Can You See The Real Me?: Mod and the Mod Revival(s). ('Mod For Dummies').

Mod. An abbreviation. Does it mean modern? It used to, but now it means retro. What is it? It's a youth culture revolving around clothes and music that originated in the late 1950s in London, England and other pockets in Britain, never really dying out while enjoying small semi-mainstream revivals every few years.

What was Mod fashion? Over the years it has evolved into many things. Many people erroneously refer to the dandy-ism of the mid-late 60s as "mod" because that's when the word first became known in America. Some think of the Beatles of the early-mid 60s as mod, but really they were far too mainstream, despite sharing a general image and musical sphere with mod.

Mod Fashion was Three button tonic suits with five inch side vents on the jacket for night time, Ben Sherman button down check shirt or Fred Perry polo in the daytime, topped off by a Barracuda Harrington jacket or collarless monkey jacket to keep out the cold in style.

Turned up Levis 501 jeans or Sta-Prest trousers. Brogues or tassle loafers on the feet, or if you could get them, American sneakers or baseball boots. Those were the staples, among other items, of real mod fashion. These items were purchased feverishly as both fetish item and practical streetwear.

Besides the above mentioned, fashions came and went rapidly, sometimes weekly, and you would not want to be seen out sporting last week or last months' look. US military issue parka coats were worn over the suits so as to preserve their fresh clean-ness. You didn't tolerate dirty or wrinkled suits. Many younger mods drove Italian scooters such as the Vespa or Lambretta.

What is mod music? Initially, mods didn't play music, they just danced to it. The first, elite late 1950s London mods listened to Jazz music and watched Italian films, smoking French cigarettes and talking about matters of great political and spiritual import at London coffee bars. The first explosion of mod wasn't until the early 1960s however, and by this time it had evolved into a more visceral cult of sharply dressed, amphetamine crazed youngsters that obsessed over American soul records and Jamaican "blue beat" or ska music, an early form of US soul influenced reggae.

<--Soul Music.
There were no white "mod bands" until the Who and the Small Faces. The Who had their mod image forced upon them by their mod managers, but through the genius song writing of Pete Townshend and the violent, dandy thuggishness of Roger Daltrey, the band would come to represent for millions of people the world over what "mod" is. A certain semi depressed, grey Englishness brought forth loudly with guitars, cool clothes and the sharpest and smartest of pop songwriting hooks. The Small Faces were pretty much the same animal, but their sound had a much more US soul influenced slant, with the otherworldy Otis Redding style vocals of the amazing Steve Marriot in the forefront. Other bands like The Creation and the Action followed the Who and Faces into the mod hall of fame.

<--The WHO.
Mod made international headlines when fights with the "Rockers" ( a similar Brit-youth cult who worshiped 1950s rock and roll and rockabilly music and rode motorcycles) became publicized. Perhaps because of escalating violence between the two groups, changing fashions, etc, mod slowly went underground toward the mid-late 1960s.

Two things brought mod back to the British mainstream in a huge way in the late 1970s. One was a band from Woking called the Jam, who had cruised into the public eye on the tail end of punk rock's first wave. Punk Rock was all about recycling and combining. The Jam combined punk's up to date fury with the sharp suits and jangly pop guitars of the mod-era Who.

The JAM.-->
The second item that re-invigorated mod was a movie called "Quadrophenia", written by the Who's Pete Townshend, and soundtracked by the band's brilliant album of the same name. The album and film were companion concept pieces about a young mod coming of age in London in the mid 1960s. It is an unassailable, brilliant film. Like "Rebel Without A Cause " in the 1950s, this film summed up it's generation perfectly.


After the popularity of the movie exploded across Britian, new mods sprang up in any tiny town or major burg all over the UK. Even in America, the style was taken up by ex-Punks and New Wavers. All of these new mods saw none other than the Jam as their heroes, their spokesmen, their Who. An overwhelming list of Mod Revival bands such as the Purple Hearts, The Jolt, The Circles, Long Tall Shorty, Secret Affair, the Merton Parkas, The Chords, and hundreds more formed and released mod influenced singles and albums that capitalized on punk energy and the glimmering three chord jangle pop of the Who and Small Faces, filtered through the revisionist sound of the Jam.They wore Fred Perry and Ben Sherman, turned up their Levis, restored old scooters and danced to soul and ska, just like the old days brought up to date. This revival lasted into the 1980s, and died down quite a bit when the Jam broke up in December 1982.

