There was a time when our perceptions of pop were defined not just by the records we listened to, but by the many and varied tribes of young people who followed each of the particular kinds of music, by their clothes, their behaviour – or at least how their behaviour was reported in the press or portrayed on film. Mods would peer coolly over their scooters, braking off for the occasional fight with passing rockers. Punks would spit at gigs and terrorise grannies. Ravers with ski masks and bottles of Vicks would cruise the M25 looking for a soundsystem set up in a field. That seems to be fading: when was a new kind of music spawned by and indelibly associated with a particular youth cult? Does the lack of hugely visible new teenage tribes matter for the health of pop culture?
Not if you talk to the "scene girls". In a brightly-lit living room in Borstal, Kent, Eve O'Brien, Louisa Burnes and Victoria Gibson, 15, jump up and down in front of the Kerrang! channel on TV. Each of them wears one item of neon blue and has a choppy, layered haircut. They talk excitedly for an hour about bands they all worship, including Paramore, 3OH!3, and All Time Low.
"Scene people are happy emos," O'Brien explains. "Scene isn't a fashion thing – we don't like girls that wear tops down to here, but that's because it isn't good for them. We like loud guitars, we don't like Radio 1, we don't like people who only like music without meaning." But if you have values, she says, it's OK to like unexpected things. "Louisa even likes the Jonas Brothers!" Her friends pull her into a giggly heap of skinny jeans on the sofa, and her voice squeaks out. "But that's OK, Louisa! It's OK!"
Only the most jaded observer would claim that young people no longer form allegiances, networks and gangs, even if you can no longer tell what music a teenager likes by looking at their clothes. Pop tribes still exist in 2010, but their forms are looser and broader than in the heyday of subcultures. Perhaps that's because young people consume music in very different ways. Hardly anyone under 20 remembers pop culture before the internet, for example, when records had to be scrimped and saved for, rather than streamed or downloaded. Neither do they remember a time when their listening was limited to tracks they could hear on the radio, buy with their own pocket money, or receive from a friend on a scribbled-upon cassette. If you can only hear 10 songs, you're more likely to go for 10 you're sure you'll like, and your cultural identity will reflect that. When you can listen to anything, any time, you're less likely to hold tight to tribal loyalties.
"Maybe the excitement of listening to a song you saved up to buy has gone, but that feeling has been overshadowed by the freedom of simply listening to a song whenever you want," says 19-year-old Bianca Munyankore, who organises dancehall and grime gigs in Coventry. Munyankore listens to music constantly, she says, and believes that an openness to music is now considered a natural part of being young. "Also, if you saved up to buy a CD, you wouldn't be exploring any other music, and how can that be a good thing?"
To Munyankore, the idea of pop tribes is outdated. Nevertheless, she admits the internet encourages her to deepen her connection with her favourite music – and without it, she would also have trouble finding it. She listens to new dancehall or grime tracks on websites like grimedaily.com – tracks often not allowed on mainstream channels because of their explicit content – and also uses social networking sites to organise gigs in the city, and form bonds with similar fans.
Duncan Wilkins, a 29-year-old metal DJ from Birmingham, says the metal scene in his city in booming for similar reasons. It's not because the home of Black Sabbath, Judas Priest and Napalm Death is overwhelmed by nostalgia for its musical heritage – teenage fans are simply embracing more extreme sounds. "And it's because of the internet," he says. "Metal fans feel like outsiders, and the internet gives them access to more music of outsiders. I never had that when I was young, so I'm quite jealous." Deathcore bands such as Suicide Silence and local metalcore groups like Bring Me the Horizon are particularly popular with teenage fans, he says, although they are very different to the city's older heroes. "Partly because they wear more fashionable clothes, and partly because metal has split up into so many sub-genres. But the spirit is still there, perhaps more so than ever, only the labels don't seem to matter so much any more."
Neil Kulkarni, both a music writer and a secondary school teacher, has observed pop tribe developments from both the gig venue and the classroom. "Subcultures definitely still exist, but they're not worn like a badge any more. They're not participated in with pride or any aggressively militant tribal way. It's 'just the music I'm into', or 'just what I like wearing'. A lot of kids also find their taste overlapping with other groups – they delight in those moments when what they find themselves liking is utterly at odds with everything else." He agrees that the internet has rendered his pupils less hostile to things one might assume won't fit in with their taste. "Critics expect to see subcultures walking down the street en masse, but that's not what it's about any more. It's small connections between people, between sub-groups of already existent subcultures, that are important."
So are tribes in fact expanding, rather than dying? Paul Hodkinson, author of Goth: Identity, Style and Subculture, thinks so; he believes the transformation of pop tribes over the years points to their success, rather than their failure. In his opinion, the Goth movement has branched out into offshoots (such as emo and scene) because of the outsider's need to make connections. "If you like things that other people find odd, and if that makes you unpopular, you will always feel it more important to be among people like you," he says. "Being in a tribe's always about being comfortable."
But was comfort important to older tribes? What happened to the spirit of protest that drove angry mods and rockers, and anarchic punks? Hodkinson thinks that academics such as Dick Hebdige – whose 1979 book, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, became one of the bibles of sociology – over-politicised the tribes they were observing. "His stuff on the subcultures he knew, like mods and rockers, was really spot on, but it's easy to read politics into a tribe when you want to see it there. The urge to be in a tribe is often about far less sexy things. Like trying to make friends, or having something to do."
