heard it, and I thought, “Flippin’ heck. That’s good.”
Lynval: “Get up, stand up. Stand up for your rights” by Bob Marley, because it was around the time when we started having our own identity. We started getting away from the colonial ways that were forced on to us. And that’s when the Rasta theme started coming up, something we can call our own, you know? That really hit me.
Miranda: How about you, Terry? Is there a song you can think of that changed things for you?
Terry: I will come back to Shaddap You Face again… No, Anarchy in the UK. It was like everybody was waiting for something like that. It was a turning point.Advertisement

If someone had told me 40 years ago that a bloke like [pro-Brexit ‘yellow vest’ protester] James Goddard and his mates would be close to the profile they have today, I would’ve found it hard to believe. You played a leadership role then. What do you think needs to happen now? How do we reverse the division that people like Goddard look to exploit?
Steve E, Vancouver
Lynval: Back when we started, it was a small minority of skinheads that was pulling the wrong way. I remember one guy I met, a real National Front supporter, you know? And after I finished talking to him, we shook hands and we looked at each other, and he said he hadn’t talked to a black guy before. He wouldn’t do it. But once we talked and had a discussion…
Horace: Those people always were out there. They feel more of a licence to speak now, because we all have our platform, don’t we? This division is a knock-on effect of Instagram and Twitter and whatever. Everyone has a voice now. But there’s no filter on it. Back in our day, you would voice your discontent down the pub to your mates. Whereas now you can voice your discontent to millions of people from the privacy of your own downstairs toilet.
Terry: I think politicians love the division. It’s a great thing for them. They thrive on it. I don’t think they want everyone to be together. Brexit has conjured up so much stuff, and all these personalities are appearing, like Jacob Rees-Mogg. They like the division and I can see it getting a lot worse.

Do you feel mellowed with age or do you still get intensely wound up by current political events?
Stephen Bennett, Dublin
Lynval: I switch on CNN and wonder: “What am I watching all this for?” People calling the police because a little kid is selling water, just because the kid is black [#PermitPatty]… The one thing which I think is good with social media is, when we say: “You’ll never understand what it’s like to be black.” I think the images that come in now, but you see it and maybe understand more. You know, you walk in a shop and you know that all eyes are on you. Because you appear like a guy who’s going to come in and shoplift. Because you’re black… No, I’m not mellowed with age.
Horace: I think age has filtered a few things. The only thing I watch on television is the news, really.
Terry: I’ve definitely mellowed. But I’m at that age. I’m going to be 60 in a month, and there’s loads of shit going on, but then I look up at night and see the moon, and I just think: “Whoa.” Do you know what I mean? You see a tree that’s been there a few hundred years, and you think: “Fucking hell. This is brilliant.”
Miranda: Is that age?
Terry: No, it’s medication. When you have kids of your own and with their mates, that’s where you can be political, and that’s what I’ve tended to do, especially with my older boys when they were teenagers. Watching them go through stuff, and hopefully guiding them. My house used to be a real open house, like a youth club. Their mates always used to come round because I was like a bit “right on”, and they could smoke weed or whatever. And that’s where you try and influence so that there’s not so much anger. It’s not being mellow, you’re doing something, but you’re doing it at home, you know? Rather than just blasting it out all the time.
Horace: Micro as opposed to macro.

Watch the Specials’ video for A Message to You Rudy from 1979.

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What are your thoughts on Coventry becoming a UK city of culture in 2021? Have you been approached to do something?
Liam Nagle, Coventry
Horace: I’m the only participating member of the Specials who still lives in Coventry and no, I haven’t been approached to do something. I would like to see money put by to provide for music lessons for children in schools, a proper legacy. I’m more interested in that than “Here’s a couple of boutique hotels”, and who needs another wine bar for goodness sake?
Terry: I get really bugged by this City of Culture thing. If you have to really search for the culture, you’re making it up. The landmark for me in Coventry is the cathedral.

I’m a Cov kid, who grew up as all the industry collapsed around us in the 80s and 90s, losing perhaps 100,000 jobs in that time from Jaguar, Triumph, Dunlop, Rover, Rolls-Royce, Morris, Alvis, Massey Ferguson. I wonder how you see the city today with so many of those jobs replaced by call centres? People who had repetitive production line jobs at least had the pride of being part of making something that was known, in some cases, worldwide. Now they just get shouted at by irate customers on the phone.
FlightGuileAndPies, online
Lynval: You used to have Courtaulds. They were everywhere. Massey Ferguson that does the tractors. And in Canley, Matrix Churchill, one of the last pieces of work they were doing was [making parts for arms] for the Iraq war. Obviously that war game didn’t work out for them, because war brings employment for them! It’s all gone now. Even the smell of the city is not there any more. You could smell the engineering. Back then, Coventry was thriving, an industrial city. Now it’s a student city.
Horace: Loads of barbers.
Lynval: And chicken shop takeaways. It’s all revolving around students. Working class, labour people – once the industry goes away, then all the traditional pubs, they die. The working men’s clubs, they die. Like what my father used to go to, Rowley’s Green Working Men’s Club. They’re not there any more.
Horace: There’s still manufacturing in Coventry.
Lynval: You’ve got Triumph motorbikes.
Horace: London taxis are made in Coventry.
Terry: All my family worked in factories. My mum worked for Chrysler, my dad worked for Rolls- Royce. Aunt. Everybody worked in the car factories, and there was a real sense of community. Everybody felt on an equal level, all getting cash every week. I didn’t really notice the decline, really, until it had happened, but then it was massive. It’s difficult with Coventry because I moved away for specific reasons. I couldn’t fucking stand it.

What was it like touring with the Clash?
Peter Milne, Norwich
Lynval: It was absolutely an eye-opener. Joe Strummer was a wonderful, wonderful human being, and being in that group of people at that time, there was so much excitement. Because we did our little pub thing, but this was like the next level up. It was just a wonderful vibe. Like one big party.
Horace: We learned how to present a show while on tour with the Clash. You would see how they go on stage and it was just like, Bang. We learned to give 100%. Not just shamble on stage and “If you don’t mind, we’d like to play a few songs.” We were totally different after that tour. I always say that we started that tour as civilians but ended it as a group.
Terry: And after the Clash thing, that’s when we cut our hair, because we discovered what we should look like by doing that tour. And then you end up in Crawley with about 1,000 skinheads gobbing at you.
Horace: That was scary.
Terry: Yes, that was really scary. But it was great because Suicide were on that tour as well. And Sham did stuff. [Jimmy] Pursey was there. For me, it was like, “How do you react to an audience?” The fans tell you the songs they like. They like Monkey Man, definitely. And A Message to You, around the world.

Saffiyah Khan, in a Specials T-shirt, staring down English Defence League protester Ian Crossland in Birmingham, April 2017.
 Saffiyah Khan, in a Specials T-shirt, staring down English Defence League protester Ian Crossland in Birmingham, April 2017. Photograph: Joe Giddens/PA

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I heard activist Saffiyah Khan has sung on the albumHow did this come about?
Barry Mingard, Welwyn Garden City
Terry: We saw Saffiyah in that photo. She had a Specials T-shirt on, and she was standing up to a member of the EDL, who was screaming at her, and she just smiled back. A fantastic reaction, because it made him look stupid. So we got in touch with her and said: “Come to our gig in Birmingham.” Then when it came to recording the album, we were thinking about people who might like to be on it, and she was definitely in my head as somebody who could have something to say. And at the same time I was listening to Prince Buster, Ten Commandments of Man, and I couldn’t believe…
Miranda: How rampantly sexist it is?
Terry: It goes back to Dave Lee Travis, like hand-on-the-arse times. So then the idea came like: “Wouldn’t it be nice to do an answer to that?” But obviously from a woman. Saffiyah was the obvious choice, and we just said to her: “Here’s the Prince Buster song. Do you want to try to reply to it?” And she got on with it.

Bloody hell, I don’t think I’ve seen such effortlessly cool looking gentlemen ever. Please give me a clothing tip.
Tenement Funster, online
Horace: Smart casual. And wear your T-shirt outside your jeans.
Lynval: Horace is stepping up now, he’s the man. Me, I love that sort of stuff from the 70s, like reggae style, you know? Gregory Isaacs.
Terry: It’s simple. Avoid horizontal stripes. Didn’t work when you were 18 mate, and now you’re middle aged.

Terry, as a lifelong Man United fan, what do you think Ole Gunnar Solskjærhas to do to get the manager’s job full time?
Thehumblegent, online
Terry: No idea what he has to do. I mean, he just wins at the moment. He’s such a lovable bloke and a real legend, but whether he’ll keep the job, who knows?
Lynval: He’s a real Man U guy, he spent half his life there, it’s in his blood, and it’s got to be in your blood to be able to manage a club like that. I think they should hold on to him, and give him the job full time. It could be another Fergie in the making.
Terry: I think realistically, for me, Ferguson is managing the club again. He’s using Solskjær as his mouthpiece. Ferguson is smiling way too much.
Lynval: It’s brilliant. The next legend manager.

Now you’re doing new material like Jerry wanted to do when you reformed, isn’t it time to let him back into the fold?
Bloodydoorsoff, online
Horace: (Quietly but decisively) No. Next question.
Lynval: I think having Nikolaj Torp Larsen, we’re really fortunate to have a kid like that who’s so talented. I was one of the last ones to work with Jerry, I enjoyed working with him. If you’re going to make music, you want to make music with people that you respect as musicians. I do respect him a lot.
Terry: The whole Jerry thing, it’s like, from day one, I’m not sure why he isn’t in the band. I honestly don’t know, because we all started rehearsing together [for the 2009 reunion] and he sort of dropped out. I don’t know what happened there. I don’t know why he isn’t in the band, do you know what I mean? He just, dropped out. It’s his stuff really, it’s not our stuff. He chose not to be in the band, for whatever reasons.
Miranda: What about if he said: “Oh, can I come back?”
Terry: I’d just tell him to fuck off. [laughter] No, I wouldn’t. No, I wouldn’t. I’d get management to tell him. He can come back, it’s up to him what he’s going to do.

Why aren’t Neville, Roddy and Jerry back in the band?
Diesel Estate, online
Horace: They left.
Lynval: They left. It’s as simple as that. Roddy left the band, Neville left the band. Jerry didn’t fully join the band back. There’s nothing we can do about it.
Terry: Roddy and Neville feel comfortable where they’re at. They play pubs and small clubs, and I think if you lack that much charisma then that’s probably a wise thing. They enjoy small intimate venues with very few people there. That’s where they feel most comfortable.

For Terry and Horace. What does painting do for you that making music doesn’t?
Sam McNichols, London
Terry: When I was at my ill-est, it triggered something in my brain that wouldn’t allow me to talk or walk for three weeks. Because I couldn’t say anything, I had to write everything down. And a doctor said to me: “Paint.” And actually painting was something that was coming out of my head that I could show to people. For them, in Horace’s case, to despise. [laughter from all]
Miranda: It’s a reaction.
Terry: I’ve got a fixation on the Jackson 5, so I painted the Jackson 5 for six months, and then it was pointed out to me that I’d painted six. Six Jacksons, so I renamed the extra one Phil Jackson. It’s all getting it out, and who cares whether it’s right or wrong, I don’t give a shit.
Horace: Music for me is a collaborative process, I’m a bass player. I have to work with a drummer, a singer, a keyboard player, I’m a cog in a machine. The art is kind of my solo album.

