Cocktails and Records

I have been reading a bi-lingual magazine called Hiragana Times. Aimed at a foreign gaijin audience who are learning Japanese, it mostly comprises articles about Japanese culture, history and politics, plus a few recipes and arts stories.

The magazine has a regular segment called ‘My Japan’ where readers are invited to say what they like and dislike about Japan. Usually if you’re visiting a country and you’re asked what you think of the host country you are either politely evasive or cautiously specific in your response – not this month’s guest columnist though. Kapil, who has been in the country for a mere two months, dislikes Japan because of:

‘the way Japanese treat foreigners (bars that say “no foreigners allowed”), smoking, weird hairstyles and excessive make-up…’

Granted, he is also pleased that Japan is ‘very clean and systematic’ and it’s a fair point about some Japanese people’s attitude towards gaijin, but weird hairstyles? Weird hairstyles are precisely what makes a country great.

Look at the UK. Where would this country be without Dave Hill’s fringe, the George Roper style comb-over, the Mildred Roper style hair helmet,  the Handlebar Moustache Club, Anne Widdecomb’s fake blonde bob, Dusty’s perilously balanced beehive, the asymetrical hair of trendy Shoreditch, the white powdered wigs and lead based make-up of the Georgian aristocracy, all the cool kids in our local parks’ corn rows, Bowie at his zenith, Boris Johnson and Barbara Cartland full stop etc. etc.

God forbid Kapil ever visits Britain.

The recent spate of shows on BBC4 about both prog rock and the history of fashion has had the unintended effect of bringing that most unique item of fashion, the cape, to the front of my mind. Stuck in the midst of history, folklore and comic books, can anyone other than Rick Wakeman and Superman possibly carry the cape off? Possibly not – the only other person I’ve ever known to wear one was our university wizard.

Clearly appointed as a student union jape in the late 60s, the official university wizard was still hanging around when I was there in the early 1990s. His job appeared to be meandering around campus flourishing his cape, waving his staff and generally annoying my cynical slacker generation with his tales of cosmology, magic and ‘alternative’ lifestyles.

We thought he was a boring old hippy. He probably went home feeling sorry for us and our miserable capitalist lives. Wonder if he’s still there and what he thinks now.

Like any good self-obsessed blogger, I find my site statistics fascinating. Apart from telling me useless facts like that the only people who read this blog live in South East England, the West of Scotland and the extreme East and West coasts of the States, I’d like to think that they offer an insight into what’s happening in the zietgeist, man.

And what’s happening in the zeitgeist is Paul Weller’s hair. Since I wrote this post about my unfortunate comments to a female colleague about her Paul Weller-esque hair, I have received at least 3 google search hits a day from people wanting to know more about the great man’s hair.

Search subjects have included:

1. Paul Weller hair
2. How to get a Paul Weller cut
3. Where does Paul Weller get his hair cut?
4. Who cuts Paul Weller’s hair?
5. Does Paul Weller straighten his hair?
6. Does Paul Weller talk about his hair?
7. Paul Weller hairstyles for women (my favourite)

Sadly, this website isn’t going to answer any of those questions but it does suggest that not everyone regards his hair with amusement/disdain/sympathy.

Just thought you’d like to know.

I managed to completely disgrace myself at work today by innocently complimenting a colleague on their new haircut.

‘That’s a nice haircut.’ I said enthusiastically. ‘It’s great, it looks exactly like Paul Weller’s!’

They looked appalled. So the obvious thing to do was to continue hurling myself down this particular route.

‘Yep, that’s a great mod cut and it looks even better on you than him. I mean, you look much younger than Paul Weller does with that haircut.’

The recipient of my compliments responds frostily with ‘Thanks, you can stop now’. 

Sadly, the whole office has actually stopped by now and are looking at me, some with bemusement, some with pity. 

I guess its not a compliment to compare the hair of a 50 year old female Mariah Carey fan with the modfather.  

Spotted recently:

1. Young man near Rough Trade record store, East London wearing a navy and white striped boat neck top, white trousers jauntily rolled up to half calf level and espadrilles. Blonde streaked wedge hair cut completes ‘Simon Le Bon-on-a-yacht’ feel.
2. Man aged 30-something in building foyer, City of London, wearing pale blue suit, pink shirt and tie.  Refuses to exit building and go to nearby coffee shop because it is raining. Umbrellas don’t go with his suit he explains.
3. Teenage girl at suburban railway station with Jennifer Anniston hair, High Street skinny jeans and pastel top earnestly discussing teen-soap Hollyoakes with friend on mobile. Look topped off with brown belt declaring ‘Fuck the System’ in Jamie Reid/Sex Pistols style lettering.

There was an interesting documentary on BBC4 this evening about the bespoke tailors based on Savile Row, London. The programme was called, in a suitably restrained way, Savile Row and it depicted what is truly another world.

This was best exemplified when one of the tailors described marketing as ‘vile‘, saying something akin to:

‘We’re proud of the fact that we don’t do any marketing at all and never will. The kind of people who respond to marketing are the kind of people we don’t want coming here. We don’t want that many customers. I’d prefer to employ someone to tell people to go away’.

I am torn between whether this is just good old class snobbishness or the most radical anti-capitalist thing I’ve ever heard a business owner say. It has particular resonance too when the tailors are not paid that well themselves, and are under threat from chain stores, high rents and unsympathetic developers who want to flog their traditional workshops to tasteless overpaid City boys…