Ricky Magowan of Colours new book about the pre rave scene

Our mate Ricky Magowan from Colours who worked with Fantazia on our recent past events in Scotland has been busy writing a book about his memories and experience of being involved in the music and youth scenes.  His first volumes deals with the days before raves, but he has promised to write about that next.  Should be worth a read and is bound to be filled with interesting, funny and shocking stories....

http://youtu.be/gcNuCFFFcJU

  Dressers Book info:

 

Two years in the making, 3 nervous breakdowns, 25 personal accounts of featured events, over 200 full colour pages, 45 fashion pages, over 500 photographs, 75 designer labels, 25 scrapbook pages, 78 pairs of training shoes, 8000 shapes thrown on the dance floor and so much raving your Adidas Gazelles had holes in them.

 

Explosive, truthful, frank and entertaining, Dressers is the definitive social history of young working-class youth culture.  From the football terraces of the early 80s to the legendary raves and dance scene in the 90s, Dressers charts the route from Italian sportswear to baggy rave gear - all placed against the backdrop of a small steel-working town 10 miles outside Glasgow.

 

Chronicling the rise of one of Scotland’s original football casual groups, Dressers is a gripping insight into the mad Saturday afternoon fracas that exploded into town centres and football grounds all over Scotland and the subsequent evolution through fashion and the dance scene.

 

Accurate, funny, fashionable and sometimes dark, these exploits continue through to the 90’s when being arrested was beginning to lose its appeal.  Football casuals took a back seat as the rave and club culture exploded with the introduction of “that pill” right through to the new millennium.

With football fans having been long at the forefront of casual fashion, Dressers provides first hand recollections of the inspiration taken from figures as diverse as Bjorn Borg and Massimo Osti to Carl Cox and The Prodigy.

 

British style genius Jay Montessori said, “From a set of lads that could have been any of us living through that inspirational era, Dressers fuses the excellent observations of Phil Thornton’s ‘casuals’ book (from a Scottish point of view), with a fantastic pictorial and fashion section to rival our own ‘80s casuals’ bible.”

He continued “For me there have only been two books of note about this thing of ours.  I would consider ‘Dressers’ to be the third.”

 

Up to 30 years of first-hand accounts, memories and the most in-depth account charting football, fashion and the rave scene in Scotland, Dressers is a must read for football, music and fashion obsessives alike – enjoy!

 

"Dressers is the definitive must-read book of the UK’s most important working class subculture of the last 30 years… When I co-wrote Soul Crew, we were the first in the country to delve into the obsession of Dressing and we are proud of that legacy, but what these lads have done is given probably the most accurate portrayal of the era alongside the finest year-by-year illustrations I’ve seen.  As important a social document as any on the history of Casuals.” Tony Rivers – Co-Author, Soul Crew

 

“The whole thing was a mirror image of exactly what happened country-wide. Because, at school I mean we always had people that were into West Ham, people that were into Chelsea, Fulham and most of the time it was all about who won the fights.  It wasn’t about who won the football, if you won the football and won the fight – you go down the pub and you celebrate it. But, of course that wasn’t my vibe OR my thing – but the thing was, it was evident – very much so…” Carl Cox, International DJ & Streetrave Legend