Even John Robb, musician and oral historian of punk and 1980s indie, says our views of past pop tribes are far too rose-tinted. "There was and still is a lot of political idealism about youth culture and tribalism," he says. "Even in punk, there were apolitical tribes, and tribes who had greed and capitalism as their gods." Many people think that the spirit of pop tribes has died rather than mutated, says Robb, simply because the media is driven by fresh stories. "Editors will say, 'We've heard this all before,' and they have – but, for the youth, it's still a new story."
Perhaps pop tribes face more scepticism in 2010 because the very mass communication that makes the dissemination of music so easy also means it's equally easy to co-opt that music into the mainstream. The most underground of metal or hip-hop can be found not just on the internet, but on TV – by anyone with the full package of channels. In the days of rock'n'roll exploitation films, or hopeless record company attempts to create faux-druggy psychedelia, it was still easy to laugh at "the Man" and his failure to "get it". By the time of grunge, with fashion embracing plaid shirts, and Seattle becoming a hot travel destination, that distinction was harder to make. Now, when even indie labels are desperate to get their music into adverts, and there are musicians who make their living from licensing music to brodcasters rather than from fans buying music or concert tickets, it's simply not viable.
Perhaps the biggest change to the pop tribes, though, is that they are no longer the preserve of youth. Today, tribes embrace all ages, although sometimes this leads to blinkered nostalgia – "Like mod in the Fred Perry, Paul Weller sense," says Kulkarni. "It's now a dead-end of slack-wearing, Vespa-riding, laddish retro, fearful of black music beyond the 70s, scornful of makeup, and utterly antithetical to everything that ever made it interesting." He believes that subcultures stop being creative as soon as they become aware of themselves.
But if pop tribes open up to new influences, says Hodkinson, things can change positively. For his book, he interviewed Goths across the generations who attended the same clubs – they loved the cross-pollinations that go on between sub-genres. Robb and Wilkins are also proud that the audiences for their punk gigs and metal nights range in age from 16 to 60 – and that their relations are cordial and creative.
If a pop tribe means anything these days, says Robb, it should be an all-embracing term – about a state of mind or a set of tastes, rather than a stage of life you have to go through before reaching adulthood. "The internet is obsessed with finding new things, but the real pop debate has always gone on far away from that, in scenes that change and warp and cross-manoeuvre. That was always the whole point of the pop tribes in the first place. People disgusted or bored with mainstream culture, creating their own more thrilling worlds in which to exist."
Five great British pop tribes
Teddy boys
Golden years: 1953-58
Music: American rock'n'roll in the 1950s, and then rockabilly and glam when the teds returned in the 1970s.
The look: Edwardian drape jackets – whence the name; sculpted quiffs and "duck's arses" of hair at the neckline; crepe-soled "brothel creeper" shoes for jiving.
Deadly rivals: Everyone at first. By the late 1970s, punks often reported being attacked by gangs of Teds.
Public profile: Low, despite Teds being the first pop tribe – they pre-dated rock'n'roll, but soon became passionate fans of US music. In the 70s, there was a rock'n'roll revival big enough for a gig to be held in Wembley Stadium, followed by another, smaller revival in the early 80s. Now it's back underground.
Mods
Golden years: 1964-66
Music: US soul, UK groups such as the Who and the Small Faces.
The look: Tailormade three-button suits, parkas to protect them on scooters from mud and rain.
Deadly rivals: The greasy, unstylish rockers.
Public profile: Always bubbling away. The original Mods' habit of having bank-holiday rucks with rockers at seaside resorts made them a cause celebre in the 60s, and their profile has remained high thanks to periodic revivals of the music (in the late 1970s, and mid-1990s), and because mods are still regarded as the most stylish of all British cults.
New Romantics
Golden years: 1980-83
Music: Electronic synthpop, heavily inspired by the combination of David Bowie, punk and disco.
The look: Frilly blouses, heavy makeup on both sexes. Thanks to Spandau Ballet, it's hard to think of New Romatics without seeing kilts.
Deadly rivals: None, although rivalry within the scene was rife.
Public profile: The "Romo" movement of the mid-90s failed to spark public interest, but more recently the combination of Spandau Ballet's return and 80s-style synthpop becoming both fashionable and popular has changed that.
Grebos
Golden years: 1989-92
Music: Midlands rock bands such as Pop Will Eat Itself, the Wonder Stuff, Gaye Bykers On Acid and Crazyhead. PWEI are said to have popularised the word with their song Oh Grebo I Think I Love You.
The look: Hair shaved at the sides and long on top – somtimes dreadlocked, rarely clean. Big stripy jumpers, with baggy jeans or shorts.
Deadly rivals: None: most other youth cults considered them beneath contempt.
Public profile: Extinct. Greboes came and went, leaving little trace of their existence.
Junglists
Golden years: 1993-96
Music: Instrumental club music driven by high-tempo breakbeats and complex rhythms.
The look: Camouflage, Moschino jeans, Caterpillar boots
Deadly rivals: Not exactly deadly rivals, but fans of house music were held in contempt by some Junglists.
Public profile: Low in the UK these days – jungle music was a victim of the shifting sands of dance culture – but beginning to rise and mutate internationally.