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THE ‘JEWISH SKINHEAD’ GIVES BACK AND FIGHTS ON

John Daly’s Hollywood-like life has been equally exciting and – given his mission to give back to the world while constantly skirting the grim reaper – inspiring.

BY MAXINE LIPTZEN DOROT OCTOBER 15, 2016 02:59 

John Daly

Keeping active, John Daly pedals long distances over difficult European roads to help raise funds for orphans in Nepal. (photo credit: RONY R. BOONEN)

Metro readers first met 43-year-old John Daly in February 2009 in “The Harrowing Life of a Jewish Skinhead.” The article detailed his unbelievable life as a member and eventual leader of the North Florida branch of the Nazi Skinhead American Front.

Growing up in a small town in Florida, John Daly hooked up with a group of nonconformist kids with whom he thought he could fit in – an anti-racist skinhead group named after the county he lived in, Marion County Against Racism (MCAR).

While most people immediately associate the word “skinhead” with “Nazis,” there are different types of skinheads that most people don’t know about: non-racist SHARPs (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice), and those who are black, Jewish and even gay.

As Daly recounts, “In my small high school in Ocala, if you weren’t on a sports team, you were a nobody. I wanted to be accepted so I got involved in an anti-racist group of skinheads, MCAR. We didn’t do much of anything except hang out and talk about what was going on with the racist skins in larger cities, relieved we didn’t have them in our town.

“The guys all knew I was Jewish, but it didn’t bother anyone. It was all cool.”

One night, two of Daly’s friends went to Orlando, where they were approached by local racist skinheads (neo-Nazis) and were ordered, with threats of beatings and intimidation, to give the neo-Nazis the names and addresses of their skinhead friends in Ocala for recruitment in order to build up their dwindling ranks. One of the names was Daly’s.

Several days later, there was a knock on the door of the Daly home. When John opened it, he saw three neo-Nazi skinheads, complete with swastika tattoos. Afraid to let them in his house where they’d see the family’s menorah and other Judaica, he got in their car and drove off with them. He knew that if they had come into his house and saw the “Jewish stuff,” they’d kill him.

In the car, the three Nazi gang members took turns telling him stories about how certain individuals had been mysteriously hurt and hospitalized trying to escape. The driver then turned to Daly, put out his hand and said, “Welcome aboard.” Daly, a nice Jewish kid from a nice Jewish home, was now officially a neo-Nazi skinhead.

He lived in constant fear that his secret would come out. Whenever Jews came up in conversation, he would change the subject, saying, “Well you know there’s no shortage of minorities.”

Most of the time, he and his buddies would hang out, drink and fight “rednecks.” Daly had a sharp tongue and would verbally go after people, scaring them off with threats. This earned him a reputation as a good fighter and kept him from having to use his fists.

Daly miraculously escaped death when his Jewish identity was revealed by a jilted girlfriend of one of the skinheads, and the furious neo-Nazis decided it was time to “kill the Jew.”

He was beaten viciously and then plunged into the Atlantic Ocean to the chants of “Die, Jew boy! Die!” Thinking they had succeeded in drowning him, the would-be murderers fled, but miraculously Daly survived and made his way home.

While in the hospital, he was questioned by police. The skinheads, realizing they were in serious trouble, testified against each other to avoid long prison sentences, all the while planning revenge against “that dirty Jew.”

Upon recovering from his injuries, Daly took up martial arts, knowing he had a target on his back. He eventually earned numerous black belts in three different types of martial arts.

IN SEPTEMBER 1997, as the last of the skinheads were being released from prison, Daly, then 23, made aliya and was sent to Ashkelon because there was an opening in the absorption center there. He learned Hebrew and adjusted to his new life, doing volunteer work wherever he felt there was a need for his help. He has been living in Ashkelon ever since.

In 1999, taking a break from his studies in Ashkelon College, he accepted a job offer to go on a speaking tour around the US. His incredible story was the catalyst for raising awareness of the dangers of the growing threats of racism and the skinhead movement there.

He visited Anti-Defamation League chapters, Jewish and Christian groups, schools and retirement homes to talk about Israel. He was also a motivational speaker for addicts and at-risk youth.

Not being drafted into the IDF – though not for lack of trying and never getting an answer as to why he had been rejected – Daly views his speaking on behalf of Israel wherever he goes as his “personal army service.”

In 2001, he was accepted into an academic program offered by the Jewish Agency. This allowed him to go to college tuition-free in return for volunteering (which he had already been doing). He earned a bachelor’s in sociology and political science from Ashkelon College and Bar-Ilan University, with a minor in Judaic studies. A master’s in public policy and administration followed a few years later.

Since returning from his US speaking tour, Daly has been busy with jobs as a travel agent and teacher, but his passion is still volunteering. For many years he was the Ashkelon volunteer coordinator for Yedid, a nonprofit with one stated aim – to empower people to solve their problems by teaching them to work together to find solutions on a local or national level. In February 2009, Daly ran for the Knesset with the Hayisraelim Party on a platform of electoral change. (The party didn’t win any seats.) He has also been active in the English Speakers of Ashkelon and with a city animal rights group.

DALY WAS leading a healthy, active life, which came to a sudden halt on October 10, 2009.

In a synagogue enjoying Simhat Torah services, he suddenly crashed to the floor – having suffered, for the first time ever, a seizure. He regained consciousness in the ER of Ashkelon’s Barzilai Medical Center, totally oblivious to what had landed him there and to the fact that he had undergone several tests and a CT scan.

 Electrodes connected to an EEG help to track seizures caused by a brain tumor that is an inoperable cancer (photo credit: GAL SELA)

Electrodes connected to an EEG help to track seizures caused by a brain tumor that is an inoperable cancer (photo credit: GAL SELA)

He was soon transferred to Soroka University Medical Center in Beersheba where, relying on the CT, doctors told him that he had a brain tumor resting on the right frontal lobe (which controls higher mental functions, motor skills, emotional stability and helps with concentration) and there was nothing to do but give him anti-seizure medication.

Three days later, Daly was sent home with a bagful of medication, and returned to college life. He was summoned for an MRI a month later; there, Soroka’s chief of neurosurgery gave him the grim news, “The only person I know who might be able to help is Prof.

Tsvi Ram at Ichilov Hospital [part of Tel Aviv’s Sourasky Medical Center]. He’s your one chance. Good luck.”

Daly’s records were sent to Prof. Ram at the end of December 2009. With his mother, Ruth, one of his brothers and his then-girlfriend anxiously waiting, He endured his first “awake” brain surgery, a procedure during which the patient is totally conscious in order to respond to different commands to see how their brain is functioning.Recommended videos 

He was given a sedative to relax him and a local anesthesia was injected into his scalp. The anesthesia didn’t take, which according to doctors happens in just 1 percent of patients – and he was one of that group. He remembers intense, agonizing pain, screaming, cursing, yelling, drilling and the sounds of anxious voices all around him trying to calm him down.

Because of the excruciating pain, not only could he not pay attention to what was being asked of him, there was the real possibility of a life-threatening seizure. The anesthesiologist then sedated him completely. One of the results of this surgery was that his left side became partially paralyzed and he still endured massive seizures after the operation. To minimize the episodes, he started on doses of medications but nothing helped; he was time and again experiencing potentially fatal seizures.

His life became a series of doctor visits with regular trips to an epileptologist, a neurosurgeon, a neurologist and a neuro-oncologist. Throughout all this, he still managed to volunteer at Yedid to the best of his abilities. On September 2013, back in the hospital, Daly was taken off all medications for a full week. This was done to induce seizures so a video testing system could track them, allowing the specialists to understand them better. He was a prisoner in his hospital room, attached to electrodes and cables. It was here that he celebrated his 40th birthday, not knowing if he’d reach his 41st.

These procedures led to a second awake brain surgery in February 2014, carried out with the help of Dr. Gal Sela, a neuropsychologist. Ram once again performed the procedure and, thankfully, it went smoothly and without pain. During the operation, a portion of the tumor was successfully excised, but not all of it could be removed. As a result, Daly still has seizures, though they aren’t as aggressive.

Incredibly, after long months of physiotherapy, he was able to return to his life with some physical limitations. He still does volunteer work and lectures in high schools and colleges around the country, never covering the long, bright scar that runs across the top and side of his head. For him, it is a badge of honor.

Daly considers the long scar running across the top and the side of his head a badge of honor (photo credit: RONY R. BOONEN)

Daly considers the long scar running across the top and the side of his head a badge of honor (photo credit: RONY R. BOONEN)

IN JULY 2014, Daly was tracked down by a former friend who had been a member of the skinheads but was not in on the attempt to kill him. He wanted to make amends for his youth.

Although there was the chance it was a setup, Daly agreed to meet him, hoping that the friend’s goal was indeed legitimate.

The friend invited him to Prague, and since his seizures were less aggressive and to conquer his fear of traveling and meeting someone from his vicious past, Daly flew to meet him. This meeting resulted in a soon-to-be-released documentary, Escape From Room 18, making the rounds of global film festivals this season.

At an international pro-Israel rally in Jerusalem, Daly met a Belgian woman named Sandy, a staunch supporter of Israel. Intrigued by his life story, she invited him to Europe for the first of several trips speaking with audiences all over the continent.

This connection led him to an orphanage in Nepal founded and privately supported by a group of Belgians. To raise funds, they sponsored a bicycle trip, and Daly – who for years was not allowed to ride a bike or even think of driving a car – got the okay from his doctor and volunteered to join, provided he wore protective gear. he trained hard in preparation for this trip and was proud and elated to be an active part of it.

From this past May through August, under the Daly-designed banner of “Survivors for Survivors,” off he rode through wind, rain and heat on bumpy European roads. Exhilarated and crying with joy as he rode, thinking again and again, “I’m not supposed to able to do this,” he and his team got donations from as far away as Australia and the US. In the end, they raised more than €4,000.

To ensure all the money makes its way to the orphanage, Daly has been asked to go to Nepal for two weeks. He plans to expand the operation of the orphanage and to repair damage caused by the massive 2015 earthquake.

TODAY, DALY is in a watch-and-wait state. His tumor is an inoperable cancer that is constantly growing, albeit very, very slowly. If the tumor gets to the point where it must be treated, Daly will have radiation and chemotherapy treatments, but no one can predict how his tumor will behave.

Meanwhile, he lives an amazingly active life with daily doses of medicines to ward off potentially fatal seizures, which could happen at any time. The average life expectancy for someone with his type of tumor is five years.

Daly is going into his eighth.

 Daly and his mother, Ruth, share a light and caring moment at her home in Ashkelon (photo credit: JOHN DALY)

Daly and his mother, Ruth, share a light and caring moment at her home in Ashkelon (photo credit: JOHN DALY)

“I’ve been living under a death sentence since I was 17, and now this tumor can go crazy at any time,” he says.

“Just as I refused to let the skinheads win, I won’t let this mass in my brain stop me from fighting for this country with my words, encouraging support of Israel from people abroad and helping people living here.”

Besides the surgical staff who saved his life, there is another hero in this saga: Ruth Daly, his beloved mom.

Having her son lead the dangerous life he did as a teen would be enough to overwhelm any parent, but Ruth, constantly worried for her son’s safety, was always there for him. No matter what, he always knew that he had a loving home to return to along with unconditional love.

