Other British Subcultures

After the Teds, we had numerous subcultures built around music, although before the others arrived, one era that was producing "Shock" newspaper stories was in the early sixties, and the young who listened to trad jazz - don`t laugh - and scenes of destruction followed some concerts.  Personally, I think it was people who got a bit pissed up - what`s new there?  Towards the mid sixties we had the Mods and Rockers, with the full scale pitched battles at seaside resorts that generally never happened.  Some reporters were even paying Mods and Rockers to fight each other, to get a scoop!  

    The "hippie" era arrived with wankers like Timothy Leary wanting to look cool to youngsters with the "turn on, tune in, drop out" bollocks he liked to promote.  The Rockers had now turned to serious biking and forming clubs in the American style.  Many of these bikers were called "Hells Angels" but the truth was, until 1973, Britain only had two official Angel Chapters; London & Wessex.  The hippie era carried on to the mid seventies, and then the biggest shock to hit Britain since the Teds, arrived; the Punk era.  Many jumped on the bandwagon but it did produce many bands that did and do, live on.  It was also when we really first started seeing body piercing such as safety pins through the lips and noses.  Nowadays, nobody notices.  But this era did bring other cultures, a Mod revival, Soul Boys, skinheads - reviving the skinheads and bootboys of the late sixties, early seventies.  New Romantics, heavies.  In the late seventies, I had let my hair grow and it was over my shoulders, and one day in my local, I ran into a lad I had worked with about a year or so before.  "You've become a heavy" he said on seeing my long hair.  To which I said that no, I let my hair grow because I felt like it.  I did and still do, love heavy rock.  For a number of years now, people involved in doorwork or thuggery go around with shaven heads, so it is not really a subculture but it is taken as a "uniform" for a thug, somebody sending out the message "don`t fuck with me".  What will come next?