Following on from my earlier post, inspired by The Chords album, So Far Away, I started thinking about the other bands from the late 70's mod revival. I'm not so much thinking of The Jam, although of course they fit into this category quite nicely at times, but I'm thinking more of the other bands like Secret Affair, The Lambrettas, Purple Hearts, The Chords, Squire, The Vapors and The Merton Parkas.
Probably the first mod revival record I heard was Time For Action by Secret Affair, taken from their debut album, Glory Boys. The single was released in 1979 on I-Spy records. Early versions came in a brown paper bag style sleeve, with no writing on the front of the sleeve, just on the back. Later versions came in a black I-Spy sleeve which just a small keyhole on the front of the cover. Copies released in other countries all seem to feature a picture of the band though.
Time For Action was their biggest hit, reaching number 13 in the Top 40. This was followed by Let Your Heart Dance and My world, both also making the Top 40, but after that their singles were less successful and the band split in 1982.
Time For Action also lent its name to a book, '79 Time For Action, The Mod Revival by Garry Bushell.
And on the subject of sleeves, one of the early singles by The Lambrettas, Another Day, from 1980, was issued in what they referred to as an Emergency Sleeve. The reason behind this was that the song was originally called Page 3 but when The Sun newspaper threatened to sue, the name of the song was changed and the sleeve also. Like Secret Affair, they were also quite a short lived band, and with interest interest in the mod revival waning, they split in 1982 after a couple of studio albums and a handful of singles, although did reform some time in the 1990's.
Another mod revival band from the time were Purple Hearts, who took their name from a drug popular with the mods of the 1960's. As with most of the mod revival bands though, they only enjoyed modest chart success, with their single Millions Like Us being their highest Top 40 placing at number 57. They were tour mates with fellow mod revivalists, Secret Affair, and also featured in the March of the Mods tour. They released a couple of studio albums and a few singles, mostly on the Fiction records label.
Millions Like Us features in this 4 CD set, also called Millions Like Us, which according to the label, is the first-ever box set to properly document the Mod Revival scene of the late Seventies and Eighties. Across 100 tracks by all the key bands, the story of the Mod Revival is told, from its roots in Punk/New Wave through to its commercial heyday in 1979 with bands like Secret Affair and The Lambrettas and its resurrection in 1985 with The Untouchables and Makin’ Time.
The Vapors, again another short lived band, probably best known for their single Turning Japanese, also released a number of other singles and a couple of albums in the late 1970's and early 1980's. I'm not sure if they can truly be classified as a mod revival band, but their association with The Jam perhaps puts them as contenders, although I think perhaps they lean more towards new wave.
The Vapors - Prisoners 7" single & News At Ten 7" single, from 1979 and 1980 respectively
And finally, although I wrote about The Chords recently, I didn't think I could leave them out of this mini trawl though my mod revival vinyl selection, so here are a couple of my favourite singles of theirs, which both feature on their only studio album, So Far Away.
The Chords - Maybe Tomorrow & Something's Mission single, from 1979 and 1980 respectively
A couple of other items associated with the mod revival which may be of interest:
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