Ruth made aliya to Ashkelon in 2009, a year after becoming a widow – Daly’s father, Ken, is buried in the Ashkelon cemetery. Ruth still worries about her son and is frightened for his health, safety and well-being, but one would never know it since she’s always smiling and laughing. When she looks up at her 1.8-meter-tall son, it is with a tremendous amount of love and a bit of awe that he’s still beating the odds.

Daly ended his meeting with Metro on a pensive note.

“When they tried to kill me, they shouted, ‘Die, Jew boy! Die!’ but they failed spectacularly. My revenge is not only living, but living in Israel, sharing my love for my heritage and this country, even if it costs me my life. You know, it’s very simple. They lost. I won.”

Daly’s Hollywood-like life has been equally exciting and – given his mission to give back to the world while constantly skirting the grim reaper – inspiring.

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I was a Hells Angel

In the spring of 1977 I walked into a swap meet in Anaheim, California, with eight other Hells Angels. We were on guard right away as we realized we were in a sea of Mongols, a smaller, newer club in Southern California that had taken in Chester Green, a former Hells Angel from the Bay Area. Chester had left us in disgrace and, for months leading up to the swap meet, had been quietly filling the Mongols with ideas that the Hells Angels were vulnerable.

I was walking next to Kid Glenn, a six-foot-two, 230-pound Hells Angel from San Bernardino. Like the rest of us, he was wondering what we had walked into. Kid had a linebacker’s frame, muscular with no belly. He was quick with a bright smile and was smart for a biker, but had a reputation for toughness. It was the first time we had met. Like everyone else, he knew a bad scene when he was in one.

“What the fuck is going on with all these Mongols? Do we have a problem with them? Why are all these assholes here?” At a glance it looked like we were outnumbered at least five-to-one; law enforcement would later put their numbers at anywhere from forty to a hundred, to our nine.

“I don’t know, Kid,” I answered.

He turned to the other Angels. “We got to stay together, man. If the shit happens, we just hold our ground back-to-back.”

Everyone nodded and closed ranks. “Yeah, man.” Except for the one person who wasn’t hearing him, a Los Angeles Hells Angel.

A clot of Mongols walked toward us, the crowd parting as they came through. But we were Hells Angels. We gave way to nobody. Green was right in the middle of the Mongols. He and the L.A. Hells Angel locked eyes. No words, just a look. Then without so much as a “How do you do,” the Angel swung on him and connected. It was on.

Brawls are faster and messier than anything staged in a movie or on TV. Everyone was immediately pumped with adrenaline and just reacting, not thinking. It was absolute chaos. Fortunately, being outmanned in a close-quarters fight isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the world. Only so many guys can get to you at one time. If you can keep your cool, you can maneuver opponents so that they’re in one another’s way and don’t have a clear shot at you. In a place like a swap meet, there is also a lot of stuff lying around that you can use to your advantage. Tables and carts can slow enemies down and create a defensive barrier. Mostly, though, there are weapons everywhere. The first thing most of the Angels did was grab something lethal. Prospect Cliff Mowery – a confidential informant, as we would later find out – grabbed a beefy kickstand and started swinging it. Another Angel grabbed a piston-and-rod, which made for a deadly club.

The young Ventura chapter of Hells Angels poses in front of their clubhouse.

 

Jesse, a stocky, sandy-haired young Angel, was beside me when he was bull-rushed by a Mongol tank. This guy was a barrel-chested monster of a man but not a smart fighter. Rather than grab ahold of Jesse or land a haymaker, he rammed Jesse in the chest and knocked him backward. I watched out of the corner of my eye as Jesse flew and landed across a vendor table. The table collapsed, and Jesse wound up on the floor surrounded by heavy, forged-iron sprockets. It was a lucky break. He grabbed the largest gear within reach, jumped up, and started swinging for all he was worth. I’ve never seen anything like it, before or since.

The teeth of a machined motorcycle gear have sharp edges. A gear is heavy as hell. The big Mongol was the first to learn how much Jesse loved to fight, as the gear cut open a savage gash in the big man’s face, eyebrow to chin. Jesse gave other Mongols more of the same. Chunks of flesh and trails of blood were flying everywhere as he took full swings at attacker after attacker. The Mongols around him were screaming, holding gruesome wounds, divots taken out of their faces.

The fight, like most, ended as fast as it started. The nine Hells Angels held their ground as the Mongols broke and ran, but in the end we were really the losers. We did look vulnerable; although we held our ground when hugely outnumbered, the Mongols had fought us in a public forum and had not only lived to tell their tale but were holding their ground in the aftermath.

* * *

Over the next few months the Mongols continued to test us. Our new leader, Ray, a heavy meth-user with a greasy ponytail and aspirations in the porn industry, not only didn’t know how to lead, he was a terrible negotiator. A few months after the fight, the Mongols decided they were ready to challenge us. Their leader informed us they too would soon be wearing the California state rocker – the patch we wore to show our preeminence in the state. The outlaw world is all about respect and territory; this was clearly a challenge that would have to be addressed.

After a long hot, quiet summer, on Labor Day weekend 1977 the Hells Angels broke their silence. A pack of Mongols displaying their bold new California rockers rode along one of Southern California’s winding freeways. In a hail of machine gun fire, they got their response.

Two people were killed, and the murders got everybody’s attention. If the Mongols mistook Ray’s poor leadership as a sign that the club wasn’t serious, they now knew otherwise. Local and federal law enforcement took notice as well. Those weren’t the kind of headlines police chiefs and federal agents liked to read. The killings got big play in the news. The public and every biker in the country were aware of them.

Those in the know expected Mongol retaliation, but the Hells Angels were just getting started.

Two days later, the bodies of Redbeard and Jingles, the two Mongols we killed during the Labor Day shooting, were on view at the Lemon Grove Mortuary. A member of our San Diego chapter, whose identity remains a point of debate to this day, drove up in a white Rambler and parked next to the building. He walked in and dropped a bouquet of red and white carnations on Jingles’ casket. The Hells Angels’ colors would have been obvious to anyone in the room. I’m guessing that the Mongols either thought it was a peace gesture or were too stunned at the ballsy move to react. The guy simply walked away untouched and unidentified. A couple minutes later, he remotely detonated a bomb concealed in the Rambler. He had parked the car in the wrong place; otherwise, the damage would have been much worse. Still, the explosion injured three people.

Christie as a new full-patch Hells Angel.
Christie as a new full-patch Hells Angel.

Bombs were a favorite weapon among outlaw bikers. It was easy to get your hands on explosives, it didn’t take a genius to wire a crude bomb, and they created real damage, and fear. Outlaw clubs also had plenty of military veterans among their members, guys with lots of experience wiring explosives. But I hated bombs. They were messy and cruel. People got maimed as often as they got killed. More than that, I hated the idea of civilian casualties. It seemed stupid to bring that much attention to the club and potentially hurt people who had nothing to do with the beef. Not to mention, you could blow yourself up with a single mistake. Explosives were just way too unpredictable for my tastes.

My opinion wasn’t popular. The bomb at the Mongols memorial had sent a message that everybody wanted sent: “We’re not done with you yet.” To most of the club, another bomb seemed like a really good idea. I walked into the clubhouse a couple days after the memorial bombing to find Ray meeting with a few other members and some of the guys from San Diego. It took me about thirty seconds to realize that they were talking about blowing more Mongols up.

“You guys ever hear of collateral damage?” I asked. “You keep setting up these bombs, this shit’s going to go wrong in a big way.”

I saw the looks I got. The easiest thing in the club was to make accusations: “Oh, this guy doesn’t want a bomb to go off in downtown Los Angeles? He must be an informant. Or a cop. Or he’s just fucking weak.”

I know that they were thinking all that and calling me a coward behind my back. But it was getting out of hand. I left before I heard any more. Days later, word went around the clubhouse that they had put a bomb down a roof vent in a Highland Park motorcycle shop called the Frame-Up. The shop was owned by two Mongols. Something went wrong with the detonator or the bomb. The bomb didn’t go off. Old Man John, a former Hells Angels leader and the man who brought me into the club, took me aside and told me I had to retrieve it.

“Are you kidding? Why not just leave it there?”

“George, you have to do this,” he said, the wrinkles on his seventy-year-old face like roadmaps. “People need to know that you’re going to take care of business no matter what you think about it. The club has to come first. There’s guys saying things right now, and you’ve got to prove them wrong. I already know what you’re about. Now you got to convince them.”

Belonging to the Hells Angels means doing dangerous things. Your participation becomes your credentials. Waver in any way and you become suspect. A lot of times in the outlaw culture, saying no just isn’t an option. This was one of them.

“Okay, John, I’ll get it done.”

“Take Jesse, get that thing out of the roof vent, and take it over to the garage. That’s all you got to do. One of the other guys will take it apart,” he said.

That’s all I had to do.

Jesse and I were coming up through the ranks together, both in our twenties with a lot left to prove to the established members. I knew that, in his own way, John was looking out for me. He wanted to show everyone that I was the stand-up guy he saw, that I would get the job done no matter what. It was important to make sure everyone understood who could hold their mud and who couldn’t.

A young Christie, right, with his mother, father and Cheryl at boot camp on visiting day.
A young Christie, right, with his mother, father and Cheryl at boot camp on visiting day.

So at ten that night, Jesse and I headed over to the Frame-Up. The shop was in a neighborhood of auto body repair places, metalworking shops, and junkyards. We backed Jesse’s oversized sedan down the alley alongside the building and checked that there were no guard dogs or people around. A pull-down roof ladder was attached to the back wall, and Jesse boosted me up so I could grab it and climb up. I found the vent hood easily enough, and the rope holding the bomb had been tied off to a rooftop vent pipe. I untied it and slowly begin pulling the bomb up. It was impossible to do without the bomb swinging side to side. It was like a game of Operation, and every time the bomb clanged into the sheet-metal vent wall I thought it would go off.

I got it out and carried it carefully to the roof edge, right above where Jesse was standing. I started to lower it by playing out the rope. When it was inches within his reach, the bomb started swinging, bumping into the wall.

“Jesus, George!”

“I know, I know.”

We were both freaked out. But I finally got the bomb down into Jesse’s hands. I climbed down and we carried it to the car.

“Where do you want to put it?”

It was a good question. I looked at Jesse and shook my head. I hadn’t thought beyond just getting the bomb down off the roof. We still had to take it for a thirty-minute drive.

“Shit, I don’t know. The trunk?”

“The trunk’s right over the gas tank, man,” he said. “It goes and we’re going to blow like the Fourth of July.”

“So where? The backseat?”

“I think it’s the best place.”

We found a blanket and nestled the bomb on it, as if that would somehow stop the thing from blowing up. We both straightened up and looked at this bundle of dynamite sticks held together with duct tape. It looked cartoonish, like a bad movie prop. We burst out laughing. The absurdity of the situation, along with sheer tension, had built up to the point that laughing was the only way to deal with it. It was hysterical, crazy laughter. We were bent over, tears running down our faces. We calmed down long enough to get settled in the car. I fired it up and moved out and down the street. A block later we went over a set of railroad tracks that was a much bigger double-bump than we expected. It really rattled the car. We looked over at each other and burst out laughing again. It took us the rest of the trip to stop.

