teenage music tribes. They are gradually dying out. As i pass the hundreds of kids going in to junior’s 6th form, you may see one lad tryin’ to grow a chin in a metal / emo shirt, but no goths, hippies, mods, white rastas, or even hip-hop types, and this is a large Midlands city. This used to be a big bit of youth. identify these past music genres by the look:
long hair and lab coat
grey shirt with top button done up, short hair.
adidas bag and baggies
30s suit, book of Orwell
ma1 jacket and crew cut
ratty long hair, combat trousers, knackered DMs, patchouli, mullet
plenty more – please add.
Kids at school who liked metal didn’t have properly long hair but they did often affect a rat’s tail.
Getting a girl in some teen tribe to ‘do your hair’ used to be a solid strategy for further fraternisation. I had girls henna mine, put it into post-punk plaits n tribal beads, shave bits off (COR!), bleach it (COR LUMME!) and Christ knows what else (not all at the same time). we were metrosexual before the rush.
I used to do my top button up in the early 80s. Until everyone started calling me Walter (one for the teenagers there).
I do miss the tribes, it was dying out 30 years ago though. The yoof round our way basically girls with eyebrows like Denis Healey and inflated lips, and lads just wear black padded hoodies and put their hands down their pants…basically rocking the inmate/Petty thief look. If you asked them all what music they like you’d prob not get much sense of any connection except maybe R&B and Grime maybe.
Grime/ Hip hop/ Trap
Jordans/ Adidas trainers
Black Jacket e.g. Sail Racing, Peak Performance
Adidas track suit
Black T shirt
Black hoody
Black baseball hat
Designer manbag e.g. Armani, Hugo Boss etc
That’s the boy Kai’s wardrobe, innit!?
Whatever happened tp the denim jacket with metal bands patches sewn onto it?
Ideally sleeveless with an appropriate gig T shirt underneath.
And a pair of cargo shorts in black.
Called nuggets at our school becuase lots of patches used silver or gold thread.
Still got mine – its in the loft, but does occasionally see daylight.
All the patches sewn on by my own fair hand.
Now there’s a disarming image: Big hairy arsed metal folk sitting around an open fire sewing
This would be the perfect song to sew along to!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiJLv5WcP8Y
My wife hates cargo shorts worn with boots. I tell her it’s very common amongst the people I work with, often in winter, but she just rolls her eyes.
I took my son to the National Physical Laboratory open day in the summer and there were a young couple, both with denim jackets covered in patches and badges. When I was a teenager, there was a stall at Wembley market that only sold badges, patches and T Shirts. Wonder where all the badges went?
Was this Dire Straits song an homage to that stall?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmQKsBxd-HM
There used to be a shop in Piccadilly Circus tube station that just sold badges and patches. It’s hard to imagine that paying the rent nowadays.
Stylish Italian Suit (usually with three buttons and side vents)
Desert boots
Cropped, fixed, bouffant-esque hair
All topped off with a Green Parka
I just bought a parka – but I was told in no uncertain terms that I am NOT having my first choice with the Target on the back, sergeant stripes and epaulettes.
What is so wrong with a 48 year old bloke wanting to re-live a lost youth (that he never had – I was 12 when The Jam split, and by association the Mod Revival started grinding to a halt)
Were the side vents five inches long?
Yup.
You have to dress right for a street fight
I love those old mods who still have the long side tufts, feather cut, despite nowt on top.
Who remembers getting their ma to unstitch their jeans down the inside lower leg and insert a triangle to ‘flare’ them? No need to even use denim, let alone blue denim.
Yep I had the vee insert jeans upgrade, inspired by a picture of Paul Rodgers on the inside of “The Free Story” – long hair, beard, cheesecloth shirt, upgraded Levi’s, desert boots (also a Marshall half stack and Strat were in evidence). Me, and him, that is.
If we could post pictures I would!
I remember getting a bus out to the National Stadium in Dublin to see Lloyd Cole and the Commotions around ’86. Nearly everyone, male and female, had black polo necks on – a look that served me well for years.
Nowadays my outfits are 90% Gap, my one stop shop for clothing that fits me properly. I actually have difficulty selecting non-Gap clothing so I can go shopping there and not look like I’m nicking their stock.
@Bamber: Mainstream or Easy Pieces tour? If the former, November 1987 in the Stade Nationale. The black polo neck eluded me for years thanks to incessant weight gain but as I’m back to an hour’s commuting by bike, I finally have the figure once more. Have you tried Banana Republic? A bit of an upgrade on the OG and nearly always at discount online.
@neilo I was in London by 1987. A little research tells me it was 1985. I remember hearing Brand New Friend for the first time at the gig. I know I saw them two or three times but I’m not sure whether that was in Dublin or London. I think I’ve “misremembered” seeing them in the SFX as I can find no record of it online.
@bamber yes I gravitate to Gap. Curse of the middle-aged man who doesn’t wear a suit to work and has to look smart casual. Recently others have tempted me to Zara, which does ever-so-slightly sharper clothes in the same vein.
With my painted leather jacket i sneered at the badged denim types.
My jacket sported a large single back panel and as i could not afford (or play) a Van Halen stripy Kramer i elected to paint the jacket in homage.
This entailed white gloss, left to dry, then masking tape and red gloss.
Two days drying and peeling off the tape revealed a smashing job……lasted about a week before bits cracked and fell away.
But i then thought it looked aged…and cooler.
Oh, as the padded shoulder’s were in a checkerboard pattern, it made perfect sense to paint these black and white.
The jacket was ruined.
When I was growing up in the ’70’s in the North East it was de rigueur for any lad to carry his school stuff in what I shall now describe as a canvas builder’s haversack and paint the expansive top flap with the logo of his favourite band.
Was this a national thing, or just local?
Some of the artwork done was quite remarkable. Painstaking copies or sprayed on over homemade stencils. As time went on and tastes changed, or new albums came out, this top flap would undergo a few updates. Some of the Upper Sixth Formers took pride in the layers of paint they’d added over their time at school. The flap could look as thick as a roof tile.
I had a go. The classic Status Quo logo in silver with black shadowing on a gloss white background.
It was a practice that extended to my school in Birkenhead, though I never had one of those bags.
I’m sure my school couldn’t have been the only one in the area where that practice was extended.
I still favour these army and navy canvas backpacks for carrying of butties / reading material / cycle repair kit to/from work. No sign of a Blowzabella logo on them nowadays.
Yeah, we all had these c1977/8.
Ours were army surplus heavy duty haversacks bought from Millets.
Then the posh kids bought in a wave of Adidas/Puma grab bags. To keep up i was given a old Pan Am bag by a jet setting uncle….probably worth shitloads to a beardy student today.
We had them too. I painted my flap black as a first prep stage before painting the Floyd DSOTM prism. I never actually got around to painting the prism so mine was just minimalist black – predating Spinal Tap by some years
i did something in New Wave times stencilling/writing the names of my fave bands..The Stranglers and more. And then …The Rats, as in the Boomtown Rats. Mark Baverstock took the p**s out of me for this and Mark Baverstock was hard.