All The Young Punks

Sometimes a movie's lineage is more interesting to me than the movie itself. That was the case for a film I watched last night called 16 Years of Alcohol. It's subject material was a sure thing for me as it centered around a guy in mid 70's Edinburgh, Scotland who was a "boot boy" although he was never refered to as such. Boot boys were also called skinheads. And believe it or not, this lifestyle originally had nothing to do with racism. To show their cockney, working class solidarity, they all wore close cropped hair, Doctor Marten boots, rolled up jeans and buttoned up golf shirts. And they had three things in common --- a love of drinking, fighting, and ska music.

The movie's protagonist, or antagonist if you want to look at him that way, hung around with three other thugs. He walks into a record shop and he and his mates start acting like apes, bullying people and causing a scene. They confront the young pretty store clerk, demanding that she play some ska on the stores sound system. She tells them if they don't calm down, she'll play "Mott the Hoople" a glam rock band that was kryptonite to any boot boy. Then the romance begins between boot boy guy and the clerk. It was a nice touch. Then the movie gets a bit to arty for my taste with dream sequences and foreshadowing, but I stuck with it so I could watch the credits and sound track listings. That's where the movie held the most interest for me.

One of the bands on the soundtrack was The Skids, a wonderful Scottish punk band that put out a genius first album in the late 70's before they got a bit too arty, much like the movie, and broke up. The most famous member of The Skids was Stuart Adamson, who went on to form Big Country, a very underrated and important Scottish rock band (I you don't own The Crossing, you should.) Coincidently, the movie was written and directed by Richard Jobson, another member of The Skids. He's the guy responsible for making his punk band too arty, much like his movie.