JAGUAR WEEKEND

Spy Vibers, go forth and enjoy the weekend!

Grace space race.


Everything they've seen you have seen

Everywhere they've been you have been

Everything they've done you have been and done already

Every lovely spot near or far

You can reach them too in your car

Or you might be there now if you own a jag already


The radio blasting, the girls are glancing

The dash is dancing with gleaming dials


Grace space race.
 Grace space race

Jaguar, jaguar, jaguar, jaguar

The E-Type was manufactured between 1961-1974 and remains, along with the Spitfire, the Mini Skirt, and the red phone booth, one of the most beloved British designs of all time. Lyrics by The Who. Cover above from the 2011 book commemorating fifty years of the Jaguar E-Type. 

I have a spy novella coming out. Stay tuned and follow Spy Vibe by clicking the Follow link at top right of this page. Check Spy Vibe for recent posts about our discovery of a rare Ian Fleming serialization, my review of SKYFALL, 007 at the Intnl Spy Museum, Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot, tributes to Donald Richie and Tony Sheridan, the Les Vampires serial on Blu-ray, Lucy Fleming, The Beatles first record session, Ian Fleming's desert island interview, new Ian Fleming book designs, Fantomas, Spy Smasher, Barbarella tv show, British spy comics, Piper Gates retro designs, Cinema Retro, and more. 

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MOD SALE

Looking for something MOD this season? The Criterion Collection recently released the long out-of-print Quadrophenia on remastered Blu-ray and DVD. This cult classic based on the Who album, and starring Sting, is now on sale at Amazon for $17.99 (down from $39.99). Details here.

MOD MOVIE RETURNS

The long out-of-print Mod classic, Quadrophenia (1979), will be released on DVD and Blu-ray by the Criterion Collection on August 28th. From Criterion: "The Who’s classic rock opera Quadrophenia was the basis for this invigorating coming-of-age movie and depiction of the defiant, drug-fueled mod subculture of early 1960s London. Our antihero is Jimmy (Phil Daniels), a teenager dissatisfied with family, work, and love. He spends his time knocking around with his clothes-obsessed, pill-popping, scooter-driving fellow mods, a group whose antipathy for the motorcycle-riding rockers leads to a climactic riot in Brighton. Director Franc Roddam’s rough-edged film is a quintessential chronicle of youthful rebellion and turmoil, with Pete Townshend’s brilliant songs (including “I’ve Had Enough,” “5:15,” and “Love Reign O’er Me”) providing emotional support, and featuring Sting and Ray Winstone in early roles." The disc features a new restored and uncut print supervised by the cinematographer, a 5.1 surround mix supervised by The Who, director commentary, interviews, 1964 and 1965 French TV episodes about Mod culture and The Who, personal history by Mod, Irish Jack, and more!

MOD MOJO

In celebration of the Director's Cut of Quadrophenia by The Who, the new issue of Mojo features articles about the band, the album, 1960s Mod culture and the Mod revival, and a cool CD compilation to get your Mod party moving. Check it out! Mojo is available at newsstands, bookstores, and on their website here.

THE WHO MOD WEBSITE

In conjunction with their release of the Quadrophenia Director's Cut CD set, The Who launched a new website today dedicated to the classic album and to the Mod culture that inspired it. Find out more about the Mods, The Who, and enter contests to win a Vespa and to make an official Who video here.

MOD EXHIBIT & VESPA CONTEST

In conjunction with the release of The Director's Cut of the Quadrophenia sessions by The Who, an exhibit has been launched at Pretty Green, the London flagship boutique for Liam Gallagher's fashion line. The exhibit Facebook page here. Even if you can't make it to this rare show, you can still enter to win a custom one-off by Vespa made to look like the scooter on the classic album's cover! Details here. Pretty Green offers a large collection of Mod fashion designed by Gallagher (Oasis, Beady Eye), Paul Weller (The Jam, Style Council), as well as pieces inspired by iconic gear from Swinging London. You can even find a Quadrophenia parka here. The Director's Cut will be released on November 15th. Spy Vibers interested in the Who should check out the excellent book, Won't Get Fooled Again, by music author Richie Unterberger. The film adapted from the Who's album is currently out of print. Below, Mods gather at the Who exhibit in London, Vespa's contest prize edition, and a video promo for The Director's Cut. It's a Mod Mod Mod world!

GARAGE PARTY 2

Stock up the fridge and warn the neighbors because Spy Vibe is having a 1960s garage party weekend. Track two: early film footage of The High Numbers in 1964, a Mod band that would soon be managed by the film's producers and rechristened The Who!

MOD EXHIBIT

The music, the fashion, the scooters! Spy Vibers interested in Mod Culture should check out the exhibit, Reading Steady Go: Life through the eyes of a 1960s Mod, at the Reading Museum: "The early Mod pioneers were known as 'Modernists', because of their liking for Modern Jazz. They approved of all things new and reveled in the coffee bars and supermarkets that came to Reading in the late 1950s. The town’s Mods soaked up the influences and latest trends from London. They listened to black American R & B artists, wore smooth cropped hairstyles, tailored jackets and neat Italian rounded-collar shirts. Our exhibition intends to be an insight into the real Mod world. It goes beyond the popular myths to show their passion for music, fashion and being young." The exhibit is currently running until October 9th, 2011. Details on the official website here.

