"Bands such as the Cockney Rejects, the Angelic Upstarts – Marxists from South Shields managed by a man [journalist/manager Garry] Bushell colourfully describes as 'a psychopath – his house had bars over all the windows because people had thrown firebombs through it' – Red Alert, Peter and the Test Tube Babies. It briefly stormed the charts. The Angelic Upstarts followed the Cockney Rejects onto Top of the Pops, while Splodgenessabounds made the Top 10 with the deathless Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps Please. But today, if the general public have heard of it at all, they tend to agree with the assessment once offered by journalist and broadcaster Stuart Maconie: 'Punk's stunted idiot half-brother, musically primitive and politically unsavoury, with its close links to far-right groups.' It is, asserts [English nationalist/television critic who once tried to get a comedian banned from live broadcasts because he made a joke about fisting the Chancellor of the Exchequer Garry] Bushell, 'without a doubt, the most misunderstood genre in history'."
-There's a delightful history of the Oi! genre in today's Guardian which I think you'll rather enjoy.
Friday, March 19, 2010
15
First Wave is so boring.
Rubbish! I'm a member of the general public (!) and I've every single one of these bands. Further, I sing Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps Please! to myself at least once a day, not including the times I embarrass myself with it at a bar.
Oi! was really punk for people who thought The Clash learning a fourth guitar chord was some kind of class betrayal. I still remember Garry Bushell's negative review of London Calling in Sounds, the headline read "Give 'Em Enough Dope and Watch Them Turn Into The Rolling Stones"
Apropos of nothing, I saw this the other day and thought of your handle.
http://tinyurl.com/y9use3m
Ha! I only recently found out that guy existed. 'London Lee' is a nickname an American girlfriend of mine called me.
Well that is damn weird.
Nah, the class betrayal was them having two guitars that actually played different things at the same time.
I thought this said "Oil! Story" and got really excited for a second.
These go on the turntable when Mr. Oudemia and I have had way too much to drink. (And when we've had way way way too much to drink, it's the more maudlin items in the Jets to Brazil oeuvre, usually.)
Weird. I've been listening to Cock Sparrer's "Shock Troops" all day. Overlooked stuff.
Yes! Yes, it is! I've now read the article-- truly a delightful read!-- and he's done a great job of laying out the reasons why it has been overlooked--and its praises undersung-- by the likes of us.
Random Album brought me Oi! Chartbusters Vol. 1 just yesterday. And yes, all totally overlooked.
People have forgotten how much fun a good drunk terrace chant is.
I remember being in the middle of that whole Rancid-induced "curious afterlife" for oi. Being 15 and just starting to go to shows regularly, I asked everyone around me what oi was, what streetpunk was, to what degree it was Nazi and to what degree it wasn't, and why the hell does every one of my friends identify as a completely different kind of skinhead (though, obviously, none of them WP-affiliated)? And because the wise folk I was asking these questions of were 17 and had been going to shows regularly for two whole years, I got completely different answers every time I asked.
And then I bought a Business album and it sort of sucked and so I kept listening to a bunch of shitty skatecore, the end.*
(*Actually not quite, because the big Bay Area "streetpunk" band, the Swingin' Utters, started playing shitty skatecore and still calling themselves streetpunk, so fuck a duck if everyone under 20 isn't an idiot forever, now the end)
Spike's Me First and the Gimme Gimmes is still awesomely cool though, even if they are a bunch of sellouts.
So yeah, I'm now going through YouTube and listening to old Utters cuts. And whoever posted "Fifteenth and T" ("I never wanna walk alone/ I never wanna see the sun come up/ and it's all because of you...") totally has some sad little epigram for his high school lady-love. It's sort of killing me, which it shouldn't be, because I'm old and mean, but it's nice out and I'M PART OF THE NEW INTERNET FUCKERS.