mod (subculture)

Mod, from the word ''modernist'', is a subculture that began in late 1950s London and spread throughout Great Britain, eventually influencing fashions and trends in other countries. It continues today on a smaller scale. Focused on music and fashion, the subculture has its roots in a small group of stylish London-based young men and women in the late 1950s who were termed ''modernists'' because they listened to modern jazz.

Elements of the mod subculture include fashion (often tailor-made suits), music (including soul, rhythm and blues and ska, but mainly jazz). They rode motor scooters, usually Lambrettas or Vespas. In the mid-1960s, members of the subculture listened to rock groups with rhythm and blues (R&B) influences, such as the Who and Small Faces. The original mod scene was associated with amphetamine-fuelled all-night jazz dancing at clubs.

During the early to mid-1960s, as the mod movement grew and spread throughout Britain, certain elements of the mod scene became engaged in well-publicised clashes with members of a rival subculture, the rockers. The conflict between mods and rockers led sociologist Stanley Cohen to use the term " moral panic" in his study about the two youth subcultures, in which he examined media coverage of the mod and rocker riots in the 1960s.

By 1965, conflicts between mods and rockers began to subside and mods increasingly gravitated towards pop art and psychedelia. London became synonymous with fashion, music, and pop culture in those years, a period often referred to as "Swinging London". During that time, mod fashions spread to other countries. Mod was then viewed less as an isolated subculture, but as emblematic of the larger youth culture of the era. As mod became more cosmopolitan during the "Swinging London" period, some working-class "street mods" splintered off, forming other groups such as the skinheads.

By the early 1970s, mod and psychedelia had faded in popularity, with hard rock and glam rock styles taking over. In the late 1970s, there was a mod revival in Britain, which attempted to replicate the "scooter" period look and styles of the early to mid-1960s. It was followed by a similar mod revival in North America in the early 1980s, particularly in southern California.

Etymology and usage

The term ''mod'' derives from ''modernist'', a term used in the 1950s to describe modern jazz musicians and fans. That usage contrasted with the term ''trad'', which described traditional jazz players and fans. The 1959 novel '' Absolute Beginners'' describes modernists as young modern jazz fans who dress in sharp modern Italian clothes. The novel may be one of the earliest examples of the term being written to describe young British style-conscious modern jazz fans. That use of the word ''modernist'' should not be confused with ''modernism'' in the context of literature, art, design and architecture. From the mid-to-late 1960s onwards, the mass media often used the term ''mod'' in a wider sense, to describe anything that was believed to be popular, fashionable or modern.

Paul Jobling and David Crowley argued that the definition of ''mod'' could be difficult to pin down because, throughout the subculture's original era, it was "prone to continuous reinvention".Jobling, Paul and David Crowley, ''Graphic Design: Reproduction and Representation Since 1800'' (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996) , , p. 213 They claim that, since the mod scene was so pluralist, the word ''mod'' was an umbrella term that covered several distinct sub-scenes. Terry Rawlings argued that mods were difficult to define because the subculture started out as a "mysterious semi-secret world", which the Who's manager Peter Meaden summarised as "clean living under difficult circumstances".Rawlings, Terry, ''Mod: Clean Living Under Very Difficult Circumstances: a Very British Phenomenon'' (Omnibus Press, 2000)

1958–1970: Original movement

George Melly wrote that mods were initially a small group of clothes-focused young English working class men, insisting on clothes and shoes tailored to their style, who emerged during the modern jazz boom of the late 1950s. Early mods watched French and Italian art films and read Italian magazines to look for style ideas. They usually held semi-skilled manual jobs or low grade white-collar positions such as a clerk, messenger or office boy. According to Dick Hebdige, mods created a parody of the consumer society that they lived in.

Early 1960s

According to Hebdige, by around 1963, the mod subculture had gradually accumulated the identifying symbols that later came to be associated with the scene, such as scooters, amphetamine pills and R&B music. While clothes were still important at that time, they could be ready-made. Dick Hebdige wrote the term ''mod'' covered a number of styles including the emergence of Swinging London, though to him it defined Melly's working class clothes-conscious teenagers living in London and south England in the early to mid-1960s.

