I was struggling for a blog post today, so thought I would share a small extract from my thoroughly unfinished book Almost Human:
I used to be one of these people. I know a lot of you used to be these people too. If you were lucky, maybe you weren't one of these people but I can't quite decide if it really is lucky or not. You might have missed out on something if you weren't.
I'm talking about the need/want/desire to dress like your icons - or at the very least mimic them in some fashion - and let me tell you, if you were born after 1980, you don't know how good you have it no matter what music you're into.
Let's start with the simple end of the stick. How much hard work is it to display your colours as a Metallica fan? It's not. You pay your money and get your t-shirt, if you're feeling creative you might take the marker pens to your denim jacket or an airbrush to your leather. For the truly hardcore, you can get a tattoo of the Metallica logo but only if you're really sure you will "absolutely love them forever"...
With the exception of the tattoo (though I suspect it may be more common than I think) this is the way it has been and always will be for the vast majority. It's a nice way to be. It means you can display your colours at whim. Maybe when you go to a show or hanging out with your pals at the weekend...
But for some of us, this is not enough. I can't put my finger on the reasoning behind it at all. One of my cousins, Karen, was really into the Bay City Rollers and displayed her tartan scarves with pride. If memory serves, she also had tartan pants but I may get in trouble for knowing this.
As we moved through the seventies, I grew up with people who would dress as close as they dared to Bolan and Bowie (though I never knew anybody who thought it would be a good idea to dress like Dave Hill) - this moved into the punk arena and the new romantics. It may come as a shock to some but the punk thing never really happened outside of London. Well, it did, but the little towns in the north of England came late to the show, so by the time they were in full swing, it was over.
The New Romantic era was different. It wasn't aggressive and every high street store catered for what you might need. It's true. Need some funny suede boots to emulate David Sylvian? Chances are you could buy them in Top Man (or whatever it was called back then) and if not, there were plenty of indie stores that did cater for you.
It was a time when daring to be different was expected - and then it stopped. Well, I thought it had stopped, but what really happened was that the bands coming up through the ranks started to look like normal people, so you couldn't tell the difference betwen the guy in the band and the guy in the street. Sure, there were pockets of renegades, but they were few in numbers and very disappointing in their delivery.
My favourite object of ridicule at the moment is the kid with a good job who can afford to buy the floor length leather coat a la Keanu/Matrix mostly because he comes across like Sting does in Quadrophenia - and then I think back to how I thought that it would be the best idea in the world to try and look like Bobby Dall on the back of the first Poison album...
I guess we all have to go through the ridicule stage to get where we're going but it took a long time for it to register with me that Poison were based in Los Angeles where heroin was the norm and I was stuck in North Wales and the closest we got to heroin was drying banana skins on a hairdryer and rolling them up to smoke. It can be done, but it takes quite some practice...
Taken from the eventually forthcoming Almost Human...