<-- The Purple Hearts.
It wasn't until the early 1990s when Mod reared it's perfectly cropped head again, this time in the guise of Brit Pop. Bands like Oasis and Blur paid tribute to their mod influences and re-ignited an interest in the style. Paul Weller, the brilliant song writer/singer behind the Jam, enjoyed a huge resurgence in his career at this point as well. Mod was a buzzword again. Oasis' singer Liam Gallagher opened a clothing boutique/brand range called "Pretty Green" (after the Jam song of the same name) which sells very high end parkas, polos and other mod fetish items.

Liam Gallagher, Pretty Green Clothing.-->
Mod continues to this day. In 2012, a British cyclist named Bradley Wiggins won the Tour De France. Bradley was a self avowed Mod, and the British press were once more excited about that little three letter word. So excited were the Brits that their decades old fashion invention was being talked about again, that they staged a "mod rally" at the 2012 Olympic games in London, complete with a parade of "mods" on scooters and pre-recorded music by the Who and the Jam as well as a live performance by Blur.

Mod will probably never die. Like the word "pop" itself, it no longer means what it used to. The concepts and images of Mod have become so entwined in popular culture that I'm sure they will never be fully extricated or reclaimed for the dedicated, small cult following that made these things what they are.

Here's an older, wiser (?) Paul Weller, playing two anthems of the first Mod revival, "Start!" and "Eton Rifles".

Heavy Doom Coming Down: My Secret Love Of Doom Metal

I love a ton of different styles of music. If it has loud guitars, I like it. In fact I think that if I had to sum up what I like, I'd say "guitar music". Everything, and I do mean everything that I like has the electric guitar as it's core element. To look at me, though, you'd probably think I was a rockabilly, or a punk, or one of those greaser hot rod dudes. Most of that sort of fits. I do love classic country, rockabilly, psychobilly and all forms of punk rock, power pop, etc. Occasionally I'll shave my head and people will think I'm into Oi, Soul and Ska. I like those things alright. Another passion of mine is probably my earliest one: classic Heavy Metal. When I was 16 or 17, in the late 1980s, I had nipple length hair and listened to a ton of thrash metal, power metal, pop metal, glam metal, you name it.

When I cut all my hair off and "went punk" in my very early 20s, I started denying my heavy metal heritage. Certainly by the time that the vomit stinking tide of "Nu-Metal" (an abomination, for those of you lucky enough to have escaped the knowledge: A cross between rap, metal and funk. It was awful) took over the world of heavy music, I had entirely lost interest. I was off discovering rockabilly, hardcore, country, post-punk, and all the other delicious morsels of guitar music I could get my red and sweaty ham-fingers on.

In the mid 2000s, though, as Nu Metal's sickening testosterone fart-grunts faded into the distance, I started getting curious about what was going on in Metal again. There were some really young kids at my job who wore Iron Maiden shirts and talked about how great King Diamond was, and I wondered how these young bucks knew about such glorious forgotten gold-nuggets from my rock'n'roll past. Turns out, metal was getting big again. With good reason. These youngsters turned me onto new (not "Nu") metal bands such as Municipal Waste, Mastodon, High On Fire, 3 Inches Of Blood, Toxic Holocaust, etc. younger bands that remembered the ancient ways of good ol' forged in fire heavy metal. Thankfully, my good pal Damian started getting re-obsessed with the genre right around that same time, and began buying truckloads of new and old metal CDs and sharing them with me. Metal was back, and i was back into it, and could not for the life of me think of why I'd ever left the fold. Damian and I went to a buttload of metal gigs and got to see some serious greatness.

In the last five years, the scene has only gotten better. Especially the Scandinavian chapter who have produced such perfectly thrilling and chilling bands as Ghost, Graveyard, In Solitude, etc etc. The metal sub genres are endless. Your traditional Thrash, Crossover (which is hardcore punk + metal), Death Metal, Grindcore, Black Metal, Stoner Metal, Power Metal, plus your innovative Death N' Roll, Black 'N'Roll, Blackened Thrash, Blackened Death Metal, etc etc I could go on and on.

For me, metal is great when it's simple, raw, brutal and ugly. Early Bathory and Celtic Frost are good examples. I also like it when it's slow, heavy, atmospheric and spooky. Which brings me to a fairly new-ish obsession of mine. Doom Metal.

