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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.

 

video clips



BBC Documentary on Oi! Music (Part 1)

BBC Documentary on Oi! Music (Part 2)


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Angelic Upstarts
Attila the Stockbroker
The Boys
The Business
Chelsea
Cockney Rejects
Cock Sparrer
The Exploited
The 4 Skins
The Gonads
Infa Riot
The Last Resort
Oi Polloi
The Oppressed
Peter & The Test Tube Babies
Red Alert
Sham 69
Skrewdriver
Slaughter & The Dogs
Splodge
The Templars
Toy Dolls
UK Subs