Mary Anne Long argued that "first hand accounts and contemporary theorists point to the Jewish upper-working or middle-class of London's East End and suburbs."Long, Mary Anne, ''A Cultural History of the Italian Motorscooter'', senior thesis presented To Prof. Anne Cook Saunders on 17 December 1998, online at: www.nh-scooters.com/filemanager/download/11/php1C.pdf Simon Frith asserted that the mod subculture had its roots in the 1950s beatnik coffee bar culture, which catered to art school students in the radical Bohemian scene in London. Steve Sparks, whose claim is to be one of the original mods, agrees that before mod became commercialised, it was essentially an extension of the beatnik culture: "It comes from 'modernist', it was to do with modern jazz and to do with Sartre" and existentialism. Sparks argued that "Mod has been much misunderstood ... as this working-class, scooter-riding precursor of skinheads."

Coffee bars were attractive to British youth because, in contrast to typical pubs, which closed at about 11 pm, they were open until the early hours of the morning. Coffee bars had jukeboxes which, in some cases, reserved space in the machines for the customers' own records. In the late 1950s, coffee bars were associated with jazz and blues but, in the early 1960s, they began playing more R&B music. Frith noted that although coffee bars were originally aimed at middle-class art school students, they began to facilitate an intermixing of youth from different backgrounds and classes. At those venues, which Frith called the "first sign of the youth movement", young people met collectors of R&B and blues records.

As the mod subculture grew in London during the early-to-mid-1960s, tensions arose between the mods, often riding highly decorated motor scooters, and their main rivals, the rockers, a British subculture who favoured rockabilly, early rock'n'roll, motorcycles and leather jackets, and considered the mods effeminate because of their interest in fashion.Covach, John; Flory, Andrew (2012), "Chapter 4: 1964–1966 The Beatles and the british invasion , XII Other important British blues revival groups , E. The Who", in Covach, John; Flory, Andrew, What's that sound?: an introduction to rock and its history, New York: Norton, , "6. There were some violent clashes between the two groups. This period was later immortalised by songwriter Pete Townshend, in the Who's 1973 concept album, '' Quadrophenia''. After 1964, clashes between the two groups largely subsided, as mod expanded and came to be accepted by the youth generation throughout the UK as a symbol of all that was new.Brown, Mick. Mods: A Very British Style provides definitive history of the 1960s movement, review. The Telegraph. 19 March 2013 During that time, London became a mecca for rock music, with popular bands such as the Who and Small Faces appealing to a largely mod audience,Unterberger, R., "Mod", in V. Bogdanov, C. Woodstra and S. T. Erlewine, ''All Music Guide to Rock: the Definitive Guide to Rock, Pop, and Soul'', 3rd. ed. (Milwaukee, WI: Backbeat Books, 2002), , pp. 1321–2. as well as the preponderance of hip fashions, in a period often referred to as Swinging London.

Mid-late 1960s

Swinging London

As numerous British rock bands of the mid-1960s began to adopt a mod look and following, the scope of the subculture grew beyond its original confines and the focus began to change. By 1966, proletarian aspects of the scene in London had waned as fashion and pop-culture elements continued to grow, not only in England, but elsewhere.

This period, portrayed by Alberto Sordi's film in '' Thank you very much'', and in Michelangelo Antonioni's 1966 film '' Blowup,'' was typified by pop art, Carnaby Street boutiques, live music, and discothèques. Many associate this era with fashion model Twiggy, miniskirts, and bold geometrical patterns on brightly coloured clothes. During these years, it exerted a considerable influence on the worldwide spread of mod.

United States and elsewhere

As the mod lifestyle was going through transformation in England, it became all the rage in the United States and around the world, as many young people adopted its look. However, the worldwide experience differed from that of the early scene in London in that it was based mainly on pop culture and influenced by British rock musicians. By then, mod was thought of more as a general youth-culture style rather than as a separate subgroup among different contending factions.

