The Bishops - City Lights

to be honest i had planned this week's blog to be about The Futureheads’ “The Beginning Of The Twist” since i recently rediscovered their album. but then The Futureheads came along.
there’s a series of compilations of old Decca recordings, subdivided into genres of their contemporary fashion. So, of course, some bands appear on “The Beat Scene” and “The Mod Scene” and even those not appearing on both are hard to assign to just one of the labels just by their music. without knowing the dress code it’s hard to recognise the subtle distinctions between powerpop, pop punk or mod. with a few exceptions, of course.
Scroobius Pip discovered this just recently in his remake of his song “Thou Shall Always Kill” when he stated: “thou shalt be aware that there are no longer any musical genres; they are all just different dress codes and fashion styles.” well, right, but he is wrong assuming this to be a new phenomenon. actually the dress code always came before and defined more the subculture than the music did. before there where rockers in the music scene there was a dress code and a culture the musicians came from or addressed. same with the mods or the punks both listening to reggae, dub or soul before forming their own bands and creating a new subgenre in music. and later skinheads with a very strict dress code listening to music as diverse as ska and punk, northern soul and hardcore. in the end "skinhead" was always just a dress code and never a musical genre.
judging from the looks in the band shots i’d put The Bishops in the Mod Revival drawer reminding me of the horribly underrated late 70s, early 80s band The Chords or maybe The Killermeters. musicwise a little stiffer than the mod or mod revival bands back then. i really don’t expect anyone today smashing guitars, drums or amplifiers during their live sets but do i really need to hear that the band is wearing rented suits they don’t want to crumple.

The Bishops myspace