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#1 2010-07-19 15:04:50

Rip Rig & Panic
Member
Posts: 4697

The 'Beat Mod'

This comes straight from John Simons.  'Jack Kerouac never rang this number', he once said to me of 'Clothesville'.  He describes himself in the above terms, makes reference to jazz - obviously - Lenny Bruce etc.  So there is an Ivy-beat crossover - and why not?  Beat style certainly played its part in my later teenage years: reading 'On The Road', 'The Horn', stuff like that; taking an interest in Gillespie, the beat side of jazz.  The richer the mix the better.

 

#2 2010-07-19 15:12:25

Beatnik's ghost
Member
Posts: 337

Re: The 'Beat Mod'

Being an old punk rocker Mister Panic sir. I find so many parallels with the beat movement. The whiff of danger, the creativity, the anti establishment stance. The devil may care spirit of now.
The Ivy thing has always just been a bit too upight and button down for me.
Old punks never die, they just become old bohos...

 

#3 2010-07-19 15:28:06

Hard Bop Hank
Ivy Soul Brother
From: land of a 1000 dances
Posts: 4923

Re: The 'Beat Mod'

Lloyd Johnson also talks about his local coffee bar that had one room with a mod/ crowd, and one with rockers and greasers. Want a pic? I'm sure it's fine as it's an open facebook group...


“No Room For Squares”
”All political art is bad – all good art is political.”
"Would there be any freedom of press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemisms?"

 

#4 2010-07-20 02:54:15

Rip Rig & Panic
Member
Posts: 4697

Re: The 'Beat Mod'

We'd love a picture.  This has all the fascinating old Soho-Boho associations attached to it, doesn't it?  Perhaps Colin M was a bit more of that than a straight-down-the-line modernist.  Or was he just, Jesmond-style, his own cat?  For me, it goes into the mix during the 50s, begins to fade away after 1960, is driven more into hipdom by beach riots and Barnes-captured ruffians.  Very uncool.  Unhip?  Paul, me old son, over to you...

 

#5 2010-07-20 04:45:14

Hard Bop Hank
Ivy Soul Brother
From: land of a 1000 dances
Posts: 4923

Re: The 'Beat Mod'

can't do this at work... the "show graphics" option doesn't show up, and if I click a pic, the next one comes....

so here's a link to the picture I was talking about, not from the OM page, but from the Ivy Shop page:


http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?op=16&view=global&subj=128414570531663&pid=4363776&id=747329888&oid=128414570531663#!/photo.php?pid=30783336&op=1&o=global&view=global&subj=121413657873171&id=1339644316

Lloyd's comments:

.Some old mates outside THE PAMDOR which was our local coffe bar above Hepworths The Tailors...the were two rooms on the first floor one Mods/beats and the other Greesers/rocers everyone lived in harmony.The second floor had a small club with a dance floor...There were places like this dootted along the south coast in the early 60s...Eastbourne had The Continental and Finches a good dive/basement club and everyone knows the Brighton ones...

The guy without the glasses,Dave Muriel is wearing 501's long sleeve Italian knit shirt and a dark striped madras slipover...the girl with the shades is Lexley my best female friend of the time...still in touch today she's got a wicked humour!...note the three quater suede and beat oilskin and black rollneck...Ricky Perkins all borrowing dosh !!...The Pamdor had a rich mixed of characters.....I went to Art School with Lexley...


“No Room For Squares”
”All political art is bad – all good art is political.”
"Would there be any freedom of press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemisms?"

 

#6 2010-07-20 15:55:42

Beatnik's ghost
Member
Posts: 337

Re: The 'Beat Mod'

I'm with you there Mister Panic sir.
What I love also about Beat is it's great to grow old with. You really cannot be a old mod or an old punk, but the boho vibe is an attitude that only improves like a fine wine. Many of the cats on this forum who would operate under a banner of 'Ivy' are just old bohos with their wines and jazz and book collections. They just associate the beat thing with bongos a little too much.
Beat has real substance: art, design, literature, film, music, you name it. It's more than just a fashion fad.
How many of us are really the uptight Madison Avenue Real Ivy types?
Not many really...

Last edited by Beatnik's ghost (2010-07-20 15:57:04)

 

#7 2010-07-21 00:23:48

Rip Rig & Panic
Member
Posts: 4697

Re: The 'Beat Mod'

Most of us just wear the clothes, listen to the black music, and after that...  well, hopefully we're hip enough to follow our noses...

 

#8 2010-07-21 05:25:45

Rip Rig & Panic
Member
Posts: 4697

Re: The 'Beat Mod'

 

#9 2010-07-21 05:28:29

Rip Rig & Panic
Member
Posts: 4697

Re: The 'Beat Mod'

Oh yes, 'Jazz On A Summers Day' I think has that quality about it.

