Book Reviews...
Hopefully, by way of this page we can bring books to your attention that are more than worthy of a quick look. The first 2 books up for review are by the same author - Enamel Verguren who has taken an in-depth look at the mod scene in Britain.
The first book is This is a Modern Life - which looks at the 1980's London mod scene. In terms of ease of use, then there's no arguments at all. This book is fantastic in that it is centred around the views of people who were active on the scene at that time. Not just the club promoters and DJ's, but the regular rally goers and club attendees. Quotes abound on the scene as a whole, the changing fashions and the clubs and rallies. The books lay out is good with a nice mix of press cuttings, photos, record label scans and images of some of the modzines available at the time along with a whole host of other stuff and that includes Lambrettas. This is a Modern Life was published by Helter Skelter in 2004 (ISBN 1-900924-77-3).
Fast forward to 2010 and Shamen publishing presnt us with I'm not like everybody else (ISBN 978-0-9564882-0-6) the 2nd volume of Enamels Mod Chronicles series. This time round Enamel has taken a look at the 1990's mod scene. The second book has the same format as the first (and why change a winning one!). It has a fantastic selection of photos from clubs, rallies and events along with more records scans, modzines, flyers and a whole host more. As for quotes, I must admit that I love this one "You instantly feel knighted when you drive a scooter covered in chrome". Again the second volume has a very easy read appeal about it. Don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean that there is no substance to the book or its predecessor, because that would be missing the point. The books easy read appeal meant that I couldn't put it down. It is a fantastic piece of social documentary and Enamel deserves high praise for putting together such a good follow up to the first book.
Mind you, thats not the end, Enamel has more projects up his sleeve, so watch this space to read more about them.