#OI!

[skinnbollen]

Skinheads Thomaz & Gustav having a good laugh!

[haveyouheardthisband]

[gettingmylifetogetherorsomething]

Underage!

[guerrilla-operator]

SYNDROME 81

[rangerskin20]

We are making and selling bleachers and Bleachers Jackets throughout the world EMAIL us if you want to buy BLEACHERS@MAC.COM

[naughtydogg]

I am in love with his bitchy nature

[plasticbubbleboy]

[randomvarious]

1980s Oi! Punk Playlist

And 1980s Punk Rock Playlist December is going out with a bang, with this small batch of kick-ass oi! tunes from the early part of the decade. In a broad sense, oi! is to punk what punk is to rock. Punk arose out of a desire and necessity for rock to have raw, energetic simplicity again, like it had at its founding, and when oi! came around in the UK in the late 70s, it was for much the same reasons: punk rock was losing its meaning and its edge as it was being practiced by artsy intellectual types and it was in need of a reduction back to its roots.

Oi! was working class music that dealt with working class concerns, like labor exploitation, lack of employment, run-ins with police, Thatcherism, the constant specter of nuclear annihilation, brawling, etc., and another thing that all the songs had in common was their use of anthemically chanted gang vocals, in which every member of the band would yell along to the chorus of a song in unison, which would also involve crowd participation in a live setting too. That aspect of it helped carry on long-held traditions of drinking songs and football chants in a new and different way; solidarism and empowerment achieved through unified rebelliousness 🤘.

So what we've got here are 13 classic oi! songs to get rough, rambunctious, rowdy, and raucous to—stuff that I don't think will ever end up going out of style because of how pure and true-to-form its brand of punk rock is. There's been a lot of oi! that's come out since—even some really gross white nationalist and Nazi shit that ignorant folks think is more or less representative of oi! as a whole—and a lot of it feels like it's going through the motions, because at the end of the day, there's really only so much that one can do with oi! in the first place. But this early generation of the stuff will feel forever fresh, and as long as working class issues remain issues, which seems very likely to be the case, the topics will continue to remain broadly relevant too.

One of the great leaders of this scene was a band called Blitz, and here I've included their blistering "Never Surrender," a perfect 90-second soundtrack to an enormous hypothetical street fight between rival gangs that's outfitted with brass knuckles, trashcan fires, broken glass bottles, knives, and spiked bats. As one of Blitz's most popular songs, which is currently sitting at 758K+ plays on Spotify, "Never Surrender" is one of those primal pieces of pure jump-around-and-break-every-single-thing-in-your-immediate-vicinity fury 😤.

And then for another leading light in this scene, we've also got The Exploited, who supply "Dead Cities," which has over 1.2 million plays, but also the much less popular "Rival Leaders" too, which only has 41.6K plays. "Rival Leaders" is one of those songs that invokes that aforementioned threat of nuclear Armageddon, but does it in a way that makes it feel exhilarating, sort of like how Detroit techno can also make the vision of a futuristic urban dystopic wasteland feel somehow inviting too. There's just a certain sense of, 'well, we're all stuck in this muck together, so we may as well just fuckin' party, right?' to it all. "Rival Leaders" is an explosion of pent-up speed and has one of the best gang choruses on this playlist, which is a simple rapid countdown from ten-to-one, before a final shout of "HERE WE GO!" which first signifies the launching of the nuke and then its detonation. Cathartic and invigorating.

This playlist is ordered as chronologically as possible:

Abrasive Wheels - "The Army Song" The Partisans - "No U Turns" The Exploited - "Dead Cities" Blitz - "Never Surrender" Abrasive Wheels - "Shout It Out" Resistance 77 - "Nuclear Attack" The Fits - "Too Many Rules" One Way System - "Give Us a Future" Special Duties - "Violent Youth" Threats - "Politicians & Ministers" Uproar - "Rebel Youth" The Varukers - "Die for Your Government" The Exploited - "Rival Leaders"

Now, normally this is the part of the post where I say, 'but wait, there's more, over on YouTube!' but I'm not doing that this week. Every song that's on this Spotify playlist is on the YouTube and YouTube Music versions of it too. 13 songs that run at just under half-an-hour, which is pretty close to the perfect length for a punk rock album anyway 😁.

And that's it for this five-Sunday 80s punk rock December! This month we got into punk rock in general, and then dove further into the oft-overlapping scenes of hardcore punk, street punk, UK82, and oi! punk, where we sussed out a bunch of the similarities and differences between them all.

And to start next year we'll be zagging into a couple weeks of soul music!

Enjoy!

More to come, eventually. Stay tuned!

Like what you hear? Follow me on Spotify and YouTube for more cool playlists and uploads!

[tiredsoundsofagnes]

NOT TODAY, NOT TOMORROW.

[skinheadforlife]

HARMONY & AGGRESSION

Swedish SKINHEADS Thomaz & Magnus

[haveyouheardthisband]

[gettingmylifetogetherorsomething]

Underage!

[guerrilla-operator]

XL BULLY

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Cock Sparrer - Riot Squad

[love-me-like-a-reptile]

Out of fucking nowhere, Tallahassee raw punk sluggers Armor dropped a big fuck you to the 4th with their first studio release in 5 years (holy fuck where has the time gone) crafting brutal d-beats, noisy guitars, and tasteful Oi! growls in 6 tracks of pure, undisputed Florida attitude...

ARMOR - AFRAID OF WHAT'S TO COME - 11PM RECORDS - 2024