A fair few hippies here I’d guess, and a few old punks and New Romantics no doubt. Any ex-skins or greabos? Teds? Or were you unaffiliated? I was a late hippy/hairy, only 9 in ’67 but fully long haired and waist coated by 75 though in no danger of going to a commune. My Mum wouldn’t have let me. You?
What tribe were you?
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I was sort of a B-Boy at the end of the 80s. Public Enemy, Run DMC, Rakim, Cool J were my heroes…
And then I’d go home and listen to The Housemartins.
Turn it up! Bring the plasticine!
I know I’ve said this before, but the first LP I bought by myself that wasn’t a Now! comp was The People Who Grinned Themselves To Death.
Blimey, me too!
*high five*
Nice one Kid. Though I have to say those Pocock Continental are finally showing through
(no, me neither)
Ohhhh.
I remember that every time that album comes to mind (or onto shuffle). Do you honestly think you have to try to make me adore you even more?
PS. Don’t you just love that reverb weirdness at the end of Bow Down? Pd really gets into the character, like in the angry middle eight in Sitting On A Fence.
PPS. The cover picture, which I’ve always assumed is the back of Pd’s head, made a bizarre and unexplained contemporaneous appearance in the lair of Brookside’s plazzy-gangster Tommy McArdle while he was in conference with the hapless Barry and Terry.
Yes, you’re right, that’s enough now.
Bow Down: also notable for the presence of Beanyfavourites St. Winifred’s School Choir.
Not the classic line-up, sadly.
Re. The World’s On Fire: I think I said this last time, but this song is about irreverent folk spending their Sunday mornings in bed having it off instead of getting down to church. What it should have been about is irreverent folk spending their Sunday mornings in fields buying stacks of old records… naming no names.
“The classic line-up”, haha! This new lot were a tad less sickly than the class of ’80.
The forecast for tomorrow is good, so am looking forward to an “Oh-ho!” or two.
“Please don’t show your Klaus Wunderlich to me, I think I’d see the light shine though”
Only if it was on 1970s Pye 🙂
My clothes are black, but my bread is brown, I’m really INTO early James Last.
For goodness sake don’t say that name three times while looking in a mirror or you-know-who (from Bolton) will materialise.
Oh no, it’s Ba-Ba-Ba-Ba-Beany!
I Know I’ve Said This Before
I Know I Said This Last Time
Afterword T-shirts
With either “On the Old Place” or “On the Old Old Place” on the reverse.
Shouldn’t the back say “But not the one you’re thinking of’
Mainly an across-the-board pop kid, with occasional obsessive phases e.g. Shaky nut, Brosette, DM-ed hard rocker/metal fan.
Do you still have the boots?
Give me a minute before you answer, I need to get ready.
No, because I stupidly let some drippy indie boy paint rainbows and flowers and stuff on them. When I saw sense and dumped him, I dumped the boots too.
I recommend Nitromors. For removing the paint, and the boyfriend.
Sixth form goth and then some kind of punk hippy. Now I am a normal looking middle aged bloke and no one on the commuter train suspects I am listening to black metal at ten past seven in the morning.
My school was split between mods (key band: The Jam) and rockers (key band: Whitesnake). I was the latter. I had the denim jacket with band patches, worn with the sleeves cut off over a leather jacket when I outgrew it, a subscription to Kerrang, and long, probably very greasy, hair.
Occasionally the mods and rockers would face up to each other across the school playground in large menacing gangs, and edge closer – then the bell would go and we’d head back into the school. The girls had their own tribes of course, based around Duran Duran and other chart pop, and the point where pretty much everyone seemed to meet was Bowie.
By the time I was in my mid teens I had worked out that the metal look was a effective girl-repellant, and threw in my lot in with the arty crowd (key band: Japan) and took to wandering around Chester in black clothes smoking sobranies, and going to parties with my hair gelled back and eye liner above and below the eye. Even then I was no sylph and probably looked ridiculous, but like most people who bought into this sort of thing I’m glad I did it when I was young enough to.
Thankfully I have no photographic evidence.
That’s me that is!
I was a hippy-post-punk goth 77-85, but now adopt a normcore “chap” look: ideal image: a 1950s dad.
I agree with the Gatz comment up there. When I moved from punk (post punk hadn’t been invented yet) to synthpop New Romantic, it opened up the potential to talk to many more girls. But the friends I hung about with were almost all Metal with denim and leather “colours”. They took the piss sometimes but they didn’t give a shit about what crappy music I was into. Two of them came with me to a Depeche Mode show at the Hammersmith Odeon. We were quite near the front. One stood stock-still throughout and the other sat down and tried to read a book!
Hopefully he read at least a chapter of the book.
Time well spent.
In my imagination at good half of the audience of early 80s gigs were at least pretending to read books, usually by Kierkegaard or one of those other old dead sods.
Card carrying rocker in early-mid 80s Nottingham.
Leather jacket, cut off denim, regular in the Sal, Fridays at Rock city ( a school mate of mine was the dj) Saturday lunch at the Palais, at Donington every year from 83.
