Any book revolving around a subject one might be passionate or knowledgeable about could be divisive. Why did they mention this but not that? How come this one thing is not connected to this other related thing? It can be tough to evaluate a book on fair terms because of this. It can be made more difficult if the subject hasn’t been covered much. One’s view of the book can be less ‘Did the author do a decent job?’ but more ‘They should have written a book like I would have written it!’. This is fine for fellow authors, but for most of us it’s probably better to evaluate on fairer terms.

This is something I tried to do with What Have We Got: The Turbulent Story of Oi! by Simon Spence, published by Omnibus Press, but eventually gave up. If you’re going to title your book ‘THE’ story of oi!, rather than ‘A’ story of oi!, you’re kind of asking for it.

Spence, who followers of the oi! genre may recognize as the journalist who covered modern oi! in a November 2022 Guardian article, has written a book that is very much like an extension of that article. Overall, the book includes a lot of good information, is worth reading and hopefully will motivate others to write more about this scene. However, it also has some significant faults that subtract from the quality and are hard to overlook.

The book starts out with Trevor Taylor, the frontman of Crown Court. It’s obvious that the author is initially relying on Taylor for introductions to key people, pointers on bands, and in general informal oral history that may have been passed down by others. Taylor obliges, and he should be commended for his efforts in steering the author and helping inform him.

From there the book follows along a timeline of proto-oi and oi! bands, starting with Sham 69 and ending with the new crop of groups from the 2010s-2020s. Along the way, significant time is spent on Angelic Upstarts, Cockney Rejects, 4-Skins, The Last Resort, The Business, Gary Bushell, Blitz, the fascist ‘Rock Against Communism’ scene, Combat 84, The Templars, Wattie of Lion’s Law and so-called ‘Gray Zone’ bands. To a lesser extent, but still covered, are Crashed Out, Red London, Cock Sparrer, The Oppressed and Doug & The Slugz. There are also chapters that run through US, European and World oi!, with many bands mentioned.

Many of the interviews happen before or after gigs or festivals in a seemingly limited amount of time, although there are also some proper sitdown interviews as well as ones through email. Apparently, this is where the bulk of the information contained comes from.

POSITIVES

The story of Sham 69 is the only one I was somewhat familiar with, as they are usually part of the punk histories that get told in the many books on the genre I remember reading as a teenager. They offered a working-class orientation to the punk scene, unique at the time, which brought them popularity. However, they had a strong skinhead following, some of it far-right associated, that ended up derailing the trajectory of the band.

The chapter on the Angelic Upstarts I thought was excellent at portraying the unique and polarizing figure that singer Mensi seemed to be. This is something I had seen alluded to numerous times in articles, interviews and online discussion about him and the band. But never anything very specific.

Really, every chapter of the book has valuable information about the bands mentioned and the scene at the time. Although there are some books about bands such as Cock Sparrer, Angelic Upstarts, The Ejected, the Cockney Rejects and Red Alert, the only one on oi! more broadly I can think of off-hand is The Story of Oi!: A View from the Dead End of the Street by Garry Johnson from 1981. There is also Skinhead Nation (1996) and Spirit of ‘69: A Skinhead Bible (1994), but these focus more on skinhead culture rather than mainly oi! music. So if you aren’t a fervent reader of defunct fanzines and self-published books, a lot of information in here may be new, even to the person who was around when the musical subgenre first arose.

There are a lot of little tidbits of stuff here and there, revealing some information I hadn’t come across before but was glad I did. Hoxton Tom of the 4-Skins and Arthur Kitchener of The Last Resort, both bass players for those groups, apparently were inspired by Motown and soul music for the bass lines for many of the early songs from both groups. Further confirming my opinion that soul music has been an unappreciated and unacknowledged contributor to skinhead culture.

I was surprised to learn how much involvement Lars Frederiksen of Rancid fame has had with the oi! scene over the years. While I’m familiar with The Old Firm Casuals, I did not know about him producing some records, bringing some bands on tour, connecting lesser known bands with record labels, etc. In some ways, it reminded me of how some early 1990s grunge bands would bring along on tour what were until then, very obscure or forgotten punk or alternative acts from the 1980s, exposing them to a level of mainstream exposure they had never experienced.

After mentioning the possible influence of Lush in a review of Squalette’s most recent release, I couldn’t help but chuckle when the book educated me to the fact that the drummer of Lush was in Hard Skin.

Did you know that the Anti-Heroes’ music was used and they were presented as a white power group in the movie American History X and they successfully sued New Line Cinemas over this? I didn’t.

These are just a few interesting examples of what the author pulls up. Many of them honestly deserve more attention and hopefully the existing oi! blogs and zines find some time to more fully explore certain things included in the book.

SHORTCOMINGS

The author’s initial reliance on Taylor is understandable but a minor shortcoming is that bands such as Chubby and the Gang and The Chisel are only mentioned in passing. While not strictly revivalist oi! groups, both bands certainly do incorporate oi!, pre-oi influences and skinhead culture. They are also both pretty popular within the oi! scene, commonly tour and record with oi! bands and also are among the few groups out of this scene that are recognized by those outside of it. Both bands also have members who were in Crown Court and left, which may explain Taylor’s reluctance to talk about them except that (paraphrasing) he views them as outsiders who don’t play oi! today. One gets the impression that these bands weren’t really featured because of Taylor’s opinion of them.

