Mod Enough for The In Crowd?

I'm wearing white trousers, white shirt with Simpsons slippers on my feet. My hair is unruly, not combed, fingers bitten to the quick. I do not take drugs. I am listening to the new album from the old Sneetches singer Mike Levy. On one wall above my iMac there's a calendar created by Olympia, WA, paper-cut artist Nikki McClure; at right angles to it is a framed print of a winter's night scene outside the arts complex in Melbourne. My piano has sheet music from My Fair Lady resting on its dusted top, while the IKEA paper bin holds discarded shells and invitations to Jive nights. Am I a Mod?

Yes: attention to detail.

Two years back, I lived in Seattle and ironically spearheaded a campaign for a return to "Real Rock" at The Stranger that everyone took at face value because I enjoyed drinking my whiskey in pint glasses. On one trip to Olympia, I asked the singer of ace blonde femme band the Bangs?like the Go-Go's, without the latter's loss of cool?whether she thought I was a Mod or a Rocker. She replied the latter, and I was mortified. Had I let myself go that much, I wondered? Were my trousers really so shabby, my esthetic sense dulled to a middling degree? Then I laughed. Only someone from an elitist, parochial town such as Olympia could think of me as a Rocker. My whole life is based around peer approval and changing fashion. Or maybe (shudder) people become more like Rockers the more they age?

And let the attention to detail slip.

Listen. Here is some of my preferred listening music: Small Faces, Martha Reeves, Otis Redding, Doris Troy, Bobby Bland, Georgie Fame, James Brown, High Numbers, Booker T, Soul Sisters, Jimmy Cliff. Does this make me a Mod?

The compilers of the new "Ultimate" Mod collection on Britain's Universal label certainly think so, to judge by the track listing on their four-CD set. Paul Weller is not Mod. He is his generation's Eric Clapton, without the fretboard ability. He wasn't even the most stylish member of the Jam; that was drummer Rick Buckler.

Neither are Oasis?unrequited dirty old rockers in the mold of ELO and Status Quo (two fine bands, but we're not discussing musical ability here)?Mods. Mod is certainly not a slavish attention to labels or designers; that honor falls to the casuals or lumpen proletariat, so concerned with not being beaten up in the work playground by their dullard peers. Mod is about seeking out fresh styles, so labels clearly don't come into it?nor do bloody parkas or scooters, either.

I should know. I was threatened with knives and chains for wearing a porkpie hat in 1978. Oh, and while I'm stuck in that year, nearly all the decent original punks were Mods, not Rockers. Mods = John Lydon, Jam, Joe Strummer, Buzzcocks, Slits, Au Pairs, Dexys, Joey Ramone. Rockers = Sid Vicious, Stranglers, Mick Jones, Damned, Exploited, NY Dolls, Dee Dee.

There is much to hate about Mod?the self-styled "authorities," the wanker poser "faces," Roger Daltrey?but the music is damn near peerless.