Doom metal starts with the Blues. Howlin' Wolf Epics like "Killing Floor" and "Goin' Down Slow" have the heavy rhythms, desperate, fatalistic lyrics and wailing guitars that would inspire English kids like Led Zeppelin and the Yardbirds to pick up guitars and start livin' the hard life. The blues was also obsessed with the Devil, and warnings of the evils of sin were as common as celebrations of the joys of same, sometimes by the same artist in the same song. Robert Johnson was said to have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for the frantic guitar genius that possessed him before he was murdered in 1938.

One of Howlin' Wolfs' heaviest riffs was "Smokestack Lightnin'". Does this sound like doom metal to you? Not yet. but if you bear with me it'll all start to make sense in a minute. Witness the blues.



When four British kids from the tough industrial wastelands of Birmingham , England finally heard the blues in the mid-1960s, they wanted to play it too. When they did it, it sounded like this. And Doom Metal was born.



Black Sabbath were, without a doubt, the first heavy metal band. Which makes doom metal the first heavy metal. The Sabs single handedly invented metal by playing the blues harder and louder than anyone had before, and adding black magic, hippy anti-war sentiments, a cloud of pot smoke and horror movies to the mix. Metal soon innovated itself away from some of these precepts. It got faster, harder, uglier and ditched most of the hippy sentiments entirely, embracing the hard, cruel urban decay of hardcore punk. Doom Metal, however, evolved from fans of Black Sabbath that didn't want change or innovation. They wanted to embrace the doom and darkness and the death of the hippy ideal. Just as Sabbath ended the 1960s with their storm clouds of heavy doom, these bands helped to end their respective decades with batwings, heavy chunks of riff destruction and reefer smoke. The next great doom band was Pentagram.



These guys were so doom, they couldn't even make a full length record for the first ten years of their existence. Frontman Bobby Liebling was so doom, he couldn't stop doing drugs and trying to end himself long enough to put down a whole lot of music in the band's original 1970s incarnation. Fortunately for him though, and for us, what he did put down ( a couple of fly by night singles and rehearsal tapes that were collected and traded by the doom elite before they ever saw wide release)was so good that it became legendary, and led to the first of the bands' many comebacks, in the 1980s. This time they did release an album, the absolutely legendary "Relentless". This thing is the modern doom touchstone. It is depressed, drug addled death-blues of the highest (lowest) order. This time, a harder, 1980s style metal sheen was present in the guitars, and the Ozzy like vocals. The atmosphere of claustrophobic doom and anxiety was palpable in the sounds and the depressed hippy lyrics.



After Pentagram, another band of throwbacks in bellbottoms came shuffling along, scowling and howling into the wind. Witness the mighty SAINT VITUS.



They were so doom, they signed to a hardcore punk label (SST, home of Black Flag) and toured with mostly punk bands, whose audiences mostly hated them. They were so doom, they liked being hated. Punks despised hippies, and Vitus, like Sabbath and Pentagram before them, LOOKED like hippies, despite being more like punks in reality than most punks were, if you're pickin' up what I'm puttin' down. So the very clique-ish hardcore kids of the 1980s were horrified and angered by Saint Vitus' slow, dirgey, doomy songs and satan-hippy image. For awhile. Before too long, punk and metal crossover was pretty common, and you could be a punk with long hair or a metalhead with short hair. But that's a whole other blog. After Vitus taught the punks about Iommi, lots of bands started popping up all over who took the leaden, ominous, Frankenstein stomping tempos of Sabbath and brought them forth into the modern age. Trouble from Chicago were one, as were Candlemass and Cathedral from Sweden and the UK, respectively. Witchfinder General, also from the UK, were part of the "New Wave Of British Heavy Metal" in the early 80s. They took a Sabbath obsession to punky places and replaced the fatalistic doom message with day-glo comic book schlock-horror. As a result, they were pretty damn great. The 1980s and early 1990s were full of great examples of mid period doom. Also being born (again) in this period was stoner metal. Stoner metal is basically doom metal WITHOUT the horror, death and gloom themes. I like some of it, but it's not as interesting to me without the macabre, spookhouse, death-hippy acid flashback element. One "stoner" band who has delved more and more into the murky blood-waters of pure doom is England's ELECTRIC WIZARD. They are perhaps the greatest doom band the world currently has to offer.



Japan's CHURCH OF MISERY are one of my newest favorites in the heavy death-hippy genre. They have HUGE rollicking riffs, a great 60's LSD murder-hippy image, and all their lyrics are about serial killers. Pretty much genius. They remind me of Japanese Misfits worshippers Balzac in that they take all the best elements of their genre and distill them into a perfect product. probably the best solid example of a doom band going right now.



