Some questions:
1. Which of the following is actually more like the behaviour of the
early mods (or a subculture):
(a) to go out to the same places as their friends were going, to chat,
dance, drink and pose?
(b) to agonise over sub-culture and meaning?
2. When talking of 'the mod scene' who exactly are you talking about?
A particular person? The most stupid mod you know? The best one you
know? The average of the 'mods' you know?
3. Two mods go to a [insert contemporary music] club. Does this make
style X mod?
4. Four mods go to . . .
5. 100 mods go to . .
6. A mod goes to a Style X club. Are they still a mod if:
(a) if he dresses the same as he would at a mod club.
(b) she dresses as Style X, but says they're a mod.
(c) they still go to mod clubs as well.
(d) proclaim style X is the new mod, and cease going to mod clubs.
7. Are they style X, or the new mod, or both, or some hybrid of mod and
style X?
8. Do they have any friends when they go out?
9.
What if their friends don't follow them - maybe they get into Style Y,
or they stick with 'the mod scene'?
What if despite other differences they all meet up at mod clubs? But
some of them say they're not mods anymore?
And then some of them say that this makes them the real mods. And then
some of them get into Style M and Q, or even more ludicrously they get
into a more up-to-date yet still backwards looking culture (i.e old
skool hip-hop) but maintain that this is somehow forward looking, and
start saying that those into style X and Y don't get it (as well as
those people just into that 'retro shit', of course). At what point does
it become ludicrous to even use the same word to describe this group of
people, let alone the word mod?
10. One of our hypothetical mods has passed through trend X,Y,M and Q,
and reached a moment of realisation - that they never listened to the X
or Y records anymore, yet all along they'd enjoyed 60s soul, and that
maybe it was time to relax and admit what they loved, rather than worry
about being at the cutting edge, or what their friends on the cutting
edge may think, or what sociological analysis suggests they should do,
and that perhaps it was even more radical to be themselves, rather than
try to prove that everyone else wasn't.
Is this moment when they cease to be a mod? And if they're not, what are
they?
11. Does that mean the people who'd stuck with the mod thing for 15
years and slagged off X,Y,M & Q were right all along, or did they miss
something too, especially if they're so bitter about it?
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