I'M ONE...... PT.2

Around the time that i met the woman who became my wife my feeling that i needed to belong to something faded into the background. I had connected with someone for the first time in years, and fell madly in love. I still loved music, and still went to both Whitby Goth Weekender events, but my heart wasn't in it. After years of singledom i naturally wanted to do "couple things", and i gradually withdrew from that part of my life. At the same time, i no longer wanted to dress the part. A few months earlier i had a windfall, and treated myself to a couple of Ben Sherman shirts, a Harrington, and some Levis. Being, well, fat at the time these were hard to come by in my size, so they were from Jacamo (i've struggled with my weight for a long time). But they looked decent, and i suppose were my first Mod clothes.  Over the next few years i began to find out about the history of this subculture, its origins and influences, and in turn what it influenced. A lot of the music i've gotten into over the years has been an offshoot of the original Mod scene, or been influenced by it: the very early Modernists listened to modern jazz, which years later fed into the acid jazz scene of the early nineties; the sixties Mods were into rhythm & blues, ska and soul music which branched off into skinheads and northern soul, and in the eighties soul boys and casuals. The first homegrown r'n'b Mod bands - The Small Faces, The Who, The Kinks, and less successful but still influential The Creation, The Action, and The Smoke, to name a few - were partially responsible for the Mod revival of 79/80, whuch was also spurred on by The Jam, whose frontman Paul Weller was a proud Mod. 2-Tone was influenced by not only ska music and punk, but the Pop Art aesthetic of sixties Mod that The Who's Pete Townshend used in the groups' presentation and artwork. Even glam rock (Bowie and Bolan had both been teenage Mods) took notes. Needless to say, the styles and dress sense permeated British culture far beyond the music.

I'm constantly learning more about this highly influential subculture, always discovering more about its history, from the music to the clothes, the literature - i've just finished Absolute Beginners by Colin McInnes, an important touchstone of the early Modernist scene - and pretty much everything else! Several websites have been and continue to be fonts of knowledge, especially the long running Modculture site. Many books have been written about Mods, but Mod: Clean Living Under Difficult Circumstances - A Very British Phenomenon by Terry Rawlings, and Mod: From to Britpop - Britain's Biggest Youth Movement by Richard Weight have proved invaluable in making sense of it all. There are several independent record labels promoting new Mod music, fanzines and magazines keeping Mod alive. Becoming a Mod in my early forties means i have sixty-odd-odd years of history to sift through, making my Modness eclectic, much like my taste in music in general. I've yet to attend any events - the current lockdown has put that on hold - and i need to shift some timber if i want my clothes to look good (and for health reasons, obviously!), but after years of taking an interest from the fringes - and with a couple of diversions - i can say this: I'M ONE. I AM A MOD.