Romulus, 1975/6 - Retromania with the Birmingham Bowie/Roxy kids

In his autobiography 'Bless me father' (2025), Kevin Rowland talks about Birmingham club Romulus in the mid 1970s, which like similar scenes elsewhere saw people anticipating the future while refashioning the style of the past. Puts me in mind of the famous Marx quote from 'The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte' (1852):

'The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language.

Here's an extract from Rowland's reminiscences:

'Wearing 1940s and 50s clothes and haircuts in the mid-70s was different. Nearly every young man was still wearing the feather-cut, baggy flares and tank-top look that was initially exciting in 1971, '72, but was now nothing but depressing, as far as I was concerned. Bryan Ferry was a massive inspiration. He wore a white tuxedo in early 1974. It was pure genius and way ahead of its time. Of course, he had the best clothes designer, in Antony Price, but Ferry understood the looks and wore them incredibly well. I would get clothes made, or pick up dead stock from old men's shops or from charity shops. Wearing an American GI outfit, or a forties suit, with a short-back-and-sides haircut to a normal club in late 1975 and early 1976 was a culture clash [...]

Then I tound the Romulus - a club on the Hagley Road, where in the downstairs room, on Saturday nights, a small dressing-up crowd would gather. It was really good to see like-minded people. The girls were wearing forties or fifties outfits and would have their hair dressed up. The boys would usually be Ferrys or Bowies circa David Live (Martin Degville, later of Sigue Sigue Sputnik, was one), and there were a few James Deans. Suits would be forties or fifties style, worn with quiffs or wedges, which would often be blond on the top, and coloured purple all around the graduation at the sides and back.

The DJ would play Roxy and Bowie at the peak of the evening, and forties swing. I had been getting bored of going out and dancing to soul music; it seemed to be getting lighter, less tough, as it moved nearer to disco, and didn't have the same impact for me as the likes of the Fatback Band or War, from 1973 and '74. I felt good at the Romulus and would look forward to it all week'.

One thing I don't think he mentions in the book is that a few years later he played at the venue with Dexys Midnight Runners, with Joy Division in support. Quite an incongruous line up!