'Saturday's Kids: The 1980s British Mod revival' by Darren Russell

Inspired by Richard Barnes’ 1979 book, ‘Mods!’, (that was predominantly made up of photographs from the original 1960s Mod scene) together with a family interest in photography, Darren Russell took a camera to many of the 80s Mod events that he attended from circa 1982 onwards and, all these years later, we have the newly published ‘Saturday’s Kids’ book.

Edited by Claudia Elliott and with an introduction by scene veteran, Dave Edwards, there are interesting narrative contributions from Gary Wood (The Scene), Tony Perfect (Long Tall Shorty), Mark Raison, Peter Jachimiak, Bernadine Wood, Mick Wheeler, Steve Besemer, Paul Hurst, Tracey Wilmot, Kev Lock, Dominic Morgan and the author himself. The pictures are all black and white, very much south-east-centric and taken at rallies (Hastings ’82, Littlehampton, Isle of Wight ‘83), events (Ilford Palais Alldayer), clubs (Phoenix Club, Crawdaddy Club, Solent Club), at gigs (The Scene, The Moment, Makin’ Time, Fast Eddie, Small World, The Aardvarks, JTQ, The Phrogs & Paul Weller etc.) and shopping trips to Amsterdam and Paris. 

There’s also several scene ‘Movers & Shakers’ captured throughout such as Dave Edwards, Eddie Pillar, Tony Class, Ian Jackson, Paul Hallam, Rob Bailey etc. and many great shots of ‘Mod’ed-up’ scooters.

‘Saturday’s Kids’ gives a pictorial memory lane for many of us that were on the Mod scene at that time (and still are today) – thank goodness Darren took his camera (as most of us rarely did) to record this moment in time.