During the 1960’s in the United Kingdom, Scooter shops would compete to produce their own unique and individual scooters based on either a Piaggio Vespa or an Innocenti Lambretta.

These scooters were often tuned with their own unique paint work and their own identity and then put out on the track to race!

One of the special characteristics of these powersports Vespa’s is that they all use the classic scooters small frame. After riding one of these Vespa small frames I have to say that for me personally they are one of the most fun to ride. The position of your legs and arms when mounted on the scoot gives a totally unique feeling of complete control over the scooter. This all helps you take corners a lot sharper which is the aim of any racing motorcycle/scooter.

Out of all the classic Vespas the small frames are the easiest and most suitable for engine tuning. The fact that all the small frame engines are of the same 45 degree angle design means that many of the tuning kits available for one model can easily be adapted for others.

The most popular tuning kits available are:

• Pinasco 75cc : Pinasco cylinders are recognized as being of some of the highest quality builds in the world
• Malossi 135cc : Most powerful tuning kit
• Polini 133cc : This kit offers good Speed and a whole lot of fun, not quite as fast as the Malossi but recommended as offers probably the best balance between speed, reliability and cost.

If a fun fast ride is what you want then I would recommend you look at restoring a classic small frame Vespa.

At the very least, subsequent use of the Union Jack in the Gear boutique sunglasses of 1965 and John Entwistle’s jacket on the cover of The Who’s My Generation in 1966 can be directly traced to Geoff Reeve’s similar experiments with sunglasses and silk screened fabrics in the early 60s. The art-clothing connection of the early sixties can also be similarly seen in someone like Michael Davies, who graduated in graphic design from in 1958 and was the decorator for one of the first Carnaby Street mod boutiques, Domino Male.

Turning commodities into art is but one of the linking concepts between the pop-art movement of the early 60s and modernism. On the U.S. side of the Atlantic, Roy Lichtenstein’s Ben-Day paintings, largely based on pop-culture and comic book themes (and thus frequently also following an action-based paradigm), have arguably become the most famous remnants of the pop-art. His work (and/or derivatives based on his style and themes) have been used quite frequently in the context of mod projects. The explosive rise of comic book output during the so-called Silver Age of the early 60s further accentuates the time-branding effect of his material.

Indeed the concepts of motion, action, and speed that were inherent in the paintings and designs of the early decade were quite closely mirrored by the modernist culture. London’s Situationists particularly attempted to redefine the contents of the canvas not as pictures but as events and the recording of a sequence of actions. Names such as The Action, or terms such as Swinging London, or the countless arrow motifs spanning The Who’s early posters to Weller’s This Is The Modern World sweater, are alternative interpretations of this early 60s emphasis on mobility and dynamism.

Perhaps there does not exist a direct relationship between Jasper Johns’ target and flag paintings in the 1950s and 60s USA and the mod fixation on these same items (after translation through a UK filter via the RAF and the Union Jack motifs). However, it is difficult to believe that the subversive nature of using national symbols in these new contexts was not a driving force behind both of these tendencies.

Does it make any sense to associate mod culture–ostensibly known as a working-class ethic with strong emphasis on the materialistic- with the elitist and cultured atmosphere that the word “art” usually brings to mind? Direct connections might exist or have existed: ex-art school types who are/were mods, bands like The Creation who fused art school elements into their stage act, or art school types who later became musicians. Realistically, though, it would be excessively flattering to modernism to say that it has had any significant impact on the traditional art world as understood by the average person. However, the reverse certainly isn’t true: anybody who doesn’t understand how tendencies in the world of art have had a significant and catalyzing influence on modernism is certainly missing a good part of the story.

In particular, there are a number of stylistic elements associated with the art (and, by double association, manufactured items and pop-art) of the early 60s that are as important to establishing a “visual modernist look” as any piece of clothing or song you care to choose. Specifically there were during this time very specific recurring themes in several visually-related fields, such as typography, composition, and painting.

The same forces that made artistic output largely focus on simple abstract, geometric and figurative directions was a reflection of societal tendencies that generated and affected modernism in many ways. With an enhanced mobility in the population, afforded by public transportation or alternative methods (e.g. scooters), cities such as London in the early 60s were undergoing a change from the static into the kinetic. Road systems on the West End were being remade into fast-moving routes-these were captured on photographic film by the typographer/graphic designer Herbert Spencer in his Mile A Minute Typography.

Robyn Denny’s Austin Reed Mural of 1959, with its polychrome lettering and permutational style foreshadowed the Ready Steady Go! set decorations of two years later. Optical, aggressive art such as Bridget Riley’s interference patterns caused visual stimulation and the impression of motion by means of abstract colour and form.

Although the history of musical trends in mod culture is easily chronicled, any attempt to strongly classify bands or music as mod is flawed in its premise; there is no mod music per se, just music that mods have traditionally liked and listened to. To view music as a more fundamental or necessary component of the subculture is a common outsider misconception, motivated by analogy to other more recent movements which were formed or led by bands and were thus spurious by nature. As has been the case with other teen phenomena, a mod “stance” has, in the 60s, 70s, and 90s been adopted by bands looking for ways to quickly increase their popularity, but most of these bands have also quickly been forgotten.

