Guilty pleasures

I've mentioned them before, but as I seem to be on a bit of a trip back down memory lane to the grating eighties (see The Loveless, below) The Stray Cats naturally sprang to mind.

Or, more specifically, Brian Setzer. See, in the early eighties, before the Internet or even VHS players, your tastes as a youngster were influenced by what you could find in magazines and album covers and hear on the radio or in clubs.

Brian was the first guy I'd ever seen on Harleys like this (before I'd discovered American bike mags)... and I liked the pared-back fiftiesness of them. Harley caps, engineer boots (even the appalling Johnsons double-buckle versions they're wearing on the album cover), cut-off bowling shirts... I fell for it all. I remember reading in NME how he'd ridden his old Panhead from London to Paris to hang with the French HA, and I lapped it up.

So thanks Brian. I hate to admit it, but you were a cool cat back in the very early days before the mullet and the orchestra... and you introduced me to some nice bikes before anyone else.

(Thanks to Danny Franssen for the top photo, which he scanned from an old French mag).