We drove the bomb back to the garage and then dropped the car off at the clubhouse, where I picked up my black 1942 Harley Davidson flathead. When I finally pulled into my driveway, I took a moment to just breathe.

* * *

Give the club credit for persistence. Just three weeks after the Mongols’ memorial, Thomas Heath, a twenty-something, short, stubby career criminal and Hells Angel prospect, walked a flat motorcycle tire into the Frame-Up. Brett Eaton had rigged a bomb inside the tire, so that it would detonate when the tire valve was unscrewed. After an hour, Heath called the shop and asked if the tire was done. He talked to Mongol Henry Jimenez. They had a heated exchange, Heath pressing for the tire to be fixed so he could get it on his bike before nightfall. Jimenez finally told him he would get it done. Jimenez wasn’t alone. Raymond Hernandez, the fifteen-year-old brother of another Mongol, was hanging out in the shop.

Christie poses with friend and fellow rider Mickey Rourke.
Christie poses with friend and fellow rider Mickey Rourke.

A fifteen-year-old kid hasn’t even starting shaving yet. He was hanging out with this guy he must have looked up to. He was changing oil or helping out as best he could. Learning. Thinking about how, soon, he would have his own bike. This kid knew exactly what type of Harley he was going to have. Maybe a beat-up bobber he could trick out right there. Like every other teenage boy with a biker brother or father, he knew exactly how his own bike was going to look, and how cool he was going to look riding it.

But he never got a chance to build or ride a motorcycle. He would never even own a driver’s license. Henry Jimenez held the tire steady and began unscrewing the valve. The bomb contacts came together, and Mongol and teenager were instantly killed in a blast that blew the windows out of the buildings on either side of the shop. Heath called again, an hour later. Someone else answered. The sounds of sirens and chaos filled the background.

“Yeah, your tire’s ready, motherfucker. Come down and get it.”

Heath hung up and laughed. It was a joke to him. For days, he went on about the explosion: “You should have heard that fucking guy. I bet his ears were ringing.” He was almost doubled over with laughter as he said it. John finally had to tell him to shut up about it.

Justice would be served decades later when Heath was sentenced to 35-to-life for a domestic dispute beef that bought him a “third strike” conviction.

But to most of the club, it didn’t matter. War was war and collateral damage was to be expected. Days later, the president of the San Fernando Valley Mongol charter, Luis Gutierrez, went out to his driveway to get in his van. It blew up as he opened the door. He was luckier than the fifteen- year-old; he escaped with his life and his body intact.

The violence drew even more attention. Law enforcement doesn’t care when bikers kill bikers, but they don’t like innocent kids getting blown up. From that point on, you couldn’t wear your colors on a paved road in Southern California without getting pulled over and jacked up. Those of us who rode regularly were not having a lot of fun, and I couldn’t get that fifteen-year-old out of my head.

A few nights later, I got home before the kids were in bed. I had been gone for two days and they were overjoyed to see me. We had a little ritual. My place in the living room was a big old black easy chair with gigantic, rounded, thickly padded arms. I would sit one kid on each side and wrap my arms around them. Six-year-old Moriya had just taken a bath and she pressed in on me, reading a picture book, humming to herself. Her hair smelled sweetly of kids’ shampoo. I held the baby, Georgie, close on the other side as he played with a toy car. The TV was on but I wasn’t paying attention. I was just so glad to be home.

The moment was sanctuary. My wife, Cheryl, wasn’t giving me a hard time. Nobody was asking me to juggle dynamite or shoot someone or cover up a felony. There were no psychotic drug dealers here. I had always held a romantic view of the outlaw as hero, but that view was being put to the test. Sooner or later any reasonable person will ask himself what he’s gotten into, how it works with everything else in his life. It all started with the idea of having a simple good time. Partying with brothers, hanging out, building and riding bikes, and living our own version of the American dream. The club seemed to have gone a long way from that in the blink of an eye.

I sat in my little four-foot-by-four-foot square of contentment and wondered how I missed getting shipped out to Vietnam only to wind up at home in the middle of a war. I thought about a fifteen-year-old boy who had probably never enjoyed a stiff drink, a drag race, or sex – and never would. Eventually, I had to ask myself, “How long will I last?” I told myself to cherish the moment. A month and I could be in prison. I could be dead. Cheryl could come to the end of her rope and kick me out. I squeezed the kids closer. Georgie squirmed in my grasp.

Story by George Christie  ·  Photos courtesy George Christie   ·  9.30.16

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Symarip Pyramid Original Ska Band

The Pyramids = Symarip: Establish Skinhead Reggae in The UK and Influence A Generation

Symarip Skinhead Reggae 1969

As The Bees this band are recognised as the first ever UK based Ska band, backing legendarty Singers as Prince Buster and Laural Aitkin. Changing their name several times during the 1960’s. The Pyramids were formed in the mid-sixties by six young British-based Jamaican musicians. The band were also known at various stages of their career from The Bees, The Pyramids, Seven Letters and Zubaba. In the mold of The Equals, they began their career as a straight “pop” group, consisting of founders Frank Pitter, Michael Thomas, Josh Roberts, Ray Knight, Monty Naismith and vocalist Roy Ellis and were signed to President Records.

In 1968, President bagged their first Number 1 with “Baby Come Back” by The Equals, featuring a teenage Eddy Grant on lead vocals. At the request of his label, Grant had also been working with the Pyramids, who had backed Prince Buster on a recent U.K. tour. Besides composing songs for the band (and one for Prince Buster himself, the rude classic “Rough Rider” which was later covered by The Beat), Grant also produced several tracks for The Pyramids in 1969 including the band’s debut single and sole hit, “Train to Rainbow City” which appeared on their self-titled LP.Here is a video of the song “Train To Rainbow City” written by Eddy Grant for The Pyramids:

According to sleeve notes from a best-of collection released by Trojan Records, The band’s relationship with President soured when their record ‘Mexican Moonlight’ was a hit in Germany, but the label neglected to tell them about it. As a result, the band decided to rename themselves so that they could record elsewhere without President Records knowledge. Organist Monty Neysmith came up with a plan: ‘I came up with the idea of turning Pyramids around and you leave out the ‘d’. So originally it was spelt Simaryp. I don’t know how it came to be spelt Symarip!’ So in 1969, safe in the knowledge that Presidnet Records would never unravel the secret of their true identity, Simaryp/Symaripprepared to record for their new label, Graeme Goodall’s Treasure Isle – whose chief label was ironically called Pyramid! 

Skinhead Moonstomp front cover featuring London Skinheads 1970. Trojan Records

 While working as his backing band Laurel Aitkin suggested to the boys that they should write an album for the emerging Skinhead subculture that had started to develop from the Mod culture in England, firmly picking up the Jamaican Ska sound brought into the dancehalls by the new immigrants from the colonies.

The band then recorded their first album as Symparip in 1970 and immediately became the face of “Skinhead Reggae” with songs like “Skinhead Girl”, “Skinhead Jamboree” and “Skinhead Moonstomp”, which is based on the Derrick Morgan song, “Moon Hop”. According to Neysmith, the band noticed a new element coming to their live shows: Skinheads. ‘A lot of skinheads started coming to our shows, and Roy and I said, it would be good to write a song for skinheads. We remembered a song [‘I Thank You’ by Sam & Dave] where they said, ‘I want everybody to get on their feet, and this and that, and give me some of that old soul music’. I thought, let’s change the words and put, ‘I want all you skinheads to get on your feet, put your braces together and your boots on your feet, and give me some of that old moonstomping’.In 1980, the album Skinhead Moonstomp was re-issued in the wake of the 2 Tone craze, hitting the UK pop charts for the first time and a whole new generation of fans were introduced to their sound. The Specials further expanded their name and popularity of Symarip by recording a live cover version of “Skinhead Moonstomp” as part of a medley of 60’s reggae songs on the B-side of their “Specials Live EP” which hit number one in the UK charts.

Laurel Aitkin smoking weed backstage at Acklam Hall Ladbroke Grove , West london

Here is a brief video of Symarip performing in Horace Ove’s documentary “Reggae” recorded at Wembley in 1970 before a crowd of 14,000. The tune is a Rupie Edwards tune called “Pop Hi”. Don’t miss Roy Ellis’s back-flip at the start of the clip:
Amazingly Ellis and Neysmith have reformed the band and plan to perform around the UK in 2008-09. They will perform a show on Friday October 31st at The Hootananny in Brixton, London. You can get ticket information here. There must be something in the water in the UK that’s causing all these bands to reform.

Here is the track list and a download to their 1969 LP “Skinhead Moonstomp” that was reissued in 1980 during the height of 2-Tone”

1-Skinhead Moonstop
2-Phoenix City
3-Skinhead Girl
4-Try Me Best
5-Skinhead Jamboree
6-Chicken Merry
7-These Boots Are Made For Stomping
8-Must Catch a Train
9-Skin Flint
10-Stay With Him
11-Fung Shu
12-You’re Mine
13-Bam Bam Baji
14-Hold Him Joe
15-Tomorrow at Sunrise
16-Parsons Corner
17-Redeem
18-La Bella Jig
19-Holidays By The Sea
20-Feel AllrightSymarip – Skinhead Moonstomp

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Mental health crisis in the Music industry

Kurt Cobain suffered serious mental health issues and drug addiction

The following blog comes from Achal Dhillon – the MD of British independent music company, Killing Moon. Dhillon (pictured inset) tackles a tricky subject: is the music industry doing enough, in the right way, to protect at-risk artists’ wellbeing?


That’s right. I am calling it a mental health crisis, because that’s what it fucking is.

There’s no real need, from where I am sitting right now, to ‘sell’ the importance of addressing the ever-presence of mental illnesses and lacklustre well-being in our music industry.

The fact of the matter – if you have a heart, that is – is that people are dying. People will continue to die if we do not deal with this sooner. And more of them, more frequently than ever before.

However, I recognise that we live in a country, indeed a world, that finds it perfectly acceptable to walk past the homeless, impoverished and (more often than not) the mentally ill in the streets whilst they are actively asking for their help, ignore them, and somehow still sleep at night. (Honestly, if you are one of those people, good for you. I really mean that. I just can’t fucking do it, despite trying.)

So when it comes to a vehicle that was largely born out of selling a particular image of the perfection of human creativity – ie. the music business – you’ll have to forgive me for assuming that many people, including those we all deal with on a regular professional basis, need a degree of poking and prodding on the subject in the headline above.
In music, mental health – and indeed the issues and ailments surrounding it – is fashionable. It is a hot topic. A buzz phrase.


On the odd occasion, I have even witnessed it become so pervasive that depression and anxiety seem more like marketing drivers, rather than illnesses and conditions to be identified and treated seriously.

Prima facie, it is very easy to take what I have written here out of context and do the now-typical thing of forming an online mob and getting angry about it. (A trend that itself obviously warrants getting angry about.)

However, I am not resentful about this situation (or, truthfully, as much as I have been in the recent past). Every art form, including music, must necessarily have a business element in order for it to get, well, anywhere. And anger isn’t going to help a goddamn thing.

Fact: depression, anxiety and, ultimately, suicide, as far as the artist community is concerned, historically results in a surge of sales (or I guess streams) for the affected artist.
This, for the business enterprise concerned with these acts, deserves serious contemplation. As does the wider narrative which surrounds these situations. (Question: would anyone have given a shit about Nirvana if Kurt wasn’t so visibly fucked up?’)