MOD ANTHOLOGY

Spy Vibers interested in Mod culture should check out this collection of writings and interviews edited by Paolo Hewitt called The Sharper World: A Mod Anthology. Now out in a revised and updated paperback edition!


From Amazon: As portrayed in the Who rock opera Quadrophenia, the mods were a working-class British youth cult in the mid-1960s preoccupied with mohair suits, dance clubs, scooters, and amphetamines. Rock journalist Hewitt borrows short snippets from Richard Barnes's standard Mods! (Plexus Pub., 1994), fiction by Tom Wolfe and Samuel Selvon, scholarly accounts by Stanley Cohen and Dick Hebdige, and oral histories. More obscure mod-related pieces, including an interview with top mod Pete Meaden, a 1960s article by fashion queen Mary Quant, and an unpublished eyewitness account by mod pioneer Irish Jack are also included. Though he somewhat neglects the mod drive for upward mobility after the lingering postwar economic squalor, Hewitt provides marvelous descriptions of mod trappings: the fashion, the music, the drugs, and the clubs that clearly demonstrate the roots of Britpop and Austin Powers. Recommended for anyone interested in social history, youth movements, Carnaby Street, and rock'n'roll.

Visit the Mod Culture website for book reviews, news, and more.

JAGUAR: THE WHO

JAGUAR: THE WHO
The Who released their pop concept album, The Who Sell Out, in January 1968 (some sources show December 1967). Sequenced like a pirate radio show, the album remains a fantastic snapshot of growing up in the era. Themes in the lyrics included Townshend-style characters struggling with issues of identity, relationships, and consumerism- the radio format even included mock commercials. Among the jingles for Rotosound guitar strings and Coke is my fave, Jaguar. The lyrics summed up the fantasy of car-as-catalyst for adventurous travel and sexy escapades. Countless Spy Vibe heroes and villains drove the XKE model- seen below from Danger Diabolik (also released in January 1968), followed by a vintage ad. Fans of The Who Sell Out should check out Petra Haden's A Capella version of the album. Better yet, listen to it in your Jag!

Grace space race.
Everything they've seen you have seen,
Everywhere they've been you have been,
Everything they've done you have been and done already.
Every lovely spot near or far,
You can reach them too in your car,
Or you might be there now if you own a jag already.
The radio blasting, the girls are glancing,
The dash is dancing with gleaming dials.
Grace space race.
Grace space race.
Jaguar, jaguar, jaguar, jaguar.

THE WHO: BLU MOD GROUP

THE WHO: BLU MOD GROUP
Breaking out as The High Numbers, Pete Townshend, Roger Daltry, Keith Moon, and John Entwistle embraced the 1960s Rock and Roll explosion with tunes tailored to Britain's Mod scene. The flip side of their initial single echoed the sub-culture slang, "I'm the Face." To be The Face meant to be popular or cool. With a change in management, the group was reborn as The Who, and embodied the youth generation through Pop Art and Auto-Destructive Art concepts. The use of military insignia (the RAF target) and other icons as fashionable Pop symbols ignited the imagination, and continues to sell T-shorts today! In 1965, the year of the big spy boom and The Beatles' Help, The Who released "Can't Explain" and "My Generation" and rocketed to stardom. As the culture evolved in 1966 and beyond, The Who began to experiment with concept albums and linked song cycles, first in short story/Pop Art form (A Quick One, The Who Sell Out), and then moving into full-blown rock opera (Tommy). Along with The Beatles, perhaps no other band stands today as a reflection of the 1960s as an era of ever-changing narrative and visual revolution. On March 2nd, Universal Music Group will release the excellent documentary, The Kids Are Alright on Blu-ray. Play it loud! Spy Vibers may also want to check out a new (still unseen) documentary called The Who, The Mods, and The Quadrophenia Connection. Looking for Mod clothes? Check out I'm The Face.

MODS TO MOONGIRLS

Mods to Moongirls is Spy Vibe's most popular post of all time! Find related books, DVDs and music in the Spy Vibe Amazon Store.  Scroll down for posts about Les Vampires crime serial, Skyfall release and review, Lucy Fleming, The Beatles first record session, Ian Fleming's desert island interview, new Fleming book designs, Fantomas, Spy Smasher cliffhanger serial, the new Barbarella tv show, Man From U.N.C.L.E. illustration, British spy comics in the 1960s, Piper Gates retro spy designs, Cinema Retro celebrates James Bond, and Spy Vibe's 2012 top ten. Want to support Spy Vibe? Please make a small donation with our secure Paypal tip-jar link at the top left of the main page. Nothing is too small to help cover the increasing bills for the domain, web-forwarding and other costs to maintain the site. Thank you!

