Theres a good mix of ages on this forum, I think, be interesting to get views from opposite ends of the age range. I'm in my 40's so was a teenager thru the late 70's/80's, and I miss the diversity that we had back then. (ooohhh, them were the days, ah tell thee lad) What I mean is, today by and large, all teenagers / 20 somethings more or less dress the same way ( generic brands/shops like bench, superdry, ted baker, next , river island etc., and broadly like the same sort of music (everyones got their own tastes obviously, but everyone also seems to be into dance in it's various forms , R&B, hip hop at some level. What I mean is when I was in my teens, you could tell exactly what music/lifestyle someone was into just by looking at them. You didn't have to have a converstaion with them, you could tell from accross the road. We had proper skinheads, OI skinheads, suedeheads, rockabillys, psychobillys, mods, metal-heads, goths (the only ones that seem to have endured), teds, rude boys, new romantics, punks, the list goes on, later the casuals..people talk about a violent society now, but back was no different -then you could get a kicking just for no other reason than wearing the wrong clothes. OI Skins hated Mods, real skins hated OPI skins, teds hated punks, they all hated new romatics, metal-heads hated mods, skins and rude-boys, and a million other permutations. Thru my teens I was in the proper skinhead/mod camp. ('Proper' skins were the skins that came from the mods, with a love of black music like bluebeat, ska, soul and reggage and dressed sharp, as opposed to the OI skinheads who appeared round the time of punk and gave the whole skinhead movement it's bad name, with racist and violent associations and jumped on the National Front bandwagon) I had mates in school who were metal-heads and new romantics, but I wouldn't be seen out with them after school. I'm still good mates with a lot of them now, it was just the way it was then, you'd never see a gang of say mixed metal-heads and rude-boys. And you'd stick religiously to your music, your lifestyle. My record collection (yes, records, big flat black things) were all ska, two-tone, soul, northern soul, reggage, bit of punk. Even if I secretly liked an AC/DC record, I'd never buy it, it just wasn't done. The 'clean living under difficult circimstances' ethos of mod meant that I ironed all my own clothes from about 13 onwards - everything had to be 'just so' - I would never dream of leaving the house without highly polished shoes or boots, creases had to be right, the only jeans I'd ever wear were Levi's, the length had to be exact, only certain styles of shirts.. As you grow up you realise that this self-imposed straight jacket is daft, and you loosen up, embrace all music regardless of genre as long as it's good, and you don't worry about what people wear etc. But I think it's a shame that the diversity has gone. Gangs haven't, but you can never tell them apart now. Everythings generic and corporate, from the food, the music and the clothes. You can say I wasn't an individual, because I was following a style, but at least there were lots of different styles out there then, and I think it made those years a lot more interesting.
What the **** is wrong with my life? It's prime pulling time on a Saturday night, and I'm on a football forum reading a thread about how some random Geordie guy wishes he had more black mates, with the other people 'browsing this thread' being Colonel Gadaffi and Julius Caesar?!?
Silence you whiny bitch You should be grateful that you are in the presence of greatness instead of blowing money on overpriced booze and making pitiful attempts to pull high maintenance women who think they can be the next Cheryl Tweedy. Is it any surprise that Ashley Cole cheated on her?
It's life , Jim, but not as we planned it.... ps I've got plenty of black mates. And a chinese one too..
I miss it too. At school, the group I was part of comprised of goths, metal-heads, psychobillies and punks, by then the genres were already beginning to fade so we were the "alternative" kids and everyone else wasn't. I suppose rave pretty much finished it all off, everyone wanted to go out into a field and get off their faces. Back in the late 70s/early 80s, there was nothing much on TV, no Sky Sports, hardly anyone had a computer and the games were none to exciting so music and fashion was much more important. There were no mobile phones so you'd have to meet up with your mates at the same place each evening, that would become your patch. The tribe would adopt an identity and defend that territory from other tribes.
I'll be honest and admit that I laugh at the generic fashion sense of the Superdry Jacket, Huge logo T shirts, Carrot jeans and white trainers brigade. Clones (for want of a better word) who think they are cool simply because they wear what magazines and TV tells them to.
