Julian Lawton wrote:
>
> Some questions:
Are you bored Julian?
> 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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