Also amazing are San Fran's ORCHID. They are so Black Sabbath sounding, that I imagine their newest record is a better Black Sabbath record than the original Sabbath are capable of making these days. Witness the pretty much perfect late 1960s stoned and satanic vibe they've got going in their new vid:



I would be remiss if I did not mention ex-Pantera vocalist Phil Anselmo's band DOWN. Possibly the biggest ever doom band after Sabbath themselves, these guys took Doom to a whole new, punky, thrashy, scarily aggressive level. Their first album "Nola" is a classic of the "southern doom" chapter of the genre.



One thing that almost all doom bands have in common, and I really can't find many that don't share this element (besides Pentagram, who favored Les Pauls and Down, who can afford to use different guitars for every song), is the Gibson SG. The SG is THE guitar of doom, having first been adopted by Sabbath guitar god Tony Iommi in the late 1960s.

Here's Saint Vitus Dave Chandler with his SG.

Here's Electric Wizard's Liz Buckingham with hers.

If you want to be Doom Metal, you pretty much need to have a Gibson SG.You also need to see a couple of movies. Below are just two examples.


And lest we forget the one that started it all:"Starring the personable Mark Damon, and lush and lovely women. Even though one of them is from the netherworld!"


Well sir, I'm running out of time here, but I hope I have hipped you to the gloomy thundercloud stomp of doom metal. It's a fun and funky rock'nroll sub genre that more than puts the black in your sabbath.

That Greasy Kid Stuff-- All about Pomades!

Back in the day, when men took pride in looking smart and sharp for their work day, it was unheard of to be seen in public without a fair amount of grease in one's hair. A man's hair was meant to be neatly combed, slicked back and shiny. This is one of the many great male traditions that have fallen by the wayside since the late 1960s. The "hippy" look (long unkempt hair, baggy dirty clothes, pit stains on virtually everything) might have been a reaction against the overly stuffy, dressed up look of the previous thirty years, and perhaps it was a relief to some people.

But most people, once they "let their hair down" never put it back up again. As a result, the sharp neatness of a man's appearance has gone the way of the Victrola and the Edsel. Sweat pants, baseball caps, terrible white plastic running shoes, shapeless haircut,baggy jeans, sports T shirts. This is what a "man" looks like today. If, heaven forbid you are into the very retro idea of looking sharp, then you sir must be a homosexual. Sure, I love the idea that gay men have kept the retro look alive for years, but that's not my subject here. I'd like your basic straight man on the street to start giving a crap about his appearance again, and I'll bet alot of you ladies and fellas would enjoy that as well.

Lately, largely because of the success of retro themed TV shows like the brilliant "Mad Men", the hipster on the street is now (at least in small numbers) starting to sport nicely cut hair and the slick, pomaded look is coming back amongst the clued in. Not so much among the Bud Lite and Nascar crowd, but you can't have everything. NOT that I have anything against Bud Lite or Nascar, as I know some fine people who are into those things, but it just isn't for me.

Of course, the Rockabilly and Swing communities have been all about this all along.

I've been greasing up my head grass since around 1994, when I first starting getting deeply into rockabilly. My tastes have grown and matured, and I have had different looks over the years, but I have always returned to the pompadour. I cut and styled my own hair for years, but since moving back to Michigan I found a great Detroit area barber shop (The Chop Shop in Berkley), who specialize in period haircuts.



People ask me about it sometimes. "How do you get your hair like that?" and "What's that goop on your head?" If they seen genuinely interested I'll give them advice on what to use. As you might guess I've used alot of different varieties of "greasy kids' stuff" over the years. Here are a few of my faves.



POMADES:

Murray's Superior Pomade(Known as "The Orange Can")--
Here is where the rockabilly journey begins, for nearly everyone. It's either this, or Dax (known as "The Red Can"). Dax is getting harder and harder to find these days, so most greasers go right to the sticky stuff, The Orange Can. Sticky it is. a handful of this stuff will last you a week or so of regular every day wear. That's right. Put it in your hair on Monday, and don't wash your hair til next Sunday. Even if you'd like to wash your hair, this stuff ain't coming out. Rain, sleet, snow, a hurricane: your hair ain't going anywhere, cat. Yes, it is greasy and sticky and it will end up on everything you own. Your clothes, pillowcases, doorknobs, faucets, your cat, your wife or girlfriend or boyfriends' face, the Murray's will find it's way there. Having said that, it smells great, really masculine and clean, with a slight honey-like undertone. And it holds. Man, does it ever hold.



