And the one thing we weren’t was like original Mods – were were just like punks in Parkas.
The who mods mod#
There are a few sociological books by people like Stanley Coen, there was the Quadrophenia album with the photos in the middle, the ’73 issue with the picture book of the Mod kids with the target, but there was very little to tell us what to go on. Nothing until so we tried to find out and it was hard in those days. We didn’t know anything about being a Mod – nothing. You’ve just summed up in that one phrase “joined the dots”. And for those bands you were getting into, like anyone who is serious about music, you read interviews with them, they talk about the groups that inspired them and that’s how you joined the dots and made the connection So that’s basically how and why it started from my perspective, in the early days, of early 79. But The Chords were Mod and The Undertones were punks. If you listen to The Chords and The Undertones, they’re kind of the same. And my whole generation picked on the Parka, as a piece of iconography, purely to say, “We’re not them”. I was younger than the average punk, but wanted to be different. By 1979 they had become a cliché with the Kings Road tourists, Sid Vicious jackets and haircuts.
And the only reason was, I didn’t like punk kids. And it took The Buzzcocks and The Jam to get me into being a Mod.
I didn’t even know my mum did the Small Faces fan club until after I turned up wearing a Parka and my dad said, “Why are you wearing that stupid coat?”. And what made us wear Parkas… we liked punk music, but didn’t want to be punks. No, our inspiration was Buzzcocks, The Jam, Generation X. I guess that’s what happened with you, or maybe not because of your mum’s connection to the Small Faces?. And it’s the usual thing with a new generation of bands, whoever they’re influenced by, as a fan you end up looking back and getting into music from an earlier era. The very fact that there was a revival, relatively quickly after the original scene happened is quite interesting.Įddie Piller: Within 10 years… Exactly. To be honest, I didn’t really know that something else happened previously, for ages – in other words the proper ’60s Mod movement. SDE: I was born in like, 1969, so I was getting into music in the early 80s – the tail end of the Mod revival. SDE recently caught up with Eddie in a pub in East London to discuss the new release and to try and gain an insight into the Mod scene and mod culture. Released last Friday this set offers a deep dive into the Mod scene in ’60s Britain and includes a selection of classic and rare tracks, tracing the scene from its R&B roots to a soulful finale. Acid Jazz founder, Eddie Piller, has curated a new 100-track, 4CD deluxe set called British Mod Sounds of the 60s.