Cosmic Dancer
The crucial question for all of us still belonging to music fandoms. Are we still cool?
Does it matter?
My dad spent years playing Working Men’s Clubs around the North East. He played the organ, and his mate Bill played the drums. At their peak, there were hundreds of clubs across the region, big enough to own their own brewery—The Federation at Dunston.
The most famous beer brewed there was LCL. Officially, this stood for Low Carbohydrate Lager, but locals knew it as Lose Control Lager due to its mysterious effects on human behavior. A few pints too many, and you could wake up in Dundee—or married to a barmaid from Cleadon.
When my parents split up during my teens, I acquired an extended family of, frankly, terrible club entertainers. Chief among them was a former Black and White Minstrel with a booming voice and a rather suspicious perm. I say suspicious because I assumed the perm was originally part of his blackface act—making his hairstyle not only awful but also borderline racist.
I went with my dad to his last-ever CIU gig at Horden Comrades. I sat and drank cheap beer while he backed a couple of turns. He wasn’t required for the final act of the night, so he joined me as we watched a male duo take the stage.
They didn’t need a backing band; they had pre-recorded tapes and accompanied themselves on guitar.
The show opened with space-age sound effects, much to the annoyance of the crowd, who would probably have preferred the dodgy Minstrel act with the racist hair.
Then, from opposite sides of the stage, the duo ran on in spangly jumpsuits. One was thin enough to get away with Spandex; the other definitely wasn’t. He had the kind of midriff that suggested a diet heavy on LCL and Greggs pasties.
The skinny one had spiky ginger hair and a lightning bolt painted across his face in true David Bowie fashion. His partner had dark, curly hair styled in a way that suggested Marc Bolan—if Bolan had been a fat lad from Easington.
Oddly for a Bowie/Bolan tribute act, their opener was Virginia Plain. Maybe they figured Bryan Ferry was a safe bet, being a local lad and all.
The last I saw of them, they were mid-medley, blending Cosmic Dancer and Space Oddity.
There might have been more, but by then, my dad and I had drained our pints and made our exit. Most of the crowd had already done the same. I had one final glance back at the two glam rockers, wiggling their Spandex-clad bits suggestively at a handful of old ladies and one man so drunk he physically couldn’t leave if he tried.
The LCL had worked its magic once again.
This was the ‘90s. The problem with Roxy, Bowie, and Bolan wasn’t that they were old-fashioned for working mens clubs —it was that they were too modern. The clubs still clung to their ‘60s and ‘70s heyday, when big-name acts like Shirley Bassey graced their stages.
Back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, every Working Men’s Club had its own resident teddy boy or two—guys who, despite the passing decades, still donned their drapes and brothel creepers every Saturday night. Their hair, slick with brilliantine, was a relic of a youth culture long past. Sometimes, their wives joined in too.
I always thought of them as washed up on the high tide of youth culture, stranded in one moment of time.
But I get it. I spent the first half of the ‘80s pretending it was still 1965—listening to The Who and The Kinks, riding a Vespa. The latter half, I aimed for 1967.
Although I was just as stuck in the past as the teddy boys it felt more authentic. The gap between The Who and The Jam wasn’t decades—it was just a few years. And the music of the ‘60s still sounded fresh, especially when revived by bands like Echo & the Bunnymen, Teardrop Explodes, or even the more mainstream acts like Talk Talk and Tears for Fears.
You don't get cool like that with Rocky Sharpe and the Replays or Showaddywaddy.
But that was over 40 years ago. And like many people, I still belong to the same fandoms I did back then.
I know I’m not the only one who dresses in a way that aligns with my favorite bands—or who would turn down a gig purely because of how the band dresses. My aesthetic might not be as overtly retro as it once was, but I still wonder…
40 years on, are we now the sad teddy boys?
Or, to put it more kindly—how different are we from those old lads in their drapes and brothel creepers back in the ‘80s?
I always thought the mod scene was cool. Northern Soul, even cooler. Mod was unique among youth cultures because it was an all-encompassing aesthetic. There were mods in fine art—David Hockney, Pauline Boty—but mod style also permeated illustration, graphic design, and commercial art. You could live a whole mod life.
Many of my friends still dress in a mix of ‘60s mod and ‘80s/‘90s indie—a blend that fits together seamlessly. When I visit Northern Soul nights, I still see men in their 60s, whip-thin and immaculately cool.
But there are also plenty who fall into the ‘sad teddy boy’ category. We’ve all seen middle-aged men with excessively Paul Weller haircuts. Oasis fans are nearly as bad, if not worse. I saw The Who live last year, and trust me, there were plenty of comedy mods in the crowd.
I hope this doesn't sound too harsh. I have friends who I have known for decades who travel the country in pursuit of their fandoms; scooters, indie music, football teams. They are the loveliest people I know, and their passions are incredible. I am jealous at their energy and commitment.
But they are the people who don't care about being cool, and who are just doing it for the passion, for the love, the obsession. There is something utterly brilliant about that, and also incredibly British.
When Orwell wrote The Lion and The Unicorn during WW2 he listed the love of hobbies and private passions as a key characteristic of the British. One of the things that made us unique. Orwell would have loved a scooter rally by the sea, he would have understood completely why people do these things.
Before I go, I want to share my one perfect Marc Bolan memory.
Phil King was a good friend of mine at school. He had an older sister who had left home, abandoning her perfectly preserved ‘70s teenage bedroom—complete with Bowie and Bolan singles. Though we were obsessed with The Jam and Dexys, we’d sneak a listen to those records in secret.
We went to different sixth forms and I’d sometimes bring Phil along to parties. One night, at a dull gathering with a terrible ‘80s soundtrack, he kept giving me this knowing look—like he had a secret.
Eventually, he sneaked over to the record player and put on Ride a White Swan. We both danced a ‘70s Bolan boogie to the horror of my new classmates.
Sadly, we lost touch, and years later, I heard he had taken his own life. This is him in Coronation Street
I still miss him.