In a message dated 12/10/99 1:09:05 PM EST, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<< When was the first siting of an american mod? My
> guess would be late 70's >>
You're uninformed at best. There were tons and tons of American bands who
identified with Mod music and did their best to assimilate the style. In
fact, a lot of the bands that get classified as garage were primarily
influenced by the Yardbirds, The Who, The Small Faces (though it must have
been a ball trying to get a hold of those singles) etc. In a lot of cases,
you can really hear the influence, but the shitty recording qualities give
them garage credibility.
One instance of this phenomenon would be a slightly smoother Cleveland
band that made their first 45 in 1967 called....the Mods. There were actually
about a dozen bands called the Mods that made singles in the mid to late
60s-the ones from Cleveland, incidentally, later became the Raspberries. If
you'd like a prime example of the mod influence on American bands of the
time, get yourself a copy of the Powder record (actually, get it on CD for
the bonus tracks, including the wonderful "Kick Me, I must Be Dreaming".
Though Powder did a stint as Sonny and Cher's back up band (I suppose it
beats landscaping as a summer job), the album that they eventually recorded
at Gold Star studios (home of the hallowed Spector reverb plate) is
afantastic amalgam of Who inspired Mod Power Pop. The liner notes describe a
group of Anglophile California high school kids doing everything they could
to glean details of the mod lifestyle-including having a friend of theirs
send clothes from London on a regular basis.
Corin