Murray's Nu-Nile-- Another great Murray's product. Murray's is a hair care company out of Detroit, Michigan that started in the mid to late 1940s. they initially catered to African American men for the most part, but the 1950s greaser trend found them a new and very loyal clientele, which stands to this day. All Murray's products can still be found in the African American health and beauty section of any drugstore anywhere. Nu-Nile is a great pomade. Ever so slightly lighter than the Orange Can, and smelling much the same, Nu Nile gives you a wetter, less waxy look while still providing the really super strong hold. It's also a bitch to wash out, but it does wash out with a couple of tries, unlike the Orange Can stuff, which just gets harder and harder the more water you put on it. It isn't *quite* as greasy and sticky as the orange can, but it's close. This is what my barber recommended to me and I use it regularly.

There are several more expensive, "boutique" pomades marketed directly to the rockabilly crowd. Hawleywood's Layrite, Mr Ducktail, Cock Grease, Voodoo Brew, American Greaser Supply Co, etc all make nicely packaged, fun and collectible pomades that are pretty much versions of the above two Murray's products with varying scents and thickness.

GREASELESS HAIR CONTROL:

As a rule, I do not ever endorse hair gels. These products are for the Ryan Seacrests of the world, with their fake spiky haircuts and their stupid trendy clothes. However, there is one, and one only, exception to this rule. American Crew Classic Firm Hold.



I hate to even describe it as a "gel", because of the unpleasant images that word puts in my brain-pan. Club hopping Jersey Shore types using handfuls of fruity smelling, bubbly pink goop to spike up their badly cut fades. As you can see though, Am-Crew is not pink, it's packaged in a classy and masculine brown bottle, and it smells fresh and clean, like a barber shop. This product is actually used on the TV show "Mad Men", for outdoor scenes where hair has to stay in place. I personally use it when I'm sick of having so much grease in my hair. Every few weeks it's good to wash all the pomade out, use a different product and give your scalp-astrotrurf a break. One of the drawbacks of pomade is that it will in some cases give you acne on your scalp and hairline. It does occasionally do this to me. So when I get a flare up, and I'm tired of all the grease, I'll go back to American Crew for a couple of days. Now, this product does dry hard like a gel. You can re-animate the slick look with just a little water, but if you do that too many times over the course of a day you will wash the product out and end up with a huge puff of hair on top of your head instead of the slick bad ass-ness you started off with. So use with caution.



Groom And Clean and Brylcreem---

Neither of these can really be called pomades, nor are they really gels. They are both traditional hair products that have been used for years and years. Neither is found in the hair styling section at your local drugstore. They are actually found, in most stores, in the shaving and/or men's toiletries section, near the "Just For Men" hair dyes and the shaving creams and razors.

Brylcreem is a super traditional, ages old product. It's packaging will claim that it's "never greasy", but that is not at all true. Basically it's a light hold pomade/grease in a tube. It smells good and is uber-traditional, but does not have the hold of a pomade or gel.

Groom And Clean is a different matter. It also comes in a tube, and usually sits right next to the Brylcreem at your local Walgreen's, CVS or Rite Aid. However the stuff that comes out when you squeeze the tube looks like toothpaste, and smells like a delicious cinnamon pumpkin bread. It's a clean, sweet smell that people either love or hate. I love it. I suppose what it actually is is an early version of a gel. When the Groom and Clean box tells you that the product is "greaseless", it's not lying. It holds well and washes right out, while giving you a bit of the "slick" look you're going for. Again, I use this when I'm tired of the grease, and when I want more hold and shine than the Am-Crew gives me. I've been using it alot lately.

Here's a great 1950s Brylcreem commercial. I'm not sure I agree with it's claims, but it has the exact mood you want when you're doing your hair. Ain't that jingle catchy? Almost makes me want to give Brylcreem another chance!
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In short, if you are interested in looking sharp and clean like real men did in the 1930s-1960s, the above guide is a good start for you. And if I haven't presented you with enough choices, here are a couple of links to help you out.

Slickville: This is a site all about pomades, retro hairstyles, and anything goopy you can use in your hair. I love it!
http://www.slickville.com

The Rebel Rouser: Here is a great blog with Pomade Reviews and commentary. This guy collects pomades and knows pretty much everything there is to know.
http://therebelrouser.wordpress.com

I guess in closing, the thing I want y'all to remember most of all is to have fun with it, and find your own personal style. It ain't easy bein' greasy.