It has historically been a bad decision to look to or rely on bands for mod inspiration; in the history of music there have only literally been a handful of people who were both true modernists as well as successful musicians (e.g. Weller up until the solo period). Most have fallen into categories such as “I hated it but I wanted to be popular” (e.g. Daltrey, Entwistle), “I went along with it ’cause my mate was into it” (e.g. Foxton), “I was a mod at one point but gave it up after I became successful” (e.g. Marriott, Townshend), “I’ll be moddish for a while but not too seriously” (e.g. Blur), “I have no sense of style but let me try to fake some by posing with a scooter and hanging out with Weller” (e.g. Oasis). Overall it could conceivably be argued that music has, when linked to modernism, done more harm than good due to its mass appeal and commercial underpinnings; however it is also true that, usually before commercial success or popularity sets in, some truly timeless, honest, and high-quality work does get produced. Like all memorable relationships, mod and music quite often don’t get along and let each other down massively, but when they work together the whole thing really does click like nothing else.

Somewhere on the way home from school or work, the mods went “missing”-they were absorbed into a noonday underground of cellar clubs, discotheques, boutiques and record shops which lay hidden beneath the straight world. Kids collected records obsessively, being as passionate about it as the acquisition of clothes. It was important to hear something first, before anyone else, and to be full of information about obscure recordings by obscure musicians. The sounds to be found in their haunts complemented their lifestyle

In the beginning, the kaleidoscopic world of modern jazz gave them hard bop, West Coast cool, subterranean hip, shades, smoke, drugs, and madness. From jazz, it was a small step to the blues. From the blues, it was a natural progression to soul and R&B, the quintessential mod music. Exploring other new directions, prospectors picked up on records from Jamaica, and danced to bluebeat and ska freshly imported to the best mod clubs. As the movement went overground towards the mid-60s, bands whose members had been mods themselves began to appear, providing a new classic English blend of pop, soul, and blues. In the 70s the revivals took a lot of their inspiration from the British R&B/pop sounds of the early/mid-60s, but also changed the mix to include large doses of punky energy and attitude; in a similar expansion, the original ska sounds of the 60s were given a more British feel as well as an increased tempo.

During the 80s there were brief flickerings of pseudomod scenes, most notably in the United States, largely as a delayed reaction to the British revivals. The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the coming of age of a new generation of British artists who had been strongly influenced not by the original classic mod sounds but via secondhand exposure through the new wave of the late 1970s. In the USA, on the other hand, the more traditional Britpop was complemented by a rising popularity in native 60s US-sounds such as surf and garage. These generally less conservative trends were balanced out by many purists who, going in the opposite direction, looked for inspiration to sounds much closer to the jazzy grooves of the original modernists.

As part of an almost an inevitable backlash given the pre-eminence of baggy and grunge in the early part of the decade, the pendulum swung again as British youth rediscovered the ideologies of modernism. The watershed event will most likely be remembered as being Blur’s release of Modern Life Is Rubbish, an album that signalled a change of direction away from the prevalent Shaun Ryderisms and more towards the legacies of Ray Davies, Steve Marriott, and Paul Weller. However, the 90s also brought along a new mod reality that was quite different from the more copycat nature of the 1970s revival (although, as in 1979, there was the luxury of having a readily available and exciting new wave of bands that were likely provide quality music for a good number of years). Fuelled by the idea that, to achieve anything stylistically the old influences must be respected but taken in new directions, the locals at clubs such as Camden’s Blow Up distinguished themselves by a liberal fusion of traditional mod and contemporary elements taken largely from the world of sportswear. A white jacket and Fred Perry with Converse, or feathered hair with a vintage 1970s Adidas tracksuit top.

This new mod was not defined by the obsessive detail and oneupmaship of the original but was instead a broad embracing of everything from Adidas punks to Acid Jazzuals. All this is mod as in modern–moving things forward by seeking out the new and the stylish in Britain. To quote members of the band Mantaray: “Mod shouldn’t be about reviving anything, it should be about what’s happening now”. Of course, such definitions raise more problems than they solve, perhaps the most obvious being whether a those subscribing to the new paradigm should really be classified by the same term used for a visibly different group. It’s an issue that hasn’t really been decided to the satisfaction of the hard-core traditionalists or the (usually) younger types (who have coined new words and phrases intermixing mod and casual to describe their particular fashion style). It’s really only history repeating itself-back in the 1960s the more purist of the early modernists also didn’t approve of the widening of the style as it expanded from suits to other casualwear, arguing that it would get diluted and lose its sophistication.

