Modcaster’s brilliant, near-definitive overview of an era’s sharpest sounds.
Mod, a movement that attached enormous significance to how one buttoned one’s jacket, was and always will be about attention to detail. Sure, it’s a broad church, but you don’t want to be getting things wrong. You’ve got to know your stuff. Which is why the lack of exacting, precisely detailed sleeve-notes here is something of a surprise. There are songwriter credits attached to each of its painstakingly curated 100 selections, in a glossy, handsomely illustrated accompanying booklet, but no personnel details – a huge omission when you consider the illustrious latter careers of many of the artists included. While tracks are datestamped with year of release, many only came out decades after recording. Add to this that track sequencing isn’t chronological, and you lose any sense of forward momentum, an absolute necessity when dealing with anything as self-consciously progressive and intrinsically time sensitive as 60s mod.
Perhaps there’s a subconscious kneejerk of innate mod elitism at work; the compilers ring-fencing their position as ace-face scene experts by keeping a modicum of theirsword, because the sort of people who’ll buy this four-CD/six-LP set are going to absolutely love trawling the net for precious clues as to exactly who played what and when.