I was thin and hairy then, mind…
Doninton 83 was my one and only Monsters of Rock. I was leaving my metal phase by then, and wouldn’t have gone if I hadn’t won the tickets from a local newspaper. Memories are Whitesnake’s helicopter, Meatloaf getting bottled, Twisted Sister stealing the day despite being on in the early afternoon, and worried looking people on top of the tyre bridge looking at the fires that been started at both ends.
I went to the first two (80 & 81). Slade stole the show in 81. Can’t remember who else was on except the headliners, AC/DC in 81, Rainbow in 80. It was a rotten journey from London though and put me off going again.
I enthused about many genres at the time. I first really discovered music in 1978/9.
In 1980-2 I would obviously nail my mast to the NWOBHM/hard rock flagpole as a weekly buyer of Sounds.
I bought a vast array of current indie/pop as well (Squeeze, Police, XTC) and also was a fan of Blondie/10cc/ELO so I guess I thought tribalism was a bit sad.
I suppose I never needed/wanted to belong to a group. The same reason I rejected joining the Cubs/Scouts at a younger age. I hate uniforms and being labelled.
I am me.
As a kid, and being born scruffy, the torn clothing of Punk appealed … but so did the sharpness of the Mods (this is 1979/1980 so the word “Revival” should be tacked on the end).
A Scout Jumble Sale provided (a) a pile of 7″ Singles, and (b) two kids suit jackets.
I was now sporting the Punk/Mod hybrid look (or the “Clarkson” as it later became known).
Iron Maiden, Motorhead and second hand copies of Metal For Muthas and Axe Attack resulted in the adoption of the full on Heavy Metal look (well, I got a denim jacket and covered it in patches).
The denim jacket was worn over a leather biker jacket (even though I never had a motorbike) and steel toe-cap boots.
All tribes were represented on the denim jacket with Iron Maiden, The Jam, The Who, The Sex Pistols and The Ramones all competing for space (and T.Rex).
I even tried to grow my hair – this never worked as the moment it got anywhere near my shoulders it just curled upwards.
I did achieve a part Joey Ramone/proto-Liam Gallagher same length all round pair of curtains.
The last attempt at tribalism was the Happy Mondays, Carter USM, Neds Atomic Dustbin, Long Sleeve T-Shirt, Baggy thing.
Problem I always perceived with tribalism is that it seemed to preclude listening to other forms of music.
If you put a Kate Bush record on the Jukebox in a Heavy Metal pub you were in danger of getting lynched.
Whenever I grew my hair long (when I was about 14, and again in my student days) it would get wavy and curl in the same direction, sweeping out to one side over a shoulder. For several months, until it got long enough to be pulled down by its own weight, I looked like I was growing a second head.
Early Jam mod with correspondent’s shoes and my dad’s old suits, henna haired late 70s Richard Hell style new waver, early eighties trench-coat-wearing Echo and the Bunnymen/Teardrop Explodes psychedelicist, but mostly Raggle Taggle era Dexies follower, complete with dungarees, kerchief, and beret.
Oh, PLEASE say there are pictures of that last one.
There might be…… locked in the attic. Let me see if I can find them so that I can undergo an Auto-da-fe here.
The whole point about punk and post-punk style in the UK was that most of it was very cheaply available in junk shops etc. at a time when everyone was on the dole. By the end of the 80s there was a shopping list of acceptable brands that you were allowed to be seen wearing, which is where we have been ever since.
We were not blest in the change, notwithstanding chucking the berets.
Yep mostly wore Oxfam stuff. Still do now actually.
I was a teenage shoegazer. I wanted very much to look like Mark Gardener from Ride, and had the big fringe covering one eye. Was constantly mistaken for a girl.
So that was you!
Frightfully sorry, old bean.
Best not go into the details of exactly *how* you mistook me for a girl…
You’re a gentleman.
UNMISTAKABLY.
I never belonged to a “tribe”, in fact I’m not sure there were any at my school. Well, one big sheep tribe perhaps, everyone dressed in the latest trendy items (snore).
I was my own very odd tribe, wearing decidedly strange clothes that I’d found packed away in the storage wardrobe, extravagant shoes, and gigantic home-made bracelets that doubled as maracas.
And I’ve never been able to narrow down my interest in music to just one or two genres.
Never allowed long hair. Always wanted it. Story of my life.
Apart from looking beautiful and getting you more sex, I have to say it’s overrated.
All the maintenance.
Oh God almighty I was a “Thrasher.”
I liked Thrash Metal. Genuinely. I saw some of the worst bands which ever drew breathe; Nuclear Assault? Acid Reign? Xentrix? Limbic Disorder? Kreator? Annihilator?
Saw them all amongst others. (Slayer, Megadeth, Metallica and Anthrax don’t count. Non thrashers saw them. No non thrasher ever saw Prong. I did. As well as the big four)
I had the “thrasher” magazine hoodie, the terrible bermuda shorts, the Nike hi-tops. At one point a bandana. Worn over the head like Suicidal Tendencies, not like Axl Rose by the way.