Ian Curtis commited suicide

“THE MUSIC INDUSTRY SAW THE THREAT OF PIRACY AS CLEAR AS CRYSTAL… THE MENTAL WELLBEING OF ARTISTS IS A NEW THREAT, ONE WHICH CARRIES MORE GRAVITY.”

It is therefore no surprise to me that there is a rather large barrier to orchestrating any meaningful form of change, given that we sensationalise illness to this point.

Our propensity to get all ‘Candle In The Wind’ about it as soon as a cultural tragedy befalls us, always beckons into view a lens of possibly profiting from it somehow.

And yet, the ongoing narrative today suggests that we may be warming to the gravity of the problem. I do not believe, however, that this warming is happening nearly as quickly as we need it to.

I am writing this to make the argument for pan-industry (trade bodies, private companies, public companies, PROs, musicians, fans, and indeed any other stakeholder I currently can’t think of) action on dealing with our mental health crisis.

This must inevitably be done in the context of money, which I have come to appreciate is generally the single language that the world can best understand.

The music industry saw the threat of piracy as clear as crystal on that basis. So hopefully this will have a similar effect in terms of generating a similar degree of response – both in terms of volume, and indeed unity. The mental wellbeing of artists is a new threat, one which I believe carries more gravity than our historic realisation that we cannot control, nor indeed destroy, the internet.

So there you go: I’m after money. Not for me. For us. Specifically, for further research into the conditions that I believe either stimulate pre-existing and unmanageable addictions or behavioural tendencies, or, in worst case scenarios, create the nuances that lead us into depression or anxiety, or both.

We then also need some more money based on the outcome of this research – hopefully to tell us how the fuck to deal with this. Training. Experience. Awareness. Identification. Treatment. All of it.


From what I hear, the industry is now swimming in money again. So what is the largely-financial argument I need to make in order to render this cause something that pretty much anyone can get behind?

Here it is: we are fucking ourselves as a business by not adequately providing the knowledge base – or the degree of fiduciary responsibility to pretty much any stakeholder (i.e. those which I have referenced above) in the music industry – on how to correctly identify and deal with mental health-related issues.

We are losing money, rooted in consequential loss as opposed to just pure economic loss.

Bluntly put, what good to us is a dead artist? Or a dead product manager? Or a dead fan? Can you make money out of them, in the long-term?

“WE ARE F*CKING OURSELVES AS A BUSINESS BY NOT ADEQUATELY PROVIDING THE KNOWLEDGE BASE ON HOW TO CORRECTLY IDENTIFY AND DEAL WITH MENTAL HEALTH-RELATED ISSUES.”

Let’s take one of the more abstract (as least as far as I am concerned) recent examples of an incident occasioning mental health issues – Chester Bennington (pictured, main).

How many team members, such as a product manager, an A&R, a tour manager, will 
now not have a job as a result of that artist no longer being alive? How much income from live outings or record sales are lost due to the festivals he will no longer play or songs he will no longer write? How many people will now not start bands, or labels, or management companies as a result of not being inspired to do so by a person of such creative and fiscal importance?

I would otherwise talk about Scott 
Hutchison, which admittedly – even as a slight positive – has inspired me to put this column to writing at this time. Because the issue is too important now, isn’t it? Because he was one of ours, wasn’t he?

Hopefully you can understand why, at this time, basically I can’t talk too much about Scott.

I’ll concentrate on the guy I didn’t know to get this across, otherwise I won’t be able to concentrate at all.


It is very easy for me to sit here and preach about this. But it is something that we put into practice on a regular basis at Killing Moon, in respect of most if not all of our monetised businesses. And it isn’t just coming from me either, given that my staff and I are quite unified in this quest to put a heart to the motherbrain of the re-ignited music industry.

I love picking on my management assistant Rob as an example most of the time (in the nicest possible way, of course). In this context, that’s especially true – given that the following event took place on his very first day in the office, back in September 2017.

Whilst getting used to our systems and indeed my own nuances/cursing out loud, we rather abruptly received the offer for Annabel Allum, an artist I had been managing for around 2.5 years at that stage, to support Beth Ditto on her entire EU (still counting the UK in that y’all) live run in October 2017.

This was seemingly our moment that we had been waiting for and we had to act fast.

We had a grand total of about five seconds to say yes to the tour, and then I had about a week to find the money in order to make it happen.

Rob, utilising his rather extensive experience as a touring artist himself, was put to the task of organising the routing, hotel bookings and air/ground transportation for the tour. I’ll leave you to decide which task was more laborious, and which one was more stressful.


By the next day – and obviously at this point we had confirmed that this was all going ahead – Rob did a rather brave thing. He told me he thought Annabel shouldn’t do the tour.

At this point, I am Mo Farah on the final run up to the finishing line at London 2012, and this guy is in my fucking way.

It begged the question, ‘Why, Rob? Why would you try to fuck this up for us?’ And so the question was asked. The response needed 
to be said: ‘I am a touring artist with nearly 10 years’ experience. The routing is far from a nice, coherent oval shape. It is a fucking spaghetti junction. If Annabel misses one connecting flight or bus, it will consequently fuck up the rest of the tour dates. It will take an immense toll 
on her physically and mentally, and that will really have a direct knock-on effect onto 
the quality of her performance.

‘I’m not sure I could do it, and right now, on paper, I’m really not sure it is in her best interests overall to do this in this manner.’

We also semantically debated the merits of sending a young woman, on her own, in these circumstances, into central Europe for the very first time. Not that we want to seem patronising or anything.


The net effect here was that, on reflection, we needed to get more money to ensure 
that Annabel could eat, sleep and travel in a manner consistent with dealing with a venture of this magnitude.

Which basically means I had to get the credit card out. I also needed to go out with her to the first show, make sure she was acclimatised to Beth Ditto’s crew and live environment, and that she could generally get into the swing of the touring routine. Which, to be honest, I can’t even do myself having ended up as tour manager/merch boy on several tours back in the proverbial day myself – lasting about three days before I started crying, and wanting to go home.

Beth Ditto, on the first date of the tour, invited Annabel to travel with her on the tour bus. Why? “Because she used to be me,” Beth told me as I said goodbye following the sold-out show at Copenhagen’s Vega venue, whilst she was talking to a bunch of fans that had waited outside the stage door after curfew to just catch a glimpse of her.“ No way in hell am I letting her travel alone out here by herself. And I wish someone did that for me when I was her.”

So, that was £2,500 on PDs, travel and accommodation well-spent. And I really, really mean that.Music Business Worldwide.

*********************************************************************************************************************************

Promoters are often overlooked in the music business, probably one of the hardest jobs there is, because of the risks involved. The mammoth hours trying to convince people to come along to the show. In modern times the online abuse, a promoter can be the target of. Then the responsibility of the event itself. making sure you have enough money raised to cover the events cost, and to hopefully earn something for your own time. Bankruptcy and breakdowns is a regular for the promoter. Even friends think its cool to come to the show without any financial support. Artists often demanding payment and treatment well above their own value. This all weighs on the promoter, nights of non sleep and anxiety .

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Rebel Dykes London Punk Rock

Lesbian Punk Girls

Brixton in the ’80s was home to a group of radical lesbians who mixed sexual politics with squat culture. Meet the group calling themselves the ‘Rebel Dykes’

In the early 1980s, young gay women, many still teenagers, gravitated to London, attracted by its diversity and experimentation. A lesbian subculture grew up around the squats of Brixton and Hackney. ‘You could tell which houses were squats by the painted doors and blankets in the windows,’ Siobhan Fahey remembers. ‘I wanted to live in Brixton, so all I did was walk around the streets asking if I could move in.’

Fahey had come to London from Liverpool as a teenager. At the time being gay could be dangerous. It had only just become legal for gay men to have sex, and in 1988 Margaret Thatcher brought in Section 28, legislation which outlawed the promotion of homosexuality as ‘a pretend family relationship’. The capital’s empty buildings offered safe spaces for sexual openness, creativity and activism, and so the Rebel Dykes – as Fahey later christened them – were born. Dressed in biker jackets and chains, their hair sculpted, shaved and rainbow-coloured, the Rebel Dykes were the antithesis of ’80s conservatism. They helped establish women-only squats across the city and opened London’s first lesbian fetish club.

  ‘There have been no books or articles. It’s like it never happened’ – Siobhan Fahey

Now, though, these pioneering women feel like they’ve been written out of history. ‘There have been no books or articles. It’s like it never happened,’ Fahey says, explaining that their ‘punky intersectional feminism’ was attributed to ’90s movements like Riot Grrrl, while stories about 1980s squat culture often focused on men. Eventually, she set up a Facebook group to find former Rebel Dykes and nearly 200 people joined. Now she’s producing a documentary to tell their story.

The roots of the Rebel Dykes can be chased back to the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, the female-only protest which campaigned against US nuclear weapons being sited at an RAF base in Berkshire. It was a feminist hub and, according to many of the women I spoke to, a hot spot for coming out and hooking up.

Lesbian Fetish Punk London

‘ I was young, I was cute – why not?’ – Karen Fischer

Rebel Dyke Karen Fischer, known as Fisch, explains that, for many lesbian women, heading to Greenham was liberating. ‘It was like being alone on a desert island, then suddenly there were loads of you,’ she says. ‘It was like being a kid in a candy store. I was young, I was cute – why not?’

There was more at stake, though. ‘If people found out you were gay, you could lose your job, you could get your kids taken away,’ says Fisch. ‘Our lives were made political by the lifestyles we had.’ One Rebel Dyke told me how a Lesbian Strength March was followed by neo-fascists.

Lesbian Punk girls kissing London

Pink Paper

 Two women kiss at Pride (from Pink Paper) 

A major component of the Rebel Dykes’ ‘political lives’ was London’s squat culture. Squatting became a criminal offence in 2012, but in the ’80s it was a basic lifestyle option for
struggling young people. More than 30,000 people were reported to be living in squats in London at the start of the decade. With 3 million Brits out of work, a scene of artists, activists and musicians grew in our city’s squats. As women from Greenham drifted to London, a radical group formed among them.

Fahey ended up living – ironically – in a disused housing benefits office as well as sharing a room at a well-known house on Brailsford Road. ‘We lived in one street that was full of squats where we all took turns cooking at each other’s houses,’ she says, describing how there was a band practice room downstairs .‘There were lots of people in open relationships,’ says Fahey. ‘We had parties that would go on for days.’ It wasn’t all fun, though: drugs, Aids and homelessness affected the community.

The back page of ’80s squatters’ zine Crowbar

The Rebel Dykes were known for their liberal attitude towards sex . They launched London’s first lesbian fetish club, Chain Reactions, which caused uproar among other lesbian groups who were more conservative. Fahey says that the complaints only fuelled the night’s success. It was always packed out, with a different ‘sex cabaret’ each week. ‘Groups of women would come together to put it on and fall in and out of love while making it,’ she laughs. ‘We had pickets outside from other lesbians who thought that lesbians shouldn’t be doing this thing as it “wasn’t quite right”.’

