60's Jamaican foundation ska,porkpie hats,thigh length leather coats and Dr Martens.

[bumphrey hogart]

Having only recently joined the FL and lying here in bed with a terrible dose of manflu I thought I'd start a thread to find anyone with common interests to mine. since buying 'gangsters' by the special aka when it was first released I've loved ska,now though it's the original 60's jamaican stuff I listen to and the first hat I bought with my own money was one of those cheap stingy brim trilby/fedoras that all us 'rude boys' wore at the time,now I wear proper porkpies,vintage Dunn & co cashmere and fur felt,etc.With my brown aero stockman and a vintage US black schott that's cut more like a 'vestes de rallye'. Now in my late 40's my style of dress seems to be less 'rude boy' and more like the old west indian guys I used to see around Handsworth, Birmingham in the early 80's.I always liked the leather stingy brim trilbies they wore with their skinny legged trousers and leather coats.I never made a conscious decision to copy that style,if style it is,I just sort of had a realization one day that I could have walked into a west indian club of that period with my ticket that not only gave me entrance but also got me a plate of curried goat and rice,with old style rocksteady booming out the sound system and not looked out of place. (Except of course for my colour).I now live in a part of the country with no ethnic minorities at all,where any knowledge of ska,rocksteady or reggae would be limited to UB40,maybe,where hat wearing is baseball caps and tilleys and where appreciation of the unusual is considered eccentric.This is why I was so delighted to find this forum,with my small collection of vintage swiss automatics and manuals,my hats,leathers and single breasted,3 button suits I thought I'd found a place of like minded people with whom to communicate.I've posted a number of times but have yet to really get involved,so this is my attempt to find some people who share similar interests and strike up a dialogue.Feel free to throw your hat into the ring!

 

[Touchofevil]

I first stumbled upon the ska band Hepcat in the mid nineties and was hooked. Since then, I've discovered many a ska band, but have found that I favor the Slackers, Hepcat, and of course the Grandfathers of Ska, the Skatalites! The energy of these bands at live events is amazing and addicting. Ska music's reputation has been besmirched in recent years due to its fusion with punk music, but real ska is a beauty to behold!

 

[Flat Foot Floey]

I like ska too. I don't dress the part but I go to Ska and Soul Nighter very often. Most people there have the smart-skinhead look. Checked button down shirt, sweater vests, clean highwater jeans...very different from the Oi! crowd I think. Very positive and polite. It's fun to go to this partys and just dance.

There are some Mods too. But seldom in vintage sixties suits.

 

[bumphrey hogart]

Real ska came out of the Jamaican love of early American R&B,Louis Jordan,the Duke,etc,it's hard to tell the difference between Louis and alot of the late 50's Trojan ska,the backbeat isn't anywhere as heavily defined as it was to become and alot of the non-instrumentalist songs have the humour you expect of Jordan.A friend of my sons who is 16 is a huge fan of what he calls 3rd wave ska,(1st wave the original stuff we're talking about,2nd wave the late 70's/ early 80's two tone thing that first got me hooked and 3rd wave of which I know only what he's played for me),alot of these bands are coming out of California and seem to have much more of the fun and humour that was missing in the two tone stuff,(the political scene post punk in the uk was very serious and alot of music reflected that).'Touch',you mention ska's reputation and it's having become fused with punk,this must be something limited to Cali or the US,over here punk died in the early 80's apart from a few hardcore,the vast majority of punks got into vintage and are typically the sort of people gracing this forum I'd imagine,at least here in the uk.Flat foot,the music of choice of the late 60's original skinheads was ska,skinheads then were a very different thing to what we understand them to be now,they were essentially the tail end of the mod thing that got into west indian music,how the racists ever hijacked them I'll never get,they were the absolute opposite,young white kids integrating with our black population for the first time,the smart dress was the mod influence,Ben Shermans,Fred Perrys,Sta Press trousers,the tighter trousers were the influence of the west indian kids they were going to school,and hanging out with,as were the stingy brim porkpie hats.I'd go as far to say that alot of the responsibility for keeping hat wearing alive in the uk is down to west indians.I'm really interested in what is happening over your side Touch,from what my sons friend has played me the Cali ska sounded fun,I'd hate to think it's being hi-jacked again,and Flat I think your experience is much closer to mine,though to be honest its been some time since I've been to a weekender,at nearly 50 I just feel ancient,though there are alot of guys my age it kind of feels like we're trying to hold onto youth a bit too hard,and also as I mentioned on my first post I don't dress in the uniform,the influences are there but much closer to where the style originally came from not what it became,and of course what it came from was American 40's R&B/jazz.Strange isn't it how you can draw a line of influence from 30's/40's american street fashion through the west indies to late 60'early 70's British street fashion.

 

[Woland]

I love it, and I DJ it...

Had the immense pleasure of attending a concert with the legendary Derrick Morgan in London last May.
The missus was a tad worried about mixing with Skins, but she need not have worried.
We had a great time indeed, and she was mightily impressed by both artist and audience.

We were of course in our best bib & tucker.
She in a polkadot dress, me in a three-piece tweed with a bow-tie and all.
Rogues in brogues! The crowd at "The Gaff" welcomed us as their own.

[video]http://youtu.be/itu4LybnKHw[/video]

Btw; if you use ITunes, check out "Midnight Ska" by Reggie Msomi's Hollywood Jazz Band.
South-African ska from the 60s!

 

[bumphrey hogart]

WOW!!! Derrick Morgan!! As you say 'LEGENDARY'!

 

[Woland]

WOW!!! Derrick Morgan!! As you say 'LEGENDARY'!

Indeed.
70 years old, been blind for the last 20.
He gave us nearly 2 hours of enjoyment.
Grand!

 

[CopperNY]

i'm a Specials/80's era convert. now i listen to early ska/rocksteady fairly often. have converted my coworkers to Desmond Dekker and early Wailers. to be honest, it was the rudeboys that first made hats cool for me. had a job in college where my boss was an older Jamaican man. introduced me to obscure tunes and showed me how to tune a "ratchet" knife.

 

[bumphrey hogart]

I lived in an area in Birmingham called Handsworth where the majority of west indians in the city lived,Birmingham is the second city in England after London, and these guys wouldn't dream of going out without a hat,alot of rastas with their locks tucked into the big woollen things but everyone wore a hat of some description,stingy brim leather snap brims,the big pimp style round brim,homburgs,a real hat fest,and a lot of these guts were real rude boys,escaped from the law in Jamaica to the uk,(rude boy was just a name for criminal/troublemaker originally),but they brought their music and style with them and it just appealed to me,it was the modern take on all the old 'hat movies' I loved,I felt a bit self-conscious walking around trying to look like Philip Marlowe,but I could change it a bit and be a rude boy and get to listen to a music I loved aswell.Alot of this vintage thing is fairly interchangable,if you look at photo's of 30's American zoot suit jazz guys,porkpie hat,long jacket,narrow bottom trousers accentuating the shoes/boots,then look at an original skinhead,porkpie type hat,thigh length crombie or sheepskin,narrow bottom trousers,etc,then look at the style in Jamaica in between there is an argument that Louis Jordan created skins and ska.Well it's an interesting theory!

 

[rmrdaddy]

"Al Capone Guns Don't Argue!"
Cheers mates!