I'M ONE: 21ST CENTURY MODS by Horst A. Friedrichs
A Review by 21K-M.O.D
The two reasons I so enjoyed this book was firstly due to the quality of the photographs and secondly because it is the only book I am aware of that covers 21st Century Mods. Like the author I am also a 21st Century Mod, I am too young to have experienced either the 60s' Mod scene or the Mod revival. So I am particularly interested in information about Mod as it exists now.
Horst's book did some things very well but in other areas had significant weaknesses. It has to be remembered that this is essentially a coffee-table book and the main focus of it is clearly on the photos. As far as these photos go they are some of the best quality photos on the Mod scene and they do effectively present the breadth of Mod fashions in the 21st Century. Of course, as well as Mod fashions the book also contains some quality photos of some amazing scooters.
The central weakness of the book is the lack or accompanying text. All the book contains in the way of text is two pages by Rob Bailey on 21st Century Mod, some quotes that I imagine are of 21st Century Mods - these are used as Chapter names-, a two-page brief history of Mod written by Paolo Hewitt, very short photo captions and some acknowledgements. In total this amounts to a handfull of pagest in a reasonable sized book. My main complaint here is that the book would have been vastly improved by a much larger section of text dedicated to the 21st Century Mod scene.
It was refreshing to read Rob's philosophy of Mod as being a broad church that has over five decades of music and fashion to draw on. In my mind this vast cultural base not only allows but encourages people to draw their own vision of what aspects of Mod culture most speak to them. When we look back to the 1960s we see that Mods' choice of clothes. scooters and music was constantly evolving. However, there was little in Rob's contribution that actually dealt with 21st century Mod. Rather most of it was a discussion of his experiences as a young Mod in the 1980s. This makes an interesting read but it adds little to our understanding of the current Mod scene.
In conclusion Horst clearly never intended this to be a modern version of Richard Barnes' book it was meant to be a Mod coffee-table book and maybe for that reason it is a little unfair for me to criticise it for its lack of text. However, I can't help feeling that the addition of more information about the current Mod scene would have resulted in a more enjoyable and informative book.