 

#10 2010-07-21 08:19:01

fxh
Big Down Under.
From: Melbourne
Posts: 6159

Re: The 'Beat Mod'

 

#11 2010-07-21 08:20:37

Rip Rig & Panic
Member
Posts: 4697

Re: The 'Beat Mod'

 

#12 2010-07-23 11:33:56

4F Hepcat
THE Cat
Posts: 14333

Re: The 'Beat Mod'

The Beats were pure bebop and benzedrine.  Kerouac was the biggest fucked-up bisexual benny zen-siddharta addict of them all in panoramic be-bop prosody and jazz poetics. He was the only person that Timothy Leary had a bad acid trip with, Kerouac refused to let go of his bar room bravado and beat the LSD with a bottle of Old Grandad.

He had one Brooks Brothers suit, for when he went on the Steve Allen show to read from 'On The Road'. Burroughs had several Brooks Brothers suits, he truly dressed like the enemy, like Miles. Except Ivy was not the enemy after all.


Vibe-Rations in Spectra-Sonic-Sound

 

#13 2012-02-04 05:15:38

Hard Bop Hank
Ivy Soul Brother
From: land of a 1000 dances
Posts: 4923

Re: The 'Beat Mod'

I think actually he did not refer to himself as a "beat mod" or so, as if it were a certain sub-culture or as if he was part of any youth cult... the phrase that John Simons used in one of the interviews with John Gall for the old page was something like:

"that beat mod crossover... you know, carrying an LP, that pseudo-intellectual thing..."

I can't remember the context, though...

Was it in one of the two parts of the interview???

Was it to do with "Madras memories"??? You know, Madras half sleeve shirts and the Zippo in the pocket, traveling to jazz festivals in France???

... or was it on the first page??? "The John Simons Story"...

I think that's where it was... Just like the line about the "post war re-birth of modernism through jazz, art and clothes"....


“No Room For Squares”
”All political art is bad – all good art is political.”
"Would there be any freedom of press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemisms?"

 

#14 2012-11-16 11:27:21

fxh
Big Down Under.
From: Melbourne
Posts: 6159

Re: The 'Beat Mod'

Last edited by fxh (2012-11-16 11:29:59)

 

#15 2012-11-16 11:35:25

Drum Thunder !!!
Son of Odin
From: the Time that Land Forgot.
Posts: 3768

Re: The 'Beat Mod'

I'm beginning to realise Ivy is only the start, although I'm sure it comes round to being the end also.

(sounds like something Jim would say)


Arrives unpressed and minimally packaged.

 

#16 2012-11-16 11:44:38

fxh
Big Down Under.
From: Melbourne
Posts: 6159

Re: The 'Beat Mod'

Last edited by fxh (2012-11-16 11:46:27)

 

#17 2012-11-16 11:56:53

fxh
Big Down Under.
From: Melbourne
Posts: 6159

Re: The 'Beat Mod'

 

#18 2012-11-17 03:09:15

4F Hepcat
THE Cat
Posts: 14333

Re: The 'Beat Mod'

^Believe it, or not, I was once a English Lit grad student and I actually penned an extended essay on the the Mad magazine parody of the Beats. The whole issue was devoted to the movement and was full of stereotypical caricatures and Lord Buckley style hipster talk.

My conclusion, if one could have understood my dense and purposely florid and unreadable prose that I favored at the time, was that this marked the point of Kerouac's departure with the Beat movement, as it had become overtly commercialised and removed from the bebop spirituality of 52nd street.

It was now the laughable subject of baffoon like cartoons and all one needed to be Beat, was to sport a pair of sandals, grow a beard and wear a beret.


Vibe-Rations in Spectra-Sonic-Sound

 

#19 2012-11-17 03:20:51

Drum Thunder !!!
Son of Odin
From: the Time that Land Forgot.
Posts: 3768

Re: The 'Beat Mod'


Arrives unpressed and minimally packaged.

 

#20 2012-11-24 12:18:09

CaptainMaddox
Member
From: UK
Posts: 329

Re: The 'Beat Mod'

 

#21 2012-11-26 03:12:46

Russell...Street
By any other name...
Posts: 100156

Re: The 'Beat Mod'


42R | 16.5/34 | 34/30 | US 10D/UK 9.5E
"Horses, horses... horseshit!"

“As honest as you can expect a man to be in a world where its going out of style.”  - Raymond Chandler

 

#22 2012-11-26 10:10:52

CaptainMaddox
Member
From: UK
Posts: 329

Re: The 'Beat Mod'

Thank you very much.

 

#23 2012-11-26 20:42:24

Millenial88
Member
Posts: 44

Re: The 'Beat Mod'

 

#24 2021-09-29 08:39:57

A Fine Sadness
Member
Posts: 3009

Re: The 'Beat Mod'

I enjoyed this so much at the time that I've bumped it to maybe run alongside the Vetra thread.  Because JS perhaps still has that element about him and pulls off a look I'm uncertain anyone else could do as well.  I know I couldn't - nor, I don't think, would be wise to try.  But I did go through a phase, at nineteen, of reading Camus and puffing my way through lots of Gitanes.

 

#25 2021-09-29 09:23:50

Yuca
Member
Posts: 8543

Re: The 'Beat Mod'

I took a copy of the Plague with me to Colombia (in translation of course). I put off reading it though - until the pandemic arrived. Then I had the time plus it was painfully apt. Not a bad read btw.


some sort of banal legitimacy

 

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