Arguing about these trends has perhaps already become irrelevant, since the demise of this particular mod resurgence was clearly signalled by the increased mainstream-media coverage of the past year. Most repellent in this regard is probably U.S. MTV’s Giving The Nod To The Mod, a set of adverts mindlessly grouping various bands whose only commonality lay in a British origin and, ironically/tragically, general lack of airplay on that same channel. Given that the industry cash-in is occurring at this very moment, the best thing to do might be to lay low and stock up on the occasional nuggets that might be produced in the avalanche of trend-oriented material. After the masses once again discard modernism to make way for the next fad, both the traditional and newer symbols will undoubtedly be useful for sorting out those in the know from the rest of the crowd.

The post-punk return to modernism of the late 1970s was mostly a fiasco, in hindsight doomed to failure as a result of its essentially derivative nature and lack of original talent. Largely energized by the first ever full-length commercial film about mods (Quadrophenia), the bandwagonesque set of bands that sprung up (The Lambrettas, Merton Parkas, The Chords, Secret Affair, and The Purple Hearts being some of the most famous) were a dead end that matched the energy but not the quality of their New Wave contemporaries. When the movement started to disintegrate a brief attempt was made to escape categorization via the Glory Boys moniker but this never caught on in any significant way. Ultimately, in an odd repetition of the 1960s, the more dance/hedonistic/fashion elements of the movement became adopted by other societal groups, becoming exaggerated and causing the whole system to crash via the New Romantic movement and the subsequent mid-eighties frivolity.

Regardless, there was an intersting resurgence of interest in American Soul as typified by the return of tracks such as Green Onions to the top of the charts. The only new group with enough style and substance to pull of a contemporary reworking of the Stax/Atlantic sounds were Dexys Midnight Runners with the release of their first album in 1979.

The true mod legacy of this revival, however, was the emergence of the most important and relevant figure in the pop music world of the late 1970s and early 1980s: Paul Weller, who was quite courageous about displaying his mod influences at a point in time when they were unfashionable and a clear liability in the eyes of the press. First through The Jam and later with the Style Council he singlehandedly redefined mod as applied to the punk generation and became a substantial influence for the then-youngsters who were to form the basis of the 1990s mod revival.

Also during the late 1970s, ska music, an original favourite of the 1960s mods, inevitably became fashionable once again. A set of genuinely talented bands appeared (mostly by way of the successful independent label 2-Tone) whose following and membership included various representatives from the mod/skinhead/rude boy camps.

The first wave of modernist youth emerged in or around London in the late 1950s. Most commentators agree on certain basic themes: mod was predominantly working-class, male-dominated, and centered on an obsessive clothes-consciousness which involved a fascination with American and Continental styles. The Dean in Colin Macinnes’ Absolute Beginners is a typical early modernist:

College-boy smooth crop hair with burned-in parting, neat white Italian rounded-collared shirt, short Roman jacket very tailored (two little vents, three buttons) no turn-up narrow trousers with seventeen-inch bottoms absolute maximum, pointed toe-shoes, and a white mac folded by his side…

Defined by a geography of dress, he is English by birth and Italian by choice. His unnamed girl is described in similar detail:

Mod was largely a matter of commodity selection. It was through commodity choices that mods marked themselves out as mods, using goods as weapons of exclusion to avoid contamination from the other alien worlds of teenaged tastes that orbited around their own (the teds, beats, and later the rockers).

Mods exploited the expressive potential within commodity choice to its logical conclusion. Their furious consumption programme enveloped clothes, clubs, records, hair styles, petrol and drinamyl pills. Scooters became the preferred means of transportation, and a style became fixed around the vehicle-a uniform of olive green (parka) anoraks, jeans and hush puppies. Sometimes French berets were worn to stress the affiliation with the Continent and to further distinguish themselves from the rockers whose own ensemble of leather jackets, flying boots and cowboy hats signalled an alternative defection to America.

By the time Mod had an identity reinforced as a set of newspaper photographs and bank holiday headlines, its significance and influenced had stretched beyond the confines of a mere subculture. Towards the end of 1964 the coffee bars and shirt/bra stores as described by Macinnes had given way to discotheques and boutiques. A thriving fashion industry arose in London based on Carnaby Street and King’s Road. There was now a mod television programme (Ready Steady Go, whose opening sequence was a mod on scooter at traffic lights with a voice-over of “The weekend starts here…”).

The mass commercialization and media attention given to a subculture based on exclusivity and elitism resulted in a natural identity crisis by the middle of the 1960s. At that point, two new subcultures quickly splintered off leaving only small remnants behind. On the one hand, furthering the non-aggressive, hedonistic, and intellectual aspects were the set of people who would give rise to Swinging London, psychadelia, and ultimately the hippie regression. The other set, wearing boots and sporting crops as early as 1964, were the forerunners of the skinhead cult, a group which even today maintains an innumerable number of similarities and ties to the mods of the early 60s (as late as 1969 they would still occasionally be referred to as mods by outside observers).

The places where a large portion of the modernist essence survived through the 1970s were, surprisingly enough, far removed from the clubs and cafes of London. Up north in clubs like Wigan’s Casino Club and Stoke’s The Torch, a scene developed devoted to scooters and soul music which matched classical modernism in terms of its obsessiveness and oneupmanship.