YOUTH GENERATION

As President Kennedy announced the Space Race in 1961, an emerging generation of kids in Europe and the US were looking to the stars and beyond for ideas about what life had to offer. There was freedom in the air. And while NASA launched rockets, young adults fueled a youth movement that ignited the planet. (below: David Hemmings as a photographer in Antonioni's Blow Up).

In England, government policy changes in 1960 had direct social repercussions- young men found themselves suddenly free from national service. Beatles drummer Ringo Starr said in a May 2008 interview that the end of mandatory national service in Britain made it possible for The Beatles to exist. “We were the first generation that didn’t go into the army. I missed the call up by, like, 10 months, and so we were allowed, as these teenagers, not to be regimented and turn into these musicians."

Economies were stronger and teenagers found they didn't have to contribute as much to household incomes with money earned from after-school and summer jobs. They had time and, more importantly, they had spending money. It was a new era that offered young adults the freedom to invest in clothes and hobbies like never before as they explored self-expression and identity. The power of these dollars and pounds was critiqued alongside the Fashion world in the excellent film, Who Are You, Polly Magoo?, where TV interviewers producing a feature on a young model discussed how the ideal of sexuality and beauty had suddenly grown younger due to the youth market. I wonder what they would say about contemporary advertising and ageism? A short piece covering 60s trends at Sixties City.
OF MODS AND MEN
One group of British kids with a taste for Jazz and American R&B began dressing in tailored Italian suits and pointed shoes. Distancing themselves from the biker-greaser look of the "Rockers", the "Mods" were a sub-culture that prized a minimal, modern aesthetic. In TV documentaries of the time, much attention was given to young men who spent large sums on their outfits and to the particulars of cuts and fabrics. Some Mod history Here and Here. Mod movies Here.


Where Mod style had originally defined a smaller sub-culture (and one with incarnations through to the present), the word Mod has became a bit of a generalization to describe fashion that reflects minimal, trim, monochromatic, two-tone, Pop Art, and Op Art sensibilities. The Who, a band with Mod roots, became well-known for using Pop Art-influenced symbols in their wardrobe. Along with bold stripes, images that had iconic British-ness, like the Union Jack and RAF target, took hold in the mainstream and remain identified with Mod revival. Patrick McGoohan's The Prisoner followed a similar line of fashion with characters in bold stripes and accents. A more-to-Mod roots band meets Eero Aarnio below in a rare shot of The Small Faces. Readers interested in a historical view on stripes can check out the book, The Devil's Cloth.

"Are You a Mod or a Rocker?"
"I'm a Mocker."
-Ringo Starr/A Hard Days Night

With the pop explosion of The Beatles, The Who, and The Rolling Stones, a variety of fashion styles and sub-cultures entered the mainstream and became world-wide expressions of the generation. Boutiques sprouted up to meet the demand. Carnaby Street was an epicenter, mythicized further in pop films like Smashing Time. According to Sixties City, the Treasury in the UK reported that fashion reached a 1.7 billion pound industry in 1965. That's a figure worth tracking down! I'm curious to learn if those numbers are accurate.



Designer Pierre Cardin defined some of the suited look of the period, dressing Patrick MacNee's John Steed in The Avengers and inspiring the collarless suits for The Beatles. A British Invasion look was in! And for men looking for a dressy alternative to wearing ties, U.N.C.L.E.'s David MacCallum and The Beatles inspired a re-popularization of the turtleneck.



MOONGIRLS
Fashion for women embraced the anything-goes attitude of the times. Yves Saint Laurent's Mondrian dress and the mini skirt popularized by Andre Courreges and Mary Quant were stand-out creations. In 1964, the year Beatlemania really hit on the global level, Andre Courreges' fascination with the Space Age resulted in a fabulous line of clothes inspired by NASA white and silver. He launched his Moon Girl Collection, which included high skirts and dresses with geometric patterns and cut-outs, space-like helmets, and mid-shin PVC boots.
Paco Rabanne, Pierre Cardin, Rudi Gernreich, and others followed with their own Futuristic lines. The movement had a great effect on costume design in a number of iconic 1960s films, including The 10th Victim (Elio Petri/1965) and Barbarella (Vadim/1968). Agent David Foster (Permission To Kill) found the portraits of Patty Boyd below reminiscent of the graphics for the Eurospy classic Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

What I will generalize as "Mods and Moongirls" are some aesthetic anchors to the Spy Vibe of 1960s Film and Pop Culture. The styles define the era and continue to resonate in contemporary culture. It seems, however, that where a 60s trim style for men has returned in a Metro look, the experimental, Space Age look of Women's fashions has remained 60s iconic. Gone are the bold stripes, cut-out dresses, Go-Go boots, and other PVC gear. Many echoes of 60s fashion crop up around me. I haven't spotted a Moongirl yet, but I'm still looking :)

Check out Atom Retro for Mod clothing sales and info!

With this general overview of a cultural context, we'll explore specific Spy Vibe film costumes in... THE FUTURE! See the SpyVibe.com website for related videos and discussions about costume design in 60s cinema.