Oi! Music
 By
the end of the 1970s, punk in Britain was
splintering into several distinct strains, most of them quite
"arty". Oi! music was an attempt to keep punk a
populist, street-level phenomenon, and most of it came from the
working class of South London and the cockney East End.
Taking its name from the Cockney
Rejects song Oi! Oi! Oi! (before which it was simply
known as street-punk), Oi! was loud, brutal, and extremely simple.
 In
essence, it was punk rock that was most at home in a rowdy pub
(similar to hardcore but not quite as extreme). The Oi! movement
was marked by strenuously collectivist politics and chanted,
football-cheer choruses.
Unfortunately, Oi! acquired a bad reputation when it was
adopted by racist skinheads
aligned with the neo-fascist National Front organisation and
followers of the genre were universally labelled as an unruly
contingent of violent, rightwing hooligans.
Most bands (and many skinheads) took pains to distance
themselves from this unsavoury element, especially after a number
of violent incidents at live gigs, but a few genuine
white-supremacist bands (most notoriously Skrewdriver)
were enough to give Oi! a stigma which it never completely shed.
 The
band that brought Oi! and street-punk to prominence in 1978-79 was
Sham 69, and they in turn gave career pushes to Oi! stalwarts like
the Angelic Upstarts and the Cockney
Rejects.
The mid-90s punk revival led to a renewal of interest in Oi!
and many favourite early albums were reissued, with a number of
new bands popping up both in the UK and overseas.
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