No I did not get much (any) sex in those days.
How did I ever stop? What got me out of this musical rut? God help me, funk metal turned out to be a bridge to actual good music.
Here is some funk metal, Mordred, Esse Quam Videri. It’s not quite shite…
Point of order.
After 1968 (i.e. 1969 onwards) we were not hippies any more, we were Freaks (or skinheads). They were the tribes.
We scoffed at anyone still calling themselves a hippy. Still do.
Dylan at the Isle of Wight Festival, Woodstock, Altamont. Peace & Love be f***ed. Drugs!!
“Hair”, Space Oddity, “In the Court Of the Crimson King”, “The Stooges”, “Kick Out the Jams”, Johnny Cash at San Quentin, Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Family Entertainment”, “Switched On Bach”, “Classical Gas”, Hendrix on the Lulu Show, Led Zeppelin, Beatles on the rooftop, “Pinball Wizard”, John&Yoko’s Bed-In, Brian Jones dies, Mick Taylor joins The Stones, Stones in the park, Blind Faith…
Actually, further reading reveals that Mick Taylor joined The Stones shortly before Brian Jones died.
What the hell! Bad eggs don’t smell, when they’re sprayed with sweet perfuuuuuume…
Beatles tribe, not Stones, in the 60s, then greatcoated blues fan with ever wider flares eventually adopting full loon pantage, hair beyond shoulder length. Now of the pensioner tribe. There have been ‘looks’ in between, but too embarassing.
I was a Ted whose mother wouldn’t let him wear winklepickers. I was a mod who always rode on the back seat of someone else’s Vespa. Then I was a weekend hippie who went to the office 5 days a week.
I am a fraud, basically. I am a fully paid-up member of the old fart tribe, though.
My Tribe is…The Tribe that ran away and stood firm. The Tribe that was middle class and privileged and wanted desperately to do the right thing. The Tribe that laughed at racist jokes – all jokes were then – and scrawled the NF logo on their exercise books.The Tribe that took too much speed. Drank too much cider. The Tribe that changed its mind and said Betty Wright’s Clean Up Woman is the supreme achievement of mankind. The Tribe that had Bowie as their unconscious ideal. Looking back. The Tribe that wore this. Wore that. Flares and Straights. The Tribe that liked Sultans Of Swing and Steel Pulse. The Tribe that read Marcuse. The Tribe that sang songs about Gary Mabbutt. The Tribe that was weird and cool and fucked up. The Tribe that lost its soul. The Tribe that ran the world. And now has lost the world it made.
You didn’t have to be MC to laugh (or pretend to laugh) at racist jokes.
Your tribe were f***ing right about Clean Up Woman. My god, what a tune.
I tried to be a late 70’s / early 80’s mod but didn’t have the confidence to actually wear the clothes out of my bedroom. It all changed at college and my introduction to Echo and The Bunnymen. Mr naturally thick hair very quickly grew into a Mac style mess, I owned some check shirts, I nicked my Dads old raincoat and there I was, shy mod to cool Mac-a-like in less than a school term. The peak being The Bunnymen at the Albert Hall, me and 2 fellow girl fans. If only they’d known I was also listening to Haircut 100 and The Thompson Twins as well…..
Freak joss sticks Floyd kaftan Lindisfarne loons patchouli cheesecloth BJH big hair Pentangle Beardsley greatcoats Penguin Classics baseball boots Moodies jumpers lightshows whispering Bob.
You are me and I am you. Also with added denim jacket.
Goth. But then again I was living around the corner from the Sisters of Mercy in Leeds in the early 80s. Before that I used to take the old punk (Fall) line that its not about the clothes. Just reading Viv Albertine’s book and realising I was dead wrong about that.
An early flirtation with mod revival was quickly superceded once the coolest band morphed into the girl-friendly F*n Boy Three. I regrouped and started sporting Whitesnake, Rush, Motorhead, Saxon and AC/DC patches on a cherished blue denim jacket, equal testament to my inner rebel and my mum’s sewing. My attitude to girls changed with adolescence and I jumped ship when pale and interesting loomed in both English Literature and in the shape of The Cure, Bowie and The Smiths. Arrived at Uni a Morrissey clone, the hair gradually growing to baggy proportions. A ludicrous long and wavy on top, short at the sides thing carried on far longer than was seemly, until Hugh Grant caught up and I chopped it off.
Art school wallah. We didn’t join tribes. We created them.
Out of papier-mache?
My friends all liked rock and heavy metal, I was more into indie. I guess that the sort of scene at the time was ‘fraggle’ a kind of short lived indie pop thing more famous for its T shirts than its music, quickly surpassed by shoegazing and grunge. Still, I stand by my belief that Senseless Things Postcard CV is the ultimate album for a long haired teenager.
The spotty geek with glasses hiding in the corner from girls tribe.
also known as “the overcrowded corner”