Another popular night was Systematic at Brixton’s Women’s Centre, run by promoter Yvonne Taylor. ‘It was different to other club nights at the time,’ she says. ‘Because it brought in a whole range of different types of women: black, white, young, old, butch and femme.’ Taylor still hosts a monthly night – Supersonic – and says she’s enjoyed watching London’s nightlife become more inclusive in recent years. She’s not the only Rebel Dyke still involved with London’s LGBT+ nightlife, Fisch still performs as drag king Frankie Sinatra.

  ‘I would climb into first-storey windows, take parts of security doors off and change locks’ – Atalanta Kernick

Beyond clubbing the Rebel Dykes’ lives were centred on punk bands and protests. They took part in anti-apartheid, Stop the Bomb and Support the Miners demos as well as early Pride marches. ‘I’ve got a photo of me carrying a banner that reads: “Brixton Dykes Demand Wages for Bashing Bailiffs”,’ says Rebel Dyke Atalanta Kernick. ‘It’s a play on a campaign for women demanding wages for housework. Another was made out of pink mesh and had cats embroidered on it. It said: “Brixton Dykes Make Pussies Purr”.’

Lesbians are fucking everywhere. London Punks

T-shirt made to promote fetish night Chain Reactions

As a teenager with an acid-green mohican, Kernick moved into her first squat in 1985 with a woman she met at Greenham Common. ‘I would climb into first-storey windows, take parts of security doors off and change locks,’ she says. ‘I did a building maintenance course, then carpentry, electrics and plumbing.’ She was one of a number of women who used the skills they learned squatting to take cash-in-hand trade jobs.

Rebel Dykes now: Kernick, Fisch (left), Fahey, Taylor (right) 

Eventually Kernick left London, but the era remains a key part of who she is. After living up north for 15 years, she returned to the city after reconnecting with another Rebel Dyke. ‘We used to flirt in the squats when we were 18,’ Kernick smiles. ‘We’ve been together five years now.’

For Fahey, the Rebel Dyke years are still relevant. She sees her film as a way to connect with today’s queer activists. ‘Sometimes young people look at us like: “You’re so brave”,’ she says. ‘But we had the dole, squats and no CCTV. I look at them in awe.’

Help the Rebel Dykes make their film at www.rebeldykes1980s.com/donate-to-us.

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Todd Youth,Agnostic Front, Warzone, Murphys Law Dies

Todd Youth (Warzone, Murphy’s Law, etc) reportedly passed away

by Andrew Sacher October 27, 2018 2:25 PM

Todd Youth passes away, a huge loss to the Punk Rock community worldwide

NYHC legend Todd Youth, who played in Agnostic Front, Warzone, Murphy’s Law, D Generation, Danzig, and more, and most recently Fireburn, has reportedly passed away. Todd’s Fireburn bandmate Ras Israel Joseph I (also formerly of Bad Brains) posted on Facebook:

On the passing of my friend, and my Brother Todd Youth
There are no words to express how sad I am at the passing of my brother Todd Youth. The music he made will forever be remembered, and I’m so thankful that I was able to work with him and that we created Fireburn together. Todd and I were living separate lives doing hardcore and reggae music. We met each other in 1992 and then never spoke again until 2017. We created Fireburn within two weeks of knowing each other and finished writing two of my favorite hardcore records that I ever worked on: “Don’t stop the youth”, and “Shine”. Closed casket records signed the band and we were on our way. We had great shows and lots of people showed up to them. We toured with gbh from England, hung out with the guys from Negative Approach, and got our blessings about our music and our records from the Bad Brains. I know that Todd is now resting in peace and I know that Krishna is taking his soul to a better place. He was a devout Hari Krishna and The Devout human being. Todd wherever you are I hope that we will make music again one day. Life is a circle and I know I’ll meet you again in that circle brother. We will meet again. Rest In Peace, Rest In Power, rest my brother. I am saddened that we cannot make music again together, but I am happy that you are finally going home to be with Krishna that Haile Selassie has finally giving you peace and comfort my brother. one day, I too will lay down and die. This body that I ware is temporary. I will probably be alone. They’re probably be no one around me. However I know that I will join you and all of our other friends in that good place and we’ll all see each other again. I’m sorry you died Todd. I’m sorry I can’t see you again. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help you. You are my friend and my brother and I love you. Rest in peace my brother. May your visit to our Heavenly Home be full of peace, and comfort, and closeness to Krishna. Haribo. Haile Selassie I. FIREBURN.

Todd Youth live on stage

NYHC show promoters BlacknBlue Productions also posted, “I can’t ….. A very sad day for NYHC FAMILY . 😞😞😞🙏🏼🙏🏼 Todd Youth . We love you . Condolences to all friends & family . Tell the people you love that you love them any chance you get.”

Todd was always such a positive character and passionate about his music. The scene has lost a great character. On behalf of The British Skinhead and Punk scene I send my most sincere thoughts and love to all his family and friends across the pond

Symond ( subcultz ) England

Hatebreed also posted a tribute:

Rest in peace, Todd. You’ll be missed and your crucial contributions to NYHC and beyond will live on.

Watch the full set video of Todd playing with Warzone for the Raybeez tribute in 2017, stream the latest Fireburn single, and listen to one of the Murphy’s Law classics he recorded with them:

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My mum, The Punk Rock pioneer of X-Ray Spex : Poly Styrene’s daughter Celeste Bell

My mum, the punk pioneer: Poly Styrene’s daughter remembers the X-Ray Spex leader

Six years since her death, the punk singer remains hugely influential. Her daughter reflects on learning ‘the family business’, how fame nearly broke her mother – and why she’s making a film of her life

Celeste Bell

Poly Styrene in her early days.
Poly Styrene Punk girl icon

 Poly Styrene in her early days.
Photograph: Anorak London

Even when I was really young, I knew what my mum did for a living. She was always working on something: writing music, recording, doing interviews. As I got older, she’d tell me about the punk movement, about the musicians she knew and what it was all about.

We lived with my grandmother on and off through that period, and she saw punk very differently. For my grandmother being a punk meant things like wearing odd-coloured socks, which she didn’t approve of. Even Mum didn’t like a lot about punk, too. There was loads she found exciting, of course, but she’d tell me plenty of the negative stuff: the aggressiveness of the crowds, the spitting on stage, how very few women were present at many of these gigs – and how that made her terribly anxious about performing. I realised later she was trying to warn me off becoming any kind of performer, in case I got any ideas.

Poly Styrene with her X-Ray Spex bandmates in 1978.
 Poly Styrene with her X-Ray Spex bandmates in 1978. Photograph: Evening Standard/Getty Images

My mum was really a girl when she started playing music: she was 15 when she began performing, younger than most of the other female artists on the scene. Even though she was more talented and had more important things to say than a lot of her contemporaries, she felt she wasn’t taken seriously – not only because she was a young girl, but also because she was working class and didn’t finish school. All of this made it a massive challenge to get any respect from people in the music industry.

Poly Styrene: The Spex factor

When I was a young kid, in the late 80s, she was involved in the Hare Krishna movement. Through that she became friends with people such as Boy George and Chrissie Hynde. I assumed all this spiritual stuff and having well-known people coming and going was the norm. At some points, we were pretty much living in a temple, and everything revolved around Hare Krishna, including her music. I used to tell her: “Nobody’s interested in hearing songs about Krishna, Mum.” But she didn’t care.

Then, when I was 10 or 11, she reconnected with X-Ray Spex and started work on what would become the Conscious Consumer album. Soon after, she had her first website and she started being more in touch with fans. I began to realise just how many fans she had, and how worldwide her support was.

When I turned 15 she gave me a copy of Germfree Adolescents, and I started to understand what a great writer she was. I’d grown up listening to hip-hop and music like that of Rage Against the Machine – which, in the way of all parents, she didn’t approve of, as she told me it would encourage bad behaviour!

X-Ray Spex did a comeback gig at the Roundhouse in London in 2008, playing Germfree Adolescents in full, and my band opened the show. I’d already seen them play Brixton Academy but being up on stage brought home the size of the audience. I was also able to meet a lot of people in the audience at that gig – people would come up to me, say how much they loved X-Ray Spex and what my mum meant to them, which brought home how deep an impact she’d had.

Poly Styrene in 1991.
 Poly Styrene in 1991. Photograph: Ian Dickson/Redferns

When Mum passed away in 2011, lots of people came to the funeral who I wasn’t necessarily aware she’d known. There was so much genuine love, and genuine sadness – I was moved to see that depth of feeling for her.

My mum was quite a businesswoman in how she approached her music and legacy, and she always got me involved in “the family business”, such as writing for her website. And she even suggested I take over as leader of X-Ray Spex. She still hated performing, it brought back all those old anxieties, and I guess I could have done it – I do sound a lot like her, and in a certain way it could’ve been fun. But it would have been way, way too weird for me.

She was contradictory, though, and she remained apprehensive about me being a performer, because she said music remained a toxic environment for women. I wonder if my mum might have had a happier life if she hadn’t had that level of fame. She was always wondering what might have happened if she hadn’t dropped out of school, and although the music brought her excitement and opportunities that most people never have, it also robbed her of her mind in a sense. I think the experiences she had probably triggered latent mental health problems.

Poly Styrene performing

When I saw the documentary about Amy Winehouse, with her getting trapped by her success so young, I did notice a lot of parallels: fame, even on a small scale, really does break some people. But Mum didn’t let it get her completely – that’s why she never did what was expected of her musically. She might not have been able to recapture the unique thing she created with Germfree Adolescents, but she never let anyone tell her what to be. She was true to herself, always.

For these reasons, I wanted to make a film about her – I’m currently raising money to create Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliche. Whenever I talk about her, I think what I really want people to realise is just what a great writer my mum was. Not just a symbol of something, or another part of the punk story, but an amazing talent. With Germfree Adolescents she built this whole world that touched on sci-fi, dystopias, social criticism, the role of women, all these things. I honestly think it’s one of the greatest records of the late 20th century. She was 15 or 16 when she started composing those songs, she hadn’t done her O-levels, she’d got into all sorts of trouble – but she could write this incredibly prophetic stuff and understand the world in a way I don’t think most of her contemporaries could. I am truly proud of her work, and my long-term goal is to get more people to understand this.

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PYMC British Subculture fashion

Chuka and Dubem, twins wearing Mod / Ska, Rude Boy style, London, 1979

Fashion

THE STYLE HERITAGE OF YOUTH CULTURE > PYMCA

By Fused · On October 14, 2014

Quietly simmering gently for over a decade Jon Swinstead of PYMCA has skillfully collected together work by the best of national and international photographers with a passion for street and club culture.

Swinstead’s paced strategy has been to save potentially sinking cultural treasure that deserves global recognition. Year-by-year staff such as Jamie Brett reach their white-gloved tentacles into the most unexpected sections of society in search of insightful visual documentation by all manner of photographers and writers, delivering style heritage with substance. Such work is then swooped upon by curators, making a ‘street’ to V&A step look so easy.

The PYMCA site is a visual beehive, swarming with picture editors in search of images from the dawn of Photography to now. Alongside industry insiders from the world of Advertising to Music, there are students of Fashion Design, Photography and Fashion-related areas such as Styling and PR, clicking through the vast Education section; style stalking in amongst every youth tribe that I will not list here as it is so extensive. From Teds to… you get the picture.

Swinstead and his team seek out the most seductive aspect of style: the unexpected. It is the originators and innovators that form the solid backbone to the archive, with the focus extending to early adopters that makes fashion forecasting companies appear to be somewhat lagging along with early mainstreamers.

