Saturday 24 January 2009

Deep Down and Dirty



I was having a conversation last night about my spotty youth and when I had a passion for scooters.

In the scootering world there were 2 camps, you had your Mods, all 3 button suits, parkas and scooters with tons of mirrors, to this day I don't understand what the fuck that was all about and whip aerials. They were into the Who, the Jam, the Kinks, basically any band that wore suits and had The at the start of their name.

Then you had the Scooter Boys, who wore MA1 flight jackets, combats and docs and drove cut down, chopped or sometimes even straight Lambrettas or Vespas. They were into mainly Northern Soul, Punk/post punk, psychobilly and later on the stuff coming out of Manchester in the late 80s although the scootering world was about a year behind some of the rest of us.

Being a rather scruffy type, already having docs (as my mother thought that they were "hard wearing, sensible shoes") and being into punk and soul I was firmly in the scooter boy camp, when I got my first scooter a Vespa PK 50 with a 110 conversion, quickly sold for a 1965 Vespa GS.

Anyway (focus Drew), back to the point of the post. At the time the merits of psychobilly were lost to me. King Kurt's Destination Zulu Land was funny and worth having as the 12" played from the label out making it almost unplayable on most music centres. The Meteors were, well the Meteors and I believed that The Cramps were a joke. However a few years ago I reacquainted myself with the Cramps, due to the fact that my next door neighbour was a devotee and regularly passed me their cd's over the back wall. I have had to re asses this band and what I thought was stupid music is actually clever and highly entertaining. However I still feel that I need to have a bath after listening to them as they are probably the sleaziest band in existence.

The Cramps - Can Your Pussy Do The Dog?
The Cramps - Goo Goo Muck

4 comments:

Simon said...

I had a huge crush on Poison Ivy back in the 80s. Looking back at the younger me (what 15 or 16 at the time, and furiously Mod funnily enough) I'm pretty proud of myself. That's one hell of a woman for a spotty youth!

drew said...

I think maybe you would have bitten off more than you could chew. She would have been a bit of ruff for you mod types.

Simon said...

Lol, if there was any biting I think it would have been Ivy, not me doing the chewing!

Unknown said...

As I like to remind younger folk, The Cramps were the second band I ever saw play live.

It was a bill in May 1979 at Glasgow Apollo. First up was a new-wave pop-act called Bobby Henry, then The Cramps and then headliners The Police.

Lux got his knob out that night as he was so fed up with the hecklers.

You goota post a photo of you on your scooter at some point....