The Geography of Mod Culture

[alister prince]

No Adam you didn't imagine it! Also thanks Alan, I suspect the high consumption of red wine at Transat contributed to unopened packages.
Aly

[Adam Blake]

Excellent! I am so glad.

[Garth Cartwright]

Robert Elms is celebrating Mod culture today - first intv is with Jeff Dexter, one of the pioneering Mod DJs, and he says 1954 was when he first noted guys in sharp Italian suits on scooters. That was when The Birth Of The Cool was available and an interest in Modernism - in music and art and fashion - began taking hold amongst certain London youths. He also said that Fats Domino was the fave artist to dance to and Georgie Fame the ultimate UK mod musician! Should be an interesting show.

[Adam Blake]

Georgie Fame the ultimate UK mod musician!

More than one person "of a certain age" that I've met over the years has told me that Georgie Fame had the best band in London in 1964. I believe it too.

[Alan Balfour]

I've still got a Georgie Fame Columbia EP (Night Train/Parchman Farm/Work Song/Baby Please Don't Go) the cover has him sitting on the staircase at the Flamingo Club, drinking a Pepsi through a straw. Lots of hyperbole in three short paragraphs on reverse. Thus:

To go down into the famous 'Flamingo' Club, in Wardour Street, when Georgie is playing is quite an experience. The atmosphere is electric, the feeling tremendous, and only one person there is of any consequence - Georgie himself.

He has his audience just where he wants them - and they like it like that. As he moves from number to number everybody moves with him-in turn, happy, sad, elated, blue.

If you don't know what it's like to get "lost" in music, this experience is a must for you. The Rhythm holds you incessantly, the organ grips your mind, and Georgie's vocals grip your brain. There's only one thing bad about an experience like this - the feeling of emptiness when you leave the 'Flamingo'.

[alister prince]

Ah Alan, love those sleevenotes. I remember the tracks too. Mr Fame favoured the more jazzy soul blues style of Mose Allison to to Chess influenced more rocky bands. He was always a cool dresser and his live sets at the allnighters were great musically both for dancing and listening. The band had a really high standard and were very tight. I've always had a soft spot for him even when less engaged by some of his later projects. A couple of UK based African American bands also come to mind, Herbie Goins and the Nightimers and Jimmy James and the Vagabonds. Both exciting live, I slightly preferred Herbie (my memory tells me he pronounced it Hebe). He'd been stationed in the UK with the USAF and stayed on.
Jeff Dexter was (is) an excellent DJ, I think one of his regular sessions was at Tiles. I didn't go there much as seemed dominated by very aggressive pill heads. The atmosphere was not conducive to good health.
Oh and Will, I was quite an early starter, 14 (born in mid 48) when I began going. I said I had long suffering parents!
Aly

[Kari Salonen]

Georgie Fame was also hip enough to get into ska - or blue beat - early on, I have later learned (well, I was about two years old and geographically challenged at that time). I have seen him reminiscing about those days in a BBC mini series on reggae history some years ago. I'm not at all sure if his "Rhythm and Blue Beat" EP came out earlier than the other EP mentioned. But that's fab too.

Of course I realise my interest in this subject is almost entirely academic, me not having any first hand contact to mod culture. But some of the music is still a joy to hear. Like those EP:s.

[Alan Balfour]

Here's an EP I completely forgot was in my possession.

Getaway
GEORGIE FAME
Columbia SEG 8518

SIDE ONE
1. GETAWAY (Powell)
2. SEE-SAW (Covay

SIDE TWO
1. RIDE YOUR PONY (Neville)
2. SITTING IN THE PARK(Stewart)
® 1966
Produced by DENNY CORDELL

Georgie Fame has now become an international artist in his own right. Since separating from his backing group The Blue Flames he has been able to pursue more freely his life-long ambition to become an independent Blues Singer. Georgie has recently been associated with the brilliant Harry South Big Band and together this new partnership has brought out a great new album called "Sound Venture"!

This LP has been receiving fantastic reviews wherever it has been played and has proved to be a good follow-up to Georgie's previous album "Sweet Things".

Three great tracks from the "Sweet Things" LP have been included on this EP: they are See-Saw, Ride Your Pony, and Sitting in the Park; in company with the big hit single, Getaway.

RAY HUNTER.

PS Jeff Dexter, now whatever happened to him? He and Peel used to dj together at the Middle Earth Club in Covent Garden.

[Adam Blake]

Jeff Dexter and I have a mutual friend in John 'Hoppy' Hopkins so I very occasionally run across him. He seems fine to me.

[Jude]

Jeff Dexter is a good friend of mine, he is on facebook and is a mine of information on the 60's and the underground scene. If I remember something and get it wrong he's very good at reminding me what really happened and when. He's got a better memory than I have and has a fund of entertaining stories.. He rings me up occasionally and we have long natters about the olden days..

[alister prince]

Jeff is a good example of the mod as underground in the music and club scene. If I'm right he DJ'd the Doors/Jefferson Airplane all nighter at the Roundhouse later in the 60s. He'd grown his hair and was wearing a green jumpsuit. Further evidence that many mods moved onto the prevailing mood and continued to innovate. Hoppy Hopkins was there too. A great gig.
Aly

[Alan Balfour]

Jeff is a good example of the mod as underground in the music and club scene. If I'm right he DJ'd the Doors/Jefferson Airplane all nighter at the Roundhouse later in the 60s. He'd grown his hair and was wearing a green jumpsuit. Further evidence that many mods moved onto the prevailing mood and continued to innovate. Hoppy Hopkins was there too. A great gig.
Aly

That was the event that CG and I went got dragged along to by Bob Hite after the 1968 1st National Blues Convention at Conway Hall. I think somewhere here it's a topic of discussion.

[Rob Hall]

Charlie's account:

viewtopic.php?f=48&t=7326&p=40380&hilit=bob+hite#p40380

[AndyM]

The Doors were the Troggs with intellectual pretensions -- brilliant line!

[Pete Fowler]

Wrong, though, Andy. Charlie so hated smoking and the entire dope culture that it could easily, so to speak, cloud his judgement...not that the Doors were particularly good that night, but Jim Morrison was manifestly not Reg with intellectual pretensions, however smart the quip. Reg came up with nothing that could have been so damned appropriate as the positioning of The End in Apocalypse Now; and nothing that fired the young's 1967 ambitions in the manner of Five to One.