Sure, in amongst sections that explore and reflect everything from forty years of PUNK to strutting peacocks on the cobbles of Somerset House during the feeding frenzy of Fashion Week, there’ll be the inclusion of normcore, but such images are always selected with a certain eye.

It is the resourcefulness of youth that excites Swinstead, from one style cycle to the one that quickly emerges as a consequence, or angry reaction to. The meticulous archiving of youth culture is vital, essential, as such momentary history is vulnerable, at risk of being lost.

No gallery, as yet, exists for the collecting of such material anywhere in the world. No gallery, as yet, regularly hosts work by photographers such as Ray Stevenson, Janette Beckman, Derek Ridgers, Caroline Coon, Gavin Watson, Sheila Rock or the new wave of photographers, such as Molly Macindoe and Dean Davies of TRIP magazine.

PYMCA is of value and global importance in terms of the vast strata of social and fashion history that it holds. Whilst digital files are of immediate commercial use to television networks and publishers such as Phaidon, Laurence King and Harper Collins, it is the Fine Art work of printers such as Bob Wiskin (Grade One Photographic), Debbie Sears (Debbie Sears In Black & White) and Peter Guest (The Image) that collectors are now excitedly investing in and knocking on the door of PYMCA’s office to get their white gloves upon.

PYMCA, a mix of ingredients… simmering away quietly for over a decade… now ready to serve.

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This is England. Shane Meadows

Under my skin

Forget shoulder pads and Rick Astley – growing up in the 1980s was a riot of great music, fashion and subcultures, as new film This Is England shows. Here, director Shane Meadows recalls a youth of ska music, scrapping and a time when people ‘still cared’ about politics

Shane Meadows

Sat 21 Apr 2007 00.32 BSTFirst published on Sat 21 Apr 2007 

This is England
 Shane Meadows’ This is England has been one of the biggest British independent films of 2007

It’s easy to laugh at the 1980s. Many people base their memories on the stuff they see in those I Love The 80s TV shows: massive VHS recorders, Atari consoles and rubbish digital watches, all shown against a backing of Now That’s What I Call Music Vol 2. Then there was the way that people dressed: your mum with a deranged perm, your dad in a pair of grey leather slip-ons and your sister with a “Frankie Says Relax” T-shirt and a stack of love bites round her neck.

But my memories have more meaning than that. As a kid growing up in Uttoxeter, Staffs, it was a time of great music, brilliant fashion and a vibrant youth culture that makes today’s kids look dull and unimaginative by comparison. It was also a time of massive unrest when British people were still prepared to fight for the stuff they believed in. My new film, This Is England, is about all of these things.

Set in 1983, this is the first period film I have made. A great deal of it is based on my own childhood and I tried to recreate my memoirs of being an 11-year-old kid trying to fit in. It was a time when Uttoxeter, like the rest of the country, was awash with endless different youth tribes. There were new romantics, heavy rockers, smoothies, punks, goths, skins and mod revivalists who were into the Specials and 2 Tone. Then there were those pop culture kids who came into school wearing one green sock, one pink sock and some deely boppers on their head. People often looked daft, but were genuinely committed to their chosen denomination and would wear their identities on their sleeves with immense pride. In a town as small as Uttoxeter, though, there weren’t enough people for each sub culture to fill their own parties or clubs, so most weekends everyone would turn up at the same village hall disco and end up fighting.

Like most 11-year-old kids who wore jumpers with animals on, I got bullied by the older kids at school. So I looked for my own tribe to join. It was the skinhead movement that enamoured me the most. I remember seeing 10 or 15 of them at the bus shelter on my way home from school one summer night and thinking they were the most fearsome thing I had ever seen. Even though I was terrified of them, I was instantly attracted to them. To be a part of most of the other factions you had to be a little rich kid. But to be a skinhead, all you needed was a pair of jeans, some work boots, a white shirt and a shaved head. You could be transformed from a twerp into a fearsome warrior in 15 minutes. Skins appealed to me because they were like soldiers: they wore their outfits like suits of armour and demanded respect. There were playground myths that surrounded them and especially their Dr Martens boots. It was feared that a single kick from a DM boot would kill you or at the very least give you brain damage. I can remember kids refusing to fight unless the skinhead agreed to remove his fearsome boots first.

My older sister was going out with a skinhead who took me under his wing and taught me about the roots of the whole culture. He was a nice bloke who bore no relation to the stereotypical racist yob that people now associate with that time. It was him that I based the character of Woody on in the film. I learned from him that skinheads had grown out of working class English lads working side by side with west Indians in factories and shipyards in the late-60s. The black lads would take the whites to blues parties where they were exposed to ska music for the first time. Soon, Jamaican artists like Desmond Dekker, the Upsetters and Toots And The Maytals were making a living out of songs aimed directly at English white kids. This was where the whole skinhead thing came from – it was inherently multicultural. But nowadays when I tell people that I used to be a skinhead, they think I’m saying I used to be racist. My film shows how rightwing politics started to creep into skinhead culture in the 1980s and change people’s perception of it. This was a time when there were three and a half million people unemployed and we were involved in a pointless war in the Falklands. When people are frustrated and disillusioned that’s when you get extremist groups moving in and trying to exploit the situation. That’s what the National Front did in the early-80s. Skinheads had always taken pride in being working class and English so they were easy targets for the NF who said that their identities were under threat. They cultivated a real hatred of the Asian community. In the film, Combo represents the sort of charismatic leader the NF used to turn skinheads into violent street enforcers. Suddenly, all skinheads were branded the same way. But most of the real old skins who were into the music and the clothes went on to be scooter boys to separate themselves from the racism. I always wanted This Is England to tell the truth about skinheads.

As I started to make the film, other themes started to interest me. We had a relatively small budget so we couldn’t afford to recreate every last detail of the Uttoxeter of 1983. Instead, I set the scene by using archive news footage at the start and end of the film. Going though footage of the Falklands war really made me think again about the whole thing. As kids, we thought it was like going into a World Cup campaign. It was exciting and we were cheering on our lads to go and do the Argies. But the scenes of soldiers’ coffins shocked and appalled me.

In many ways the country was a mess. The miners’ strike was massive – they were killing scabs by throwing paving slabs from bridges onto cars. You had all the protesters and unrest at Greenham Common. But remembering all of these things made me nostalgic for a time when people were ready to stand up and say something. People cared about where the country was going. As the 1980s ended we had the poll tax riots which turned out to be the end of an era. Afterwards, it was like the nation lost its backbone. People were bought off. They were given a little bit of land, the right to buy their council house and put a little satellite dish on the front of it. They became content and lost their will to rock the boat.

The big difference between now and the period in which my film is set is our level of isolation. In 1983, people still cared about society as a whole but now they’ll keep their mouth shut as long as they’ve got the house, the job and the car they want. If you were a kid in 1983, you wouldn’t have a PlayStation to sit indoors alone with. You got your entertainment from mixing with a variety of different people. While making the film, I realised that all of my fondest childhood memories surrounded human contact: mucking about with mates or going camping. In 2007, people put less emphasis on that sort of thing and more on planning their careers and their TV viewing. As far as I’m concerned, if you’re working from nine to five then coming home to watch shows that your Sky box has recorded for you while you were out, you might as well be on a fucking drip.

This Is England is a snapshot of an era and a life that seems very dated now. It’s about sticking up for mates and beliefs.

The gang

This Is England’s tight group of mates are stranded in a drab, east Midlands town in 1983. Devoted to sharp dressing, ska music and each other, the warmth and harmony of their gang is threatened by the arrival of Combo – an older skinhead with an angry, racist agenda.

Smell

The gang’s token Boy George-alike becomes the object of young Shaun’s affections. Kindly, she gives him his first kiss.

Lol

Firm but fair leader of the girl-skins and girlfriend of Woody. Also the subject of unwanted advances from the sociopathic Combo.

Shaun

An isolated 12-year-old whose dad has been killed in the Falklands War. His transformation into a skinhead offers him a whole new life of friendship, DMs and braces.

Milky

The gang’s only black member becomes a target of abuse as certain members start to embrace the National Front.

Woody

A warm hearted leader who nurtures Shaun into a fully-fledged skin. He splits from the gang when Combo shows.

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How Fred Perry became a target of New York tabloids

Wimbledon tennis champion Fred Perry

Mod lad London

At far-right rallies across the U.S., an English tennis champion named Fred Perry hovers, invisible to the men unwittingly representing him. For the last two years, members of the Proud Boys cult of masculinity have worn Perry-branded striped-collar polo shirts with a Wimbledon-inspired laurel insignia as they shout at anti-fascist protesters and take rocks to the head. In blog posts and tweets dating back to 2014, their patriarch Gavin McInnes has instructed them that this — a Fred Perry cotton pique tennis shirt, always in black and yellow — is the proper armor for battling multiculturalism.

The Proud Boys at most have a few hundred active members, but they are a fixture at fascist “free speech” events like this month’s anti-Muslim marches, where they mingle with white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups. McInnes is eager to point out that the Proud Boys accept people of colour, Muslims, and Jewish people — so long as those members also “accept that the West is the best” and reject non-Western immigrants to America (McInnes is Canadian). But McInnes insists his followers are not themselves white supremacists, a clarification he has to make partially because Fred Perry polos have a history of popping up at any fashion orientated event across Europe and the Americas. The shirts have been a fixture in some form or another, in all their two-dozen-plus colorways, in modern and youth style for fifty years, here in the States but especially in England, where both the brand and the skinhead subculture that co-opted it are from.

    Skinheads High Wycombe 1986

In the mid-1960s, a movement emerged, which was to become a god send for very cheap headlines, to sell newspapers and movies. when first-generation ‘Black’ Jamaican and Barbadian Brits, whose parents had been recruited by the tens of thousands to help rebuild England after WWII, introduced their white working-class friends to ska, rocksteady, and rude boy style at clubs around London’s council estates. “You could see the music was bringing these different cultures together, and it was suggesting a possible way forward through understanding our differences,” Don Letts, a filmmaker, DJ, and BBC Radio host, who was born in London in 1956 to Jamaican parents, told The Outline. In 2016 he produced the BBC documentary The Story of Skinhead, mostly to correct the record on skinhead culture’s non-racist origins. “Politics wasn’t really something that we talked about. That was on our parents’ level. We just wanted to bond over music, clothes, and girls.”Amid England’s entrenched class consciousness, taking pride in looking nice as a working-class person inspired the white English kids to spin together their own heritage with their West Indian neighbors’ sleek suits, dress shoes, and generally smart style. “They went for things that were associated with the English upper class and looked clean and sharp but were more affordable, and Fred Perry was definitely one of those things,” Letts said. Paired with work boots and tight jeans, Perry’s designs for the tennis court became a subversive dig at English elitism. The look, which according to Letts appeared mostly on white kids but a few black ones, too, was also a response to flamboyant, middle and upper-class mod culture;
before the term “skinhead” finally began appearing in the late ‘60s, the young white kids with short-cropped hair and crisp workwear were called hard mods.