There are a few other bands that I believe were overlooked. The Blaggers ITA are one. Originally a straight forward oi! band, they went on to incorporate hip-hop, alternative rock and rave/jungle influences. They signed to a major label and had a few minor hits in the UK during the early 1990s, which was rare then and now. They were also militant antifascists connected with Anti-Fascist Action and Red Action.

Other bands which are now seen more as ‘UK82’, rather than oi!, such as The Partisans, The Ejected and Infa Riot, aren’t really talked about. This is a decision the author acknowledges, and I understand that one needs to draw lines, but I’m not sure I agree with this one. Like most subcultures or musical subgenres, when they are in the process of forming, there aren’t strict rules about who is in or out, what counts, what doesn’t count, etc. In those early days, there was a lot of crossover between what are now seen as oi! and UK82 bands. They toured together, were on the same compilations, signed to the same record labels and were covered by the same fanzines. You can see a lot of evidence of this in Oi! The Scrapbook Volume 2. These bands were obviously influential in the formation of oi!, so cutting them out seems arbitrary and based on the fact that they wore leather jackets rather than flight jackets. Making this even worse is that there is such a significant space given for fascist bands, whether in the dedicated chapter or tied throughout the book. I would argue the UK82 groups that the author brackets away were and are more influential in the sound of oi! than any ‘RAC’ band.

Oi’s sometimes contentious and sometimes welcoming relationship with the far right is well documented and something anyone familiar with the genre is aware of. The genre’s initial ascendancy was stunted by real, presumed and/or imagined links with the far right, culminating in the infamous Southall riots. Indeed, you can’t really even get into the history of oi! without also getting into trainspotting ultranationalist and extremist outfits originating or initiated by those in the UK. But it is a balancing act. You don’t want to downplay or ignore this aspect of oi!, especially if you’re talking about oi! in the 1980s, but you can also go too far, get into ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon‘ territory and become distracted by it.

Maybe the author was bothered about the denial and downplaying he had come across on this subject. Going over this again and confirming some of these things might be worth it to combat airbrushing of an ugly history.

All of this sleuthing doesn’t really get to any sort of conclusion, though. What I mean by that, is that in many ways it feels like this is reading someone work out their discomfort with their interest in oi!, but not realizing that is what they are doing. This discomfort seems to be because of the far right associations of the genre. But we never really come to any closure on that. The closest thing along these lines is midway through the book when he talks to Matt Worley, a professor at the University of Reading who has written academic articles about oi! music. Basically what Worley says is that oi! was primarily a scene of the young, white working class in the UK at the time, so it reflects that experience. Explicit class politics, football hooliganism, austerity, nihilism, far-right recruitment and targeting were all part of this experience so the music reflected that.

Now, that isn’t an excuse, and people should be held accountable for their behavior and abhorrent political associations, but at a certain point I think, if you’re going to write a book about this subject, you need to understand the context of what happened and come to terms with it. Otherwise, as a reader, it feels like you took me on your personal journey to nowhere.

Getting back to the ‘Kevin Bacon’ thing, several times the author doesn’t pursue what I believe would be an interesting path in favor of trying to get information on so and so’s relation to a specific far right persona or organization. For example, when speaking with Wattie of Lion’s Law, they just briefly get into the prominence of the saxophone in French oi! and punk. Rather than explore this unusual and unique feature, the author goes on to get more info about far-right associations of early French oi!. Instead of really understanding why French oi! sounds the way it does, I felt like I was reading someone’s social map of the 1980s scene.

A severe shortcoming the book has is the lack of citations. Maybe the author thought, given the presumed audience, that citing your sources is ‘middle-class’ or too academic. But it is often unclear where he is getting certain information he refers to. It’s obvious he is sometimes discussing media coverage of oi! from the early 1980s, but there are no footnotes. For what is mostly a history book, this is very strange. In addition to strengthening whatever point or narrative the author wants, citing sources would give others a resource to do their own digging, which can contribute to more writing on a particular thing. In my opinion, one of the best things a book can be is a launching pad for others to do more extensive writing on, whether it’s a better version of the original work or something that hones in on an area that isn’t focused on much in that work.

There are also some details, either related to the author second or third hand by an interviewee or just repeated that I question the decorum of including in a published book. Details about how someone died or another’s criminal background are floated out there in a way where it doesn’t seem the author made attempts to verify. Gossiping among friends or nobodies like me speculating online is one thing, but I thought it was in poor taste to repeat unverified claims that would be embarrassing or shameful to the person or their family. It seems that a published journalist in one of the largest and well known media outlets in the English-speaking world would be able to get verification around the details of someone’s death or their criminal record from 45 years ago. It comes off as lazy and approaches the type of careless tabloid coverage the subgenre suffered through in the early days.

SHOULD I READ IT?

While I obviously have some issues with the book, I think anyone interested in oi! should read it. There is a wealth of information in here that one can appreciate or even help one get a fuller understanding of the genre and the bands and individuals involved. The problems with narrative, subject matter or focus, while not minor… do not detract from this effort enough that you should reject it. What I hope happens instead is that people read What Have We Got, find something to grab onto, and write their own histories.