Modern Mods

2006-06-02T22:18:00.002+10:00

Whoever the marketing manager for the Who was BRILLIANT!!! Not in the sense that they managed to take out the commercialism… BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T!!! The photo shoots for The Who Sell Out were a great way for them to poke fun at themselves … or to show what they were really doing but without making a statement of admission. These photos were used for the covers; they were such a good idea. The Who always had a great and memorable record covers, this I feel was for the love of the music … at the beginning; then the commercialism set in. The members of the Who and all that were involved in the Who at any stage would be very, very rich by now. Over the years the Who have put out albums, done concerts, merchandise, special appearances. The people behind the scenes helping the Who must have been really good at what they did because look at the Who now, there is still a massive following more nearly 40 years after the band first started. It’s mind-boggling to think how much the marketing and media representatives behind the scenes must have helped in creating this type of success. Not to say that the Who were a crap band or anything, it’s just that they couldn’t be where they are positioned in society today if they didn’t have that type of media support.

2006-06-02T22:18:00.000+10:00

The Who put out a compilation DVD in 2005 which was called “The Who – Tommy and Quadrophenia Live.” This is a three disk set that has on it Quadrophenia (92 Minutes), a 90-minute show filmed on the Who’s US tour 1996-97; Tommy (62 Minutes) 1989 live performance of Tommy filmed at the Universal Amphitheatre in LA during the band’s 25th anniversary tour; and the Who Live (119 Minutes), a collection of live Who and Townshend solo hits including some rare acoustic performances of Who favourites filmed in various locations including a previously unreleased stadium show from the USA. The cover of the DVD box set features a large mod target in the background. The Who may have used this mod target in order to send the mod message on another run around popular culture, but I think that their reasoning was much more sinister. As I discussed last time, the Who were not mod, but just put up a socially popular façade.

Nostalgia has become a big part of the advertising campaign that the Who has used to continue to sell their products. Nostalgia is “considered to be an emotional state in which an individual yearns for an idealized or sanitized version of an earlier time period. This yearning for yesterday (Davis 1979) is expressed by the individual’s attempts to recreate some aspect of the past in present life, either by reproduction of past activities or by the recollection of symbolic representations in memory” (Stern, Barbara. “Historical and personal nostalgia in advertising text: The fin de siecle effect.” Journal of Advertising. 12.4 (1992).) The marketers behind the production of this DVD cover knew full well that in using the mod target, they are making consumers recollect symbolic representations. For some people this target meant a better time, a younger time, a time they could be free. Marketers evoke these recollections from consumers, making them more likely to by this box set. The use of the mod target has no relevance to the current mindset of the surviving gmembers of the Who and was never meant in this context.

Were the Who Really Mods?!?

2006-05-30T11:19:00.000+10:00

NO!!

The Who were really never Mod, they tried for a while, but they just the Mod themeing to give themselves an angle in the British 1970's music scene. Mod had gone out by the time the Who brought out Quadrophenia. The film and the album Quadrophenia "is firmly set in the mid 1960s, in London, and typifying the death of the naivety of Britain to a large extent. The Mods and The Rockers. The green parka-clad, pill-popping riders of scooters and the leather-clad riders of motorcycles. British Beat versus American Rock. Next door neighbour against next door neighbour. Gang versus gang. Idiocy and idiocy. It all comes together for one weekend of agro on the beach front of Brighton, on the south coast of England. Told from the eyes of Jimmy Cooper (Phil Daniels), this is the story of his gang of friends as they lead up to a Bank Holiday to remember at the beach. Their dull existence in working class London - and believe me, London in the 1960s was the epitome of British class society - as they struggle to put the money together for the pills that sustain their lives. The anticipation of the Bank Holiday weekend in Brighton, when the Mods congregate to battle the Rockers. The fights, the arrests, the drugs, the sex and the consequences. It's all here in something of a warts and all look at gang life in the 1960s" (http://www.michaeldvd.com.au/Reviews/Quadrophenia.asp).

This film was undoubtedly mod, but the idea behind this film and album had nothing to do with the opression of British teens that forced them to become mods, but a clever scheme to bring back the mod scene in order to make the Who fit into this genre. True mod bands include the Gents, Fleet Street, Jam, Mindless Thinkers, the Small Faces, Secret Affair and many others. The music from these bands all had a true "f**k authority" undertone in their lyrics. The Who however, may have been mod when they were still the the High Numbers. The High Numbers' only single was "I'm the Face" backed with "Zoot Suit", both songs were old R&B songs with new lyrics about Mods. They then changed the name back to the Who and even though the Mods still followed the band, the mod was never to be seen again.

Look at this picture of the Who as the High Numbers. Then look at the picture of the Who currently. There is nothing here that can still identify them as mod, and supposedly the mod could never leave a person. Yeah right!

Watch the Quadrophenia trailer at http://videodetective.com/home.asp?PublishedID=782376

2006-05-03T15:01:00.000+10:00

Mod was a lifestyle that originated in the United Kingdom in the late 1950’s. This lifestyle was at its peak in the mid 1960’s in Southern England.
Mods associated themselves with the jazz of Black America.

Mods hated commercialism and mainstream music. When jazz became more popular, Mods moved on to “Blues, Soul, Rhythm & Blues, and then moved on to Jamaican Bluebeat and Ska to stay ahead of the mainstream” (“The Mods and Rockers”). In particular, Mods mostly stuck to bands indigenous to Britain that played this style of Rhythm and Blues. These bands include; the Beatles, the Kinks, the Rolling Stones, the Creation, the Small Faces, and the Who. The Mod style was in theory, adapted from emulating the style of jazz musicians.

Mainstream Mods or “S. Cohen’s (1972, p. 187) “smooth mods”, were sharply dressed in suits, neat, narrow trousers, pointed shoes, accompanied by short-haired dead-panned girls, moved around the clubs displaying their clothes and presenting new dances” (Brake 1980, p. 75). Mainstream Mods were frequently associated with middle-class drug use, most notably being speed.

Most of today's mods try to take on the 1960's mainstream mod model as these 1960's hooligans are idols to the new mods.

2006-05-03T14:52:00.000+10:00

Hey guys,

This is a new experience so go easy on me.

The general idea of this blog will follow around mods sub-cultures that exist today. They do exist i swear! Even if no one really understands why.

Thanks for reading and I'll see you round here sometime.

... Katy