The Attack of Billy Eckstine by Mike Marino and Sandoz Diego Cerveza The British Invasion had a dark

side to it's moon that manifested itself in wide spread violence that swept the island nation with the fury of a Viking raid of f ierce Norsemen hellbent on pillage and plunder. This dark side resulted in scatt ered confrontations, and often bloody gang battles over the two decades of the T eddy Boy Fifties and the Mod and Rocker Sixties. Mods, Rockers and Teddy's. A tr io of street violence. turf warfare, and bloodshed. The British music and youth sub-culture scene was a Jekyll and Hyde hybrid that resulted in bashed in heads, broken faces, broken bones and blood red battles at beach side resorts, not to mention racial attacks on immigrants from the West Indies and others. The Brits do have a violent reputation, let's face it. Take soccer for example. Soccer games on the international stage usually have the Brit fans in the stands rushing to the field to pummel the other teams players and fan base. They get s o violent in fact that they are referred to derogatorily as "Lagerheads" and hav e a pent up penchant for violence that must be similar to an orgasm. This blown inner fuse by wannabe arm chair athletes is not confined to the soccer fields or Britain alone. Just look at parents at a Little League baseball game in America where the "adults" get out of control, not in all cases of course, but often en ough. It's a fucking game people, that is all, sports is a game..not life and de ath. I can see Gandhi now challenging the British Empire to a soccer game to dec ide if the Brits stay or leave...North Vietnam challenging Team Nixon to a round of golf (there's a fucking dull game that I hesitate to even call a sport!) to decide which ideology will survive jungle warfare and booby traps. It is the arm chair quarterback syndrome of wannabes who never will be the hero on the field a nd have to live potbellied on the sidelines watching..forever watching and not p articipating..in effect the penis has been cut off at the pass and will never sc ore a cheer leading goal. How does this visceral violence translate to aesthetics fostered and promulgated by The British Music Invasion? It was about music and fashion, right? Carnaby S treet meets Seville Row, right? However, if you went diving in the pop culture d umpster of the times, you would have seen a decapitated head or two, figurativel y speaking of course, (quite possibly literally too!) that was severed during a sociological gang rape of epic proportions. The youth culture of Sixties England was in full bloom, a virgin waiting to have her cherry popped by a Prince Charm ing. Instead she was thrust hard to her knees, mouth wide open and forced into g iving head to a vulgar beast. A two headed, two sided, two faced, yinned-yanged beast of angelic good and pure evil. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde had split their own atom, and had sprung to life as a youth sub-culture ensconced in a society gone quite mad, not to mention, quite Mod and quite off it's Rockers! The two heads of the beast were exact opposites. Mr. Hyde, was evil and bloodthi rsty, Dr. Jekyll was quaint Quant paisley daisies, mop tops and pop music! The t imes were "fab" and "birds" were "gear" but there was an under current, an ocean ic undertow of fear that Stanley Kubrick would encapsulate in the futuristic hor ror noir (if there is such a term, and if not, there is now) film "Clockwork Ora nge. The main character, Alex and his Droogies, were the direct offspring and ba stard children that had crept from the afterbirth of the Mods and Rockers of the British Sixties, and the Teddy Boys of the British Fifties. The film, Clockwork Orange, like the book by Anthony Burgess, was rampant with r ape and beatings as a gang of Kubrick-Burgess Droogies break into a couples home , kick and beat the husband near to death as his wife is held helpless in the cl utches of a gang of Droogie youth hellbent on penetrating her one after the othe r as her husband is forced to watch the macabre scene unfold before him. She is raped repeatedly and forced to commit sexual acts on all the members of the gang with with a plethora of penis penetration in every orifice, her body bruised an d beaten, her vagina numb to the ongoing assault. The room is filled with the sc ent of animal sex and is awash in bruised breasts and thighs, damaged psyche's a nd an overflowing vagina of sexual lava left deposited by a gang of belligerents , that now drips and pools on the floor between her middle class, middle aged ou tstretched legs glistening with liquids deposited inside of her in great volcani c volumes of teenage orgasms.

