Continued from Page 1

British bands as the Small Faces, the Action, Them, and the Who, who had burst out of London’s blue-collar West End playing a wild mix of James Brown, Motown and blues covers.

“The Who was the first band to go out into the neighborhoods, into the suburbs, and unite mod kids from all over Britain,” Harper said. “In their songs, they talked to the kids in their own language—they not only understood what the mods were all about, they were part of it.”

The English mod scene peaked in the middle 1960s, when the Who topped the charts with such anthems as “My Generation” and “The Kids Are All Right.”

“Eventually, the whole mod movement got so big that, even in America, department stores like Sears had mod fashion sections . . .,” Mendoza said.

“It was more than just a movement; it was an attitude, a life style.”

By the end of the 1960s, mod had become passe, and acid-rock and psychedelia were the latest rage. And yet in the middle ’70s, the movement began a revival that has since seen hordes of second-generation mod kids listening to the same music, wearing the same clothes, and espousing the same attitude as their first-generation mod parents.

“It’s just something we can identify with, this feeling of rebelliousness, of youth, that the orignal mods stood for,” Mendoza said. “And the Who captured this feeling perfectly.”

After today’s Who concert, Mendoza said, most of the local mods will go for a cappuccino at the Gelato Vero Caffe in Mission Hills or dancing at the 2581, a hip dance club in East San Diego. Both are regular mod hangouts.

Bartley Mendoza, above right, leader of a mod revival band Manual Scan, with fellow mod Scott Harper. At left, mods on scooters in a scene from the movie “Quadrophenia,” also the name of an album by the Who.