As young people were working out this visual identity, white English adults had become convinced that black and South Asian immigrants were taking their jobs and ruining the economy. In 1968, conservative MP Enoch Powell delivered a now-infamous, vitriolic speech in which he warned white Brits that they would soon be an oppressed minority in their own country, punished by a politically correct government for daring to reject multiculturalism. “After that speech, I felt the atmosphere change immediately,” Letts said. “Race really came into the picture and the scene became more hostile.” a perfect subject matter could be stired up and encouraged, the press were onto something. a big group of young uneducated, poor working class kids, that could become the modern devil in the midst, The modern antichrist

The more ostracized and feared they were, the stronger their identity became.Skinhead culture began migrating north, to predominantly white communities, which at that time was 95% of the Britain, where football matches were the main source of distraction from a deteriorating economy on a Saturday afternoon. Fred Perry’s wide color range gave fans plenty of options to show which team they supported, and the look emanated a tough edge well suited to the violence simmering underneath football culture. Ensconced in white suburban bubbles, these boys became a natural target for the U.K. National Front, (just as much as they were by fleet street), a rapidly growing white nationalist party founded in 1967 that often recruited outside football stadiums. Every fresh college grad journalist had easy meat for the first published piece The party also opened social clubs across northern England that hosted live music, giving working-class kids — many of whom, proud of their class status, by then identified and dressed as skinheads — a place to congregate and commiserate about their dimming futures. “But you could only get in if you signed up to be a member of the National Front, and up north it was probably the only club, and so of course they wanted to go there and hear music,” Letts explained. “A lot of it came down to ignorance and just following the herd. These kids didn’t have any formulated political views.”

Gavin McInnes Proud boys USA

We discussed this story, and Gavin McInnes, on our daily podcast, The Outline World Dispatch. As the ’70s progressed, mainstream media became fascinated with this young, fashionable, seemingly new strain of the far right. The skinheads loved it; the more ostracized and feared they were, the stronger their identity became. Like today’s Pepe trolls, any attention was a godsend. Even when framed as reprehensible, ignorant ideology aired in public forums exposed more people to the journalist’ views and legitimized them as being worthy of discussion. After Margaret Thatcher brought the Tories’ isolationist, neoliberal policies to power in 1979, gutter journalism boomed across England, and there were always badly dressed college grads in the ranks twitching to bitch and lie for a quick buck down Fleet Street

Skinhead Girls at the Reunion Brighton England

Women wear Fred Perry at the annual Skinhead Reunion event in Brighton in 2014.

A picture taken by a passer by and sold to a photo library, by a passing member of the public, looking for a quick earner, with no permission or knowledge of the girls personal lives or history

With Reagan’s inauguration signaling a similar shift in the U.S., lazy journalism, and blatant blackening of characters of the lower wealth bracket became the norm, badly dressed press reporters uniform, boomed, to the levels of the padded shoulder suits, found a welcome home stateside when it landed in the early 1980s, according to Heidi Bierich, the director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project. “poor, white people ideas already had a toehold in the US, and this culture spread very quickly across the country,” said Bierich. In conservative strongholds like Orange County, California and in parts of northern Florida, angry white youth who were politically unwelcome amongst punk and hardcore’s overwhelming anti-Republicanism became a perfect victim of cheap lazy journalism, these uneducated, low paid mass were never going to make the media have to answer charges of malicious slander, character degredation, or incitement to abuse.

Skinheads in Bogota Colombia wearing Fred Perry
Zoe Beery , fashion expert and journalist

Since the SPLC began tracking these journalists in the late 1990s, bad fashion sense has been a consistent enough presence that it’s one of only two things that really identifies these people. Number two, being their complete lack of factual evidence whilst concocting stories for the gaps between adverts in throwaway magazines clothing brands the SPLC includes in its lower class trash glossary is a fred perry t shirt (the other is Dr. Martens). “What makes youth fashion cultures distinct is music and clothing, not necessarily their ideology,” Bierich said. “They’re very mobile and fluid. You’ll find them in white black and hispanic groups in the USA,

A member of the Proud Boys stands behind Gavin McInnes in a black and yellow Fred Perry polo, at a rally in Berkeley, California.

london Hipster
Proud boy Hawaii

When I emailed McInnes to ask him why he tells his followers to wear the black and yellow polos as they trawl for anti-fascists in downtown hicksville, he warned me that “if you associate us with rich middle class pop stars, Hipsters, British sportsmen or any implication like that I will take you to court” but went on to explain that he wants to align his group with the working-class toughness of the late ’60s hard mods. (A youth culture that never actually existed ) “It plays into the idea of this being a rebellious, edgy movement against the status quo,” said Alice Marwick, an unnamed Fordham University researcher who has extensively studied social media (wasted months reading false facebook profiles) claiming to be far right. “When you say ‘white supremacy’ you think of something with a long history, like the KKK. When you say ‘alt-right’ it sounds like something new and alternative, very similar to alt delete, when you write something completely senseless. In that newness, people feel that they’re part of sticking it to the man, nothing like ending a debate, by pressing the block button, to silence any questions someone may want to ask the journalist.”

Amy Winehouse expression when asked if she was a Proud Boy

A few days later, he released a ten-minute video excoriating media that criticizes the Proud Boys for their uncanny similarities to Amy Winehouse dress sense. I asked him why, if he doesn’t want to be associated with Jewish singers and Hipsters, he tells the Proud Boys to dress like them. He replied, “I’m not going to let the media’s obsession with pop stars dictate what shirt we wear.” The more hated they are, the stronger their identity becomes.

This article has been written with slightly more knowledge than the original printed on new york toilet roll

if you want a laugh read here

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Ivy League Japan 1964

The Miyuki-zoku: Japan’s First Ivy Rebels

The first Japanese to adopt elements of the Ivy League Look were a youth tribe called the Miyuki-zoku, who suddenly appeared in the summer of 1964. The group’s name came from their storefront loitering on Miyuki Street in the upscale Ginza shopping neighborhood (the suffix “zoku” means subculture or social group). The Miyuki-zoku were mostly in their late teens, a mix of guys and girls, likely numbering around 700 at the trend’s peak. Since they were students, they would arrive in Ginza wearing school uniforms and have to change in to their trendy duds in cramped café bathrooms.

And what duds they were. The Miyuki-zoku were devotees of classic American collegiate style. The uniform was button-down oxford cloth shirts, madras plaid, high-water trousers in khaki and white, penny loafers, and three-button suit jackets. Everything was extremely slim. The guys wore their hair in an exact seven-three part, which was new for Japan. They were also famous for carrying around their school uniforms inside of rolled-up brown paper grocery bags.

What lead to the sudden arrival of the Miyuki-zoku? Although Japanese teens had been looking to America since 1945 for style inspiration, these particular youth were not copying Princeton or Columbia students directly. In fact, Japanese kids at this time rarely got a chance to see Americans other than the ever-present US soldiers.

The Miyuki-zoku had found the Ivy look through a new magazine called Heibon Punch. The periodical was targeted to Japan’s growing number of wealthy urban youth, and part of its editorial mission was to tell kids how to dress. The editors advocated the Ivy League Look, which at the time was basically only available in the form of domestic brand VAN. Kensuke Ishizu of VAN had discovered the look in the 1950s and pushed it as an alternative to the slightly thuggish big-shouldered, high-waisted, mismatched jacket-and-pants look that dominated Japanese men’s style throughout the 1950s. As an imported look, Ivy League fashion felt cutting-edge and sophisticated to Tokyo teens, and this fit perfectly with Heibon Punch‘s mission of giving Baby Boomers a style of their own.

When the magazine arrived in the spring 1964, readers all went out and became Ivy adherents. Parents and authorities, however, were hardly thrilled with a youth tribe of American style enthusiasts. The first strike against the Miyuki-zoku is that the guys — gasp! — would blow dry their hair. This was seen as a patently feminine thing to do.

More critically, the Miyuki-zoku picked the wrong summer to hang out in Ginza. Japan was preparing for the 1964 Olympics, which would commence in October. Tokyo was in the process of removing every last eyesore — wooden garbage cans, street trolleys, the homeless — anything that would possibly be offending to foreign visitors. The Olympics was not just a sports event, but would be Japan’s return into the global community after its ignoble defeat of World War II, and nothing could go wrong.

So authorities lay awake at night with the fear that foreigners would come to Japan and see kids in tight high-water pants hanging out in front of prestigious Ginza stores. Neighborhood leaders desperately wanted to eradicate the Miyuki-zoku before October, so they went to Ishizu of VAN and asked him to intervene. VAN organized a “Big Ivy Style Meet-up” at Yamaha Hall, and cops helped put 200 posters across Ginza to make sure the Miyuki-zoku showed up. Anyone who came to the event got a free VAN bag — which was the bag for storing your normal clothing during loitering hours. They expected 300 kids, but 2,000 showed up. Ishizu gave the keynote address, where he told everyone to knock it off with the lounging in Ginza. Most acquiesced, but not all.

So on September 19, 1964, a huge police force stormed Ginza and hauled off 200 kids in madras plaid and penny loafers. Eighty-five were processed at nearby Tsukiji jail. The kids got the message and never came back, and that was the end of the Miyuki-zoku.

Starting in 1945, Japanese authorities generally viewed all Western youth fashion as a delinquent subculture. Despite looking relatively conservative in style compared to the other biker gangs and greasy-haired rebels, the Miyuki-zoku were still caught up in this delinquent narrative. In fact, they were actually the first middle-class youth consumers buying things under the direction of the mainstream media. It was Japanese society that was simply not ready for the idea that youth fashion could be part of the marketplace.

After the Miyuki-zoku, however, Ivy became the de facto look for fashionable Japanese men, and the “Ivy Tribe” that followed faced little of the harassment seen by its predecessor. The Miyuki-zoku may have lost the battle of Ginza, but they won the war for Ivy League style. — W. DAVID MARX

As the Ivy League style swept across the globe. The British Modernist ‘Mods’ subculture adopted the clothing, modifying it into a very British subculture, with a new more aggressive edge. The Skinheads

Bracknell Skinheads 1970

W. David Marx is a writer living in Tokyo whose work has appeared in GQ, Brutus, Nylon, and Best Music Writing 2009, among other publications. He is currently Tokyo City Editor of CNNGo and Chief Editor of web journal Néojaponisme.

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Refresh Your Focus to Achieve More

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The Best Places To Travel in 2018

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New York City’s Oldest and Famous Bar

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50 Coolest Hostels from Around the World

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10 Movies You Must See This Season

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10 Things You Never Ask

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We’re Already Making Moves to Get to These New Restaurants This Fall

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Week In Celeb Pictures

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5 Major Color Trends

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Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequa, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros decore eam ea. Feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros est usus legentis in iis qui facit eorum augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi. Nam liber tempor cum soluta nobis eleifend option congue nihil imperdiet doming id.

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Hunting Alaskan-style

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Thanksgiving miracles

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What Your Furniture Speaks About You & the Latest in Interior Design

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Top Ten Destinations For Couples To Visit On A Weekend Getaway

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Healthy Food That Is The Best For Your Body, And Easy Tricks

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Universities Under Investigation: Students About Academic Standard

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124 Amazing Facts for People Who Like Amazing Facts

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10 Kinds of Diet Food Your Grandmother Probably Ate

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The Top 20 Places to Travel in 2018

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109 Beyond Easy Winter Dinners

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The Best Thing To See From Your Car In Every State

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5 Endangered Species & What We Can Do for Them

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