#Oi!punkCompilation

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

EXACTLY HOW NOT TO PROMOTE YOUR UPCOMING OI! PUNK COMP -- BY SHOWCASING A FAR RIGHT-WING CRETIN IN YOUR PROMO MATERIALS.

PIC INFO: Spotlight on infamous/far right wing skinhead Nicky Crane on a record poster for the 1981 oi! punk compilation album, "Strength Thru Oi!," and which was later pulled by record label Decca after Crane's identity went public. Oi! youth 📸: Gavin Watson.

OVERVIEW: "In 1981, Decca released the "Strength Through Oi!" music collection, featuring some of the most classic artists genres of the genre, such as 4-SKINS, COCK SPARRER and INFA-RIOT. The collection is curated by Bushell, who last year edited the – atypical – first part of the series, "Oi! the Album" for EMI. After a failed photo shoot on the cover of "Strength Through Oi!," Bushell decided to use the picture of a skinhead, from a skinhead X-mas card he had at home. When the image was enlarged to suit the print needs of the disc and sent to Bushell for formal inspection, he first observed the Nazi tattoos on the body of the illustrated skinhead. Two options came to the table to address this issue: to erase those controversial tattoos or to create another cover. In order to avoid delaying the album’s release, and considering it to be an innocent mistake, the first option was selected and the album was released in May 1981. "It was a monumentally, cataclysmically stupid decision," Bushell would later say.

Two months later, the Daily Mail reveals the identity of the skinhead. It was Nicky Crane, a notorious neo-Nazi, who was serving a prison sentence for a racist attack at that time. This led Decca to withdraw the disc from release. The combatant Crane on the cover of the collection was a very powerful graphic representation of the masculinity and violence that existed in Oi! scene, while this picture set a skinhead archetype. As Gavin Watson, a skinhead teenager at the time, recalls, children of his age believed that “That’s what a skinhead should look like”. Crane’s image was imprinted on t-shirts and posters. "He just fell into our living rooms. These little kids in High Wycombe – we didn’t know anything about the Nazi stuff.""

-- PHOTO THEKE, "British Oi! poster boy," by Γιώργος Αργυρόπουλος, c. November 2019

Sources: https://www.phototheke.com/british-oi-poster-boy-eng, Timeline, & Fonts in Use.