The whole effect of the film was violence for the sake of violence, to make us c ringe, as we, the audience were cinematically layered with gang rapes and beatin gs. The viewer, as helpless onlooker (and voyeur), becomes uncomfortably numb an d is overwhelmed by it's basic base theme, yet, excited, emotionally and sexuall y, places touched in corners hidden in us in a deep well that we didn't know exi sted...the violence becomes a mere backdrop as we wiggle in our theater seat dur ing the rape scene, excited..the Jekyll/Hyde thing again I suppose. The book-The film was supposed to reflect the future..instead it was a mirror reflection of the past, the past of the Mod and Rocker Sixties, not to mention Teddy Boy viole nce of the Fifties. The past was presented in a futuristic almost expressionist style that made the past very real, very violent, and oh so British. The Rockers on the one hand, and the Ted's on the other, were junkies addicted t o the heroin of Haley and the Comets, and the cocaine of Cochran, Eddie that is. Other influences included the film that help defined delinquency for the times, "The Blackboard Jungle," along with the music and fashion style of ..gasp! Bill yfuckingEkstine! No shit..Billy Ekstine, not Ozzie Osbourne, not Charles Manson, but Billy Ekstine! What the fuck? The Ted's first, and the Rockers and Mod's later, were a part of the youth cultu re that ignited a violent explosion and clash of cultures in Britain for over tw o overlapping decades. The demarcation line of Beat and Hip were blurred in a sl urry, and from the anthropological chemistry emerged three groups that were as d ifferent as day and night, where the street whore and the Virgin Mary had a lot in common as black leather hoods on Marlon Brando motorcycles and Edwardian Dand ies on scooters mixed it up to a British beat reinforced with riots, bicycle cha ins, wooden clubs and razor blades and knives..slice and dice time,...Yeah, Yeah , Yeah! Give Peace a Chance for Christ sakes. Mods and Rockers were at complete opposite ends of the youth sub-culture univers e in the Sixties. Mods had their roots in the beatnik era of the 1950's. More bo hemian at first, with art and poetry as their aesthetic gravity. The term Mod wa s derived from the term "modernist" with heavy doses of jazz infused with existe ntialism. The coffee bars were attractive the Mods for a variety of reasons, but primarily, the traditional British pubs closed at 11 p.m. while the coffee bars were open well into the wee small hours of the morning with live entertainment of jazz and blues, all influenced by American pop culture. The Mods were also a product of London at the time, while the Rockers were more a product of the nort h of the county, Liverpool in particular. The Rockers had their roots in American Rockabilly, and while the Mods preferred to scoot around on scooters (Vespa), the Rockers preferred motorcycles, rolled up Levi's, peg pants, black leather jackets and sported towering Empire State Bu ilding pompadour high rockabilly hair-do's in imitation the juvenile delinquent look and fashion of the 1950's..instead of jazz, the Rockers preferred rock and roll. Mod's on the other hand lived a lifestyle centered around fashion and musi c, wore suits and preferred soul and rhythm and blues. It was only a matter of time when the sub-culture atom would split igniting a ne ar atomic reaction of cross cultural violence in brawls and fights with a variet y of weapons designed for one purpose to maim or kill. Switchblades and chains, brass knuckles and razor blades were used to draw copious amounts of blood and t o inflict broken bones and faces. At first the melees were scattered and among small groups protecting their suppo sed turf. Most of these occurred at seaside resorts and of course, in true Briti sh lagerhead fashion, after football games! Media coverage only added gasoline t o the fire of tension that was building among the two groups. Some of these outb reaks make the Hells Angels rampage in Hollister appear to be a social tea by co mparison. British working class people enjoy their time off and it was customary to head t o the coast for long holiday weekends. On one such weekend, during Easter of 196 4 the conflict came to a head in two towns, Clacton and Brighton as thousands of Britons, as well as legions of Mods and Rockers arrived for the holiday. Soon f ighting broke out and mods and rockers were using every available weapon in sigh t. The worst violence occurred in Brighton where the battling raged for over two