American musicians, in the wake of the British Invasion, adopted the look of mod clothes, longer hairstyles, and Beatle boots. The exploitation documentary ''Mondo Mod'' provides a glimpse of mod's influence on the Sunset Strip and West Hollywood scene of late 1966. Mod increasingly became associated with psychedelic rock and the early hippie movement and, by 1967, more exotic looks had come into vogue, such as Nehru jackets and love beads.Lobenthal, J. "Psychedelic Fashion." ''Love to Know.'' Its trappings were reflected on popular American TV shows such as ''Laugh-In'' and ''The Mod Squad''.

Commercialisation

Dick Hebdige argued that the subculture lost its vitality when it became commercialised and stylised to the point that mod clothing styles were being created "from above" by clothing companies and by TV shows like '' Ready Steady Go!'', rather than being developed by young people customising their clothes and combining different fashions.

1970–present: Later developments

Mod and psychedelia dissipated after 1970, as tastes began to favor a more casual look, along with a decreased interest in nightlife. Bands such as the Who and Small Faces began to change and, by the early 1970s, moved away from mod to a more hard rock style. Other mods such as David Bowie and Marc Bolan (of T. Rex) adopted a glam rock style. Additionally, the original mods of the early 1960s were coming to the age of marriage and child-rearing, which meant many of them no longer had the time or money for their youthful pastimes of club-going, record-shopping, and buying clothes.

Offshoots

Some street-oriented mods, usually of lesser means, sometimes referred to as ''hard mods,'' remained active well into the late 1960s, but tended to become increasingly detached from the Swinging London scene and the burgeoning hippie movement. By 1967, they considered most of the people in the Swinging London scene to be "soft mods" or "peacock mods", as styles there became increasingly extravagant, often featuring highly ruffled, brocaded, or laced fabrics in Day-Glo colours.

Many of the hard mods lived in the same economically depressed areas of South London as West Indian immigrants, so these mods favoured a different kind of attire, that emulated the rude boy look of Trilby hats and too-short trousers.Hebdige, Dick, "Reggae, Rasta and Rudies" in ''Writing Black Britain, 1948–1998: An Interdisciplinary Anthology'', James Procter, ed. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000) These Mods listened to Jamaican ska and mingled with black rude boys at West Indian nightclubs like Ram Jam, A-Train and Sloopy's. Hebdige claimed that the hard mods were drawn to black culture and ska music in part because the educated, middle-class hippie movement's drug-orientated and intellectual music did not have any relevance for them. He argued that the hard mods were attracted to ska because it was a secret, underground, non-commercialised music that was disseminated through informal channels such as house parties and clubs.

By the end of the 1960s, the hard mods had become known as skinheads, who, in their early days, would be known for the same love of soul, rocksteady and early reggae. Because of their fascination with black culture, the early skinheads were, except in isolated situations, largely devoid of the overt racism and fascism that would later become associated with whole wings of the movement in the mid to late 1970s. The early skinheads retained basic elements of mod fashion—such as Fred Perry and Ben Sherman shirts, Sta-Prest trousers and Levi's jeans—but mixed them with working class-orientated accessories such as braces and Dr. Martens work boots. Hebdige claimed that as early as the Margate and Brighton brawls between mods and rockers, some mods were seen wearing boots and braces and sporting close cropped haircuts (for practical reasons, as long hair was a liability in industrial jobs and street fights).

Mods and ex-mods were also part of the early northern soul scene, a subculture based on obscure 1960s and 1970s American soul records. Some mods evolved into, or merged with, subcultures such as individualists, stylists, and scooterboys.

Revivals and later influence

A mod revival started in the late 1970s in the United Kingdom, with thousands of mod revivalists attending scooter rallies in locations such as Scarborough and the Isle of Wight. This revival was partly inspired by the 1979 film '' Quadrophenia'', which explores the original 1960s movement, and by mod-influenced bands such as the Jam, Secret Affair, the Lambrettas, Purple Hearts, the Specials and the Chords, who drew on the energy of new wave music.

The British mod revival was followed by a revival in North America in the early 1980s, particularly in Southern California, led by bands such as the Untouchables. The mod scene in Los Angeles and Orange County was partly influenced by the 2 Tone ska revival in England, and was unique in its racial diversity, with black, white, Hispanic and Asian participants. The 1990s Britpop scene featured noticeable mod influences on bands such as Oasis