OI! FROM YOUR MUSICAL PAST…
Oi! is very unpretentious, simple, and fun. As the world economy becomes increasingly shittier and wars drag on, Oi! is still a relevant music style that should not be forgotten in the UK. Because popular music still sucks and Margaret Thatcher is still a cunt!
Oi! A Cockney expression meaning Hey! Or hello. Used to name a unique sub genre of Punk Rock taken from the Cockney Rejects song Oi! Oi! Oi!
Oi! is the most distinctly English musical style to come out in the past 30 years.
Oi! first reared its ugly head in the late 1970s and peaked in the early to mid 1980s in the UK. Oi! music aimed at giving the working class its own voice, music and distinct subculture at a street level while moving away from the artsy high brow direction many post-punk and new wave bands were moving towards after the first wave of punk broke. At the same time it brought together two of the biggest subcultures in the UK, punks and skinheads.
ITS GONNA BE A BORSTAL BREAKOUT
Bands like Sham 69, Cockney Rejects, and Menace paved the path for Oi! bands to follow in the 1980s. Oi! drew an audience of all sorts of youth ; punks, herberts, and disaffected and poor youth. However the majority were predominantly skinheads.
Oi! marked a departure from West Indian and Black musical styles which had predominantly been associated with the skinhead subculture.
Despite the misinformed media image of all skinheads being racist, the truth is usually the opposite. In the 80s an influx of racism seeped into some splinter groups of skins that identified with the National Front and British Movement ideologies. However most skins remained anti-racist or neutral on the subject, they were simply working class youth. Because of outbreaks of violence and the use of skinhead aesthetic by small groups of white nationalist organizations, Oi! and skinhead culture would forever be tarnished by the media misrepresentation.
Major themes in Oi! music were fighting, fucking, drinking, unemployment, oppression, and working class rights. Musically it tended to have more harmonies than its dissonant UK82 counterpart. Football chants influenced Oi! and became gang vocals usually in the chorus. OI! was also fucking tough and just good all around.
There are still Oi! bands new and old all over the world. Piss on all that hipster bullshit and electro pop rave ass water and smash it up.
Thank you skinheads for de-fagging mod!
Oi!
Recommended play list:
INTRO TO OI!
Cock Sparrer – Take ‘Em All
Anti Social – Official Hooligan
The Business – Smash The Discos
Cockney Rejects – Fighting In The Street
Menace – GLC
Red Alert – In Britain
4 Skins – 1984
Infa Riot – We Out Number You
Combat 84 – Barry Prudom
Sham 69 – Borstal Breakout
The Oppressed – White Flag
Blitz – Never Surrender
Anti- Establishment – 1980’s
Recommended viewing:
UKDK
This is England
Southhall Riots
Words: Matt Von Sex