Glad my post was okay, I'm new but will try to contribute usefully.

This talk of 'geezers' and my saying that my children have a comparatively genteel existence bears some explanation through examples.

I did well at school, although working class we had a socially mobile aspirant upbringing from my Irish immigrant father and protestant-work-ethis oriented mother.   However while doing well in school and then work/college all before the age of seventeen the following happened to me:

- avoided deep violence in a major skinhead invasion of Nottingham, where the 'boneheads' came on coaches to beat up Mods especially.   There were riot people, shoppers hurt, terrible scenes.  I had to hide in a Littlewoods with the staff helping.

- an axe being pulled on friends in my sight by bikers

- a group of scooterboys came and laid waste to groups of friends on the other end of the estate to try and find me to shut me up (I was a confident little kid to my own detriment sometimes)

- when a bully at school really started getting heavy and I casually mentioned it to the older geezers, they all to my surprise turned up on their scooters, about 30 of them during the day at lunch, parked up in a line and went looking for the bully.  The head of year came to find me and ask me if I could diffuse the situation and ask my 'colleagues' to leave.

- I was abandoned after a party was cancelled in deepest remote Derbyshire and had to walk back in the middle of the night, involving sections walking along the M1.

- A friend's engagement party (both Mods) was targeted by skinheads who pushed over all the scooters and well you can guess the rest.

- I was at a Mod wedding in Kettering of a much older, original 'face' where local casuals tried to set fire to the venue with all the guests and led to a full confrontration with barricades, riot police again and it kicking off repeatedly in the hospital later on.   For this I was briefly seen running across the screen on News At Ten.

I was never directly involved as I was interested in clothes, dancing and music but it was dangerous and every week I was threatened.   I quickly learned to talk my way out of it and the 'geezers' never asked me to join in, they knew I was different (and frankly terrified).   These are just a few examples of what went off.  Just walking to the other side of the city to get Kent Soul LPs or sew on badges (I know, I know...) was fraught with risk, threats and chases.

Although society can be more dangerous now however I am fortunate to live in a middle class area with low crime and good people, so my kids have never seen any trouble and have never been out on the streets at night.   By fourteen I would be (unknown to my parents) across the city often picked up by adults in vans and on scooters within the scene that I had never met.   Because I read up more on music and went sourcing it, I became known for that (a lot of which was early soul, rhythm & blues and dance jazz which was Ivy clad on the covers, our only source of style guidance).

By the time I met my future wife at eighteen I had lived the equivalent of three teenagers I think and was glad to settle into comparative domestic bliss and the less dangerous soul scene.

When I look back to the geezers, one had been inside by the age of twenty for ABH, one for so called 'attempted murder' who reappeared to lead the scene after his time away and later one of the blokes who was a doorman was involved in a death at the door  (Doormen back then really were often criminals it seemed to me).   Thinking back there were lots of conversations in pubs whispered amongst the older blokes that were all in probability related to crime and even at the time I suspect a couple were pushers.    I would be more than just concerned if I thought my kids were part of this kind of thing.    They love the music of Eminem (I guess the latest manifestation of street culture) and others and I have explained my/their roots.   They are grounded but comfortable and thankfully wear aspects of classic clothing now - Fred Perry, Dunlop, Aertex, Farah, Ben Sherman and know the lineage of why they wear them.   My son is taller than me and waits for clothes to be rejected or too small.   

Whereas for me I was excited and stimulated by style, music and an aspirational lifestyle for many of the 'Geezers' it was effectively a dead end.  They had found a social grouping for life, a tribe to belong to and without getting too analytical many were damaged by their upbringing in some way and needed that sense of belonging.    As more people peeled away as they aged and defined themselves in various other ways, the core reduced down and the look became both more tatty or for some a groovy paraody of the look.    I realise I may sound patronising but it's hard to be other as my life experience has taken me into other areas through work.

I was always interested in a sharp unconformist look that was invisible to those who didn't know.   I was both aspirational and quietly rebellious.   Over the years I've evolved in my work through corporate culture to be a voice of the smaller, entrepreneurial consumer centric organisations and Ivy has become the perfect sartorial embodiment of this.    Looking back from the age of forty three I can see a journey now.   I think as a young Mod and for those 'geezers' I mentioned we were all holding a mental image of the early Ivy and Italian clad Soho Modernists as the stylistic peak without knowing how to get there.

Ironically when I recently set up a blog to explore Modernist music, street fashion, style, jazz, architecture and the like called 'In A Model Style' it was decried by the Parka 'n' Perry brigade in the Mod Talk Forum (that I have now left).   I researched my articles properly, know people from the 50s onwards who were part of the original Modernist / Ivy / Mod / Suedehead scenes and have thirty years of immersion to draw on, but apparently this wasn't enough.    The old 'don't get above yourself' attitude of those comfortable within a non-progressing scene still sadly prevails.   The social mobility and upward aspiration aspects was lost to the revival Mod scene.   Indeed the original Mods by '63 as things went overground with the press all moved on to call themselves Stylists and explored city gent looks, casual continental looks and then back to 'Ivy with attitude' by about '68.

I think Groucho Marx said it best 'I wouldn't be part of a club that would have me as a member'.

Last edited by MarkCoyle (2012-06-23 05:01:34)

A guy called Alvin changed my life.  "What's that you're reading, Alv?"  "Intimacy".  I know Woofboxer will think it's some kind of perfume, but TITK will have read Sartre, Camus, De Beauvoir etc.  Knowing John Gall and a certain lady has led to growth.  I'm far more pacific nowadays - a far cry from the summer of '75 when I was a pisshead throwing chairs around at discos.

Last edited by Yuca (2012-06-23 08:52:28)

Yes can be similar to Alfie

He was a Capitalist too? I knew Rodan was.

They're gonna blow it up! God damn them, damn them all to hell!