Richard Weight

Welcome to the world of the sharp-suited âe~facesâe(tm). The Italianistas. The scooter-riding, all-night-dancing instigators of what became, from its myriad sources, a very British phenomenon. Mod began life as the quintessential working-class movement of a newly affluent nation âe" a uniquely British amalgam of American music and European fashions that mixed modern jazz with modernist design in an attempt to escape the drab conformity, snobbery and prudery of life in 1950s Britain. But what started as a popular cult became a mainstream culture, and a style became a revolution. In Mod, Richard Weight tells the story of Britainâe(tm)s biggest and most influential youth cult. He charts the origins of Mod in the Soho jazz scene of the 1950s, set to the cool sounds of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. He explores Modâe(tm)s heyday in Swinging London in the mid-60s âe" to a new soundtrack courtesy of the Small Faces, the Who and the Kinks. He takes us to the Modâe"Rocker riots at Margate and Brighton, and into the world of fashion and design dominated by Twiggy, Mary Quant and Terence Conran. But Mod did not end in the 1960s. Richard Weight not only brings us up to the cultâe(tm)s revival in the late 70s âe" played out against its own soundtrack of Quadrophenia and the Jam âe" but reveals Mod to be the DNA of British youth culture, leaving its mark on glam and Northern Soul, punk and Two Tone, Britpop and rave. This is the story of Britainâe(tm)s biggest and brassiest youth movement âe" and of its legacy. Music, film, fashion, art, architecture and design âe" nothing was untouched by the eclectic, frenetic, irresistible energy of Mod.

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