If that’s a thing… that… can be done, it’s surprising it doesn’t happen more at motorcycle trade shows. Surely it wasn’t a good idea to show up on Italian soil during the financial crisis on the week the Prime Minister resigns (incidentally, Berlusconi was slated to speak at EICMA but cancelled), and display a knockoff of one of Italy’s proudest exports. But one would hope authorities would afford the same attention to other imitators, too.
More from EICMA: Honda has dusted off the Integra name for its new 700cc scooter, throwing car fans into a tizzy, despite one commenter pointing out that Honda used the name for the 1984 Honda VT250F Integra MC08 motorcycle a year before unveiling the automobile so beloved by car thieves.
Thanks, Bradford! (I guess a link to Corazzo is still de rigueur?)
A few years back, Lambretta Clothing teamed up with The Who to reissue some of the band’s Mod-est attire, including the famous parka from the cover of Quadrophenia, pre-stenciled for your convenience. Apparently Lambretta marketing contracts aren’t worth much these days, so with a new Quadrophenia CD/DVD “Directors Cut” box set coming out, they’ve switched alliances to Vespa. Mancunian twit Liam Gallagher will display a new PX125-based Quadrophenia scooter, film memorabilia, and Who-insipired fashions–including (again) the Quadroparka–at his Pretty Green clothing store on (where else?) Carnaby Street.
In other news, Noel Gallagher has installed turnstiles at Easington Colliery, charging punters £5 to urinate on a lump of concrete.
Quadrophenia, aside from its obvious charms to scooterists (and I admit a compulsion to watch it occasionally), isn’t much of a film and is even less of an album, so it’s interesting to see it repackaged yet again. Confusingly, (“Director’s Cut?”) this new 6-disc set doesn’t include the film at all (the DVD is surround mixes of the album), and omits all the great music (by the Who and other R&B greats) that appeared on the original soundtrack, which was re-released in 1993 and 2000.
The album (as opposed to the soundtrack) isn’t horrible, it’s just neither the Mod music that’s the subject of the film, nor the Mod revival music that sparked its release. It’s exactly the noodly late-’70s stadium rock that Revival Mods and Punks were rebelling against at the time. It may be sacrilege (and completely against the point), but I’ve always felt, aside from a couple tracks, the film would have been better off with all music from the mod era. The book included in the box set is the most compelling component, I’d be far more interested in the backstory and Townshend’s memories than hearing demos and gimmicky 5.1 mixes. Townshend calls it “…the best album that I will ever write,” but it says a lot that the album was blocked from #1 on the charts by Pin Ups, David Bowie’s great ’60s cover album… containing two early Who songs.
If you happen to be in Turin Sunday, you won’t want to miss the Red Bull Lingotto Special, a vintage Vespa/Lambretta race at Fiat’s Lingotto test track. I especially dig the creepy neofuturist poster.
Between July 1955 and July 1956, Wim Dussel and Manfred Uschold travelled the world on a Maico scooter with sidecar. 36 photos (from 10,000 negatives!) were published in Dussel’s 1957 book De wereld is nog altijd rond : per scooter dwars door Europa, Azië en Noord-Amerika, more than 400 are published in this must-see photo set.
“If you’re one of those people who find James Joyce’s “Ulysses” too long and lacking in pictures” of vintage scooters, Alister Kitchen’s Scooters of the Apocalypse comic book is available now from Createspace or Amazon. It looks great, we’ll definitely be stocking a copy in the 2strokebuzz bathroom library.
…have a new uniform. Good to see the Jets back, especially at the expense of Atlanta, but this better not pull the Wings out of the Western Conference.
Italian tenor (and Ducati ambassador) Salvatore Licitra was seriously injured in a Vespa accident on August 27, and died Monday after two weeks in a coma. Doctors suggested it was likely that Licitra lost control of the scooter after a brain hemorrhage.