days and spread to Hastings also on the coast. The media had a frenzied field d ay over this and referred to in true British fashion in blazing headlines as "Th e Second Battle of Hastings. At one point with police standing idly by, a group of trapped Rockers were overwhelmed and beaten to a bloody pulp by hordes of Mod s. On the lighter side of the Mad Mods was the colorful clothing as they gravitated to Carnaby Street to drape themselves in velvet jackets, ruffled shirts that ha d a pirate panache to them, tight fitting pants and and boots. To the Mod..the w et head was indeed dead, and the bushy long haired dry look was in. Perhaps the three most prominent Mod bands were the Small Faces, the Kinks and of course, th e Who with Keith Moon leading the Union Jack "My Generation" fashion parade. It was London, it was the Sixties and the Kid's Were Alright! While the Rockers stayed with Rock and Roll, the Mods went through a transformat ion in the mid to late Sixties. The music at first that signifies the Mod sound was upbeat, driving drums and blasting guitars with a hint of Motown. As the Six ties began it's Caraby Street beat descent, the Mods began revolving around the British garage-psychedelic sound which in time would be known as "freak beat" wh ile another faction went hip as the hippie phenom grew like a magic mushroom. To day the Mods have come full circle and there is a Mod retro movement afoot in th e UK including a resurgence in vintage shops schlepping Mod clothing and sales a re booming for Vespa and Lambretta motor scooters! The Rockers have always been a fixture and even with many layers of societal evo lution, there is a rocker underground that has re-surfaced, although it has neve r gone away. The UK has paid tribute to it's Rocker Roots of Rock and Roll with the establishment of the Rockabilly Hall of Fame that includes such American pio neer rocksters as Narvel Felts, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis. T here are rockabilly festivals and films and the Rock and Punk Bands of the 70's and 80's can claim rights to the Rocker Gene Pool. Most notably, although Americ an, is Brian Setzer and the Stray Cats who pack the houses in the United States and the Rockabilly Garden of Eden in the United Kingdom But...before the Mods...before the Rockers...before the Punks...there were the T ed's! Rock and Roll spawn of the first R n' R generation the Teddy Boys emerged in the Fifites in England, at first to skiffle and ska, and ultimately with Rock and Roll. Once the film "Blackboard Jungle" hit the British silver screen in 19 55 the Ted's began their rise to sub culture prominence and the new deities were Elvis Presley, Bill Haley and Eddie Cochran. The Ted's were the fashion pre-cursors to the Mods a decade later. They donned t he Edwardian Period Duds of the Edwardian Dandy Dudes. Preening peacocks in in a rock and roll lather. One of the stranger fashion features included a high-neck ed loose collared white shirt known as a "Mr. B. because it was worn by jazz mus ician Billy Eckstine, whose music the Teds also liked among the avalanche or Roc k and Roll..go figure. The hairstyles were greased up pompadours with the famili ar duck ass or duck tail in back and cut square in the back. Strangely enough, m y hairstyle today is loosely based on that look that was also popular in America at the time. No, my hair is not Setzerian in height but the back is duck assed and squared off at the nape. Somethings just wear well with time, eh? The Ted's began in 1950 and were a somewhat quiet subculture, until 1955 when "B lackboard Jungle" was shown in London. The audience, primarily Teds in attendanc e began to riot, rip up the seats in the theater, and then, holy shit..they bega n dancing in the aisles! The stage was now set and every place in England that s howed the film experienced the same violent outbreak...The Ted's fought with eac h other as they formed rival gangs, and in 1958 Ted's launched an especially vio lent attack on the local West Indian community. If the Teddy Boys were baddass, then the Teddy Girls were hardly Doris Day. They were referred to as "Judies" and affected the rolled up jeans look, lots of vel vet clothing, tight ass fitting toreador pants and yep, those awesome ponytails that wiggled and wagged in the breeze. The Ted's by an large were working class, not to mention high school drop-outs, (ok, another thing I have in common with them) The Teddy Boys and Teddy Girls would drop out of school by age 14 or 15 (1 5 in my case) and work at jobs all week and party hard all weekend long.

The Teddy Boys and Teddy Girls, Mods and Rockers, Skiffle to Rockabilly to Punk. .it was all part of the British Invasion..the violent side of the invasion with self inflicted societal wounds and enough blood and violence that was the real C lockwork Orange, but you can't blame the violence of the times on Alex or Droogi es or Burgess or Kubrick..hell..blame it all on Billy Eckstine!!