Eddie Piller is a big name in certain nattily attired, musically minded circles. He is the founder of Acid Jazz Records, a musical tastemaker who lends his name to mod and power pop compilations, and a renowned second-generation mod. So when I saw that he had a book coming along that cribbed its title from Mod-founder Pete Meaden's most famous description of his cult--clean living under difficult circumstances--I assumed it would be a general history of modernism.
It's actually more mod memoir with Piller's life experiences viewed through a consistently modernist lens. His mod bonafides were there from the very beginning: his mom ran the Small Faces' fan club and Eddie himself appeared on the back cover of There Are But Four Small Faces when he was but four. He was a childhood mate of the offspring of Bill Curbishley, The Who's manager. As a teen, he fell in with the second generation in-crowd, grooved to The Jam and Booker T after scouring second-hand shops for passable parkas and desert boots, and got enveloped in a riot or two. But his fealty to modernism leaked into other aspects of his life in memorable ways. While serving in Britain's territorial army in the early eighties, he nearly got clobbered while riding his Union Jack decorated Vespa through Ulster at the height of the Troubles. Incidentally, the flag wasn't some sort of political statement; it was just a bit of iconography like the kind he saw groups like The Who and The Kinks employ.So even as Clean Living Under Difficult Circumstances: A Life in Mod skoots on the personal stories that are the roast beef and potatoes of any memoir, the reader is always learning a little something about what it was like to be a real second-gen mod from a real second-gen mod. Everything you need to know to mod-out is in here: the right clothes to wear (there are two chapters on this), the right music to listen to, the right scooter to ride, the right rival to thump (racist skinheads), and so on. But it's all explained via Piller's personal experiences on the road to perfect modernistness. And though this is a personal story, he never disappears up his own arse. Whether discussing his experiences in the military, on the streets, or behind his desk at Acid Jazz, Piller remains a humble, highly readable raconteur.
