Infa Riot

Infa Riot were originally formed in late 1979 by vocalist Lee Wilson and his bass playing brother Floyd together with guitarist Barry Damery and drummer Mark Reynolds. The name Infa Riot is an abbreviation for "In For A Riot." Infa-Riot's first gig was supporting The Angelic Upstarts in a North London pub, Mensi was a huge fan. Heavily influenced by The Angelic Upstarts, Infa Riot, within a year of forming, found themselves in "Sounds" newspaper courtesy of a live review by none other than the Upstarts vocalist Mensi who was impressed by the bands performance at Hornsey Community Centre, only their fourth every gig! By November of 1980 they'd completely blown off the Lyceum stage both Chelsea and The Dark and earnt themselves the tag 'the new boot boys sensations' in the countless fanzines they managed to appear in. It though seemed that Infa-Riot never really had a steady drummer, it seemed to changed monthly. Their first issued recordings were 2 tracks on the "Strength Through Oi!" compilationin May 1981. These 2 songs were "Riot Riot" and "We Outnumber You." Infa-Riot's first single was released in September 1981 on Secret records. This was the double "a" side "Kids Of The '80's"/ "Still Out Of Order." This single entered the U.K. Indie Charts at ..9 position & reached ..2. In February of '82, they played at the "Gathering Of The Clans" Festival in Scotland. At this festival they played with The Exploited, Vice Squad & Anti-Nowhere League + many other great legendary bands. Their 2nd single was releaed in may 1982, this was titled "The Winner." They then recorded for an album in and released it in august '82. This album was "Still Out Of Order", some songs included on this album were classics like "Power", "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" & "5 Minute Fashion." This album spent 4 weeks in the national U.K. charts & reached ..42. By this time Infa-Riot was a favorable Oi! band among skins & punks throught Great Britain. In '83 things started to settle down for Infa-Riot. This went quite partly due to a fight that broke out between them & Nazi band Skrewdrivers' road crew at a gig in the 100 club in london. Good things started up again in '84, but due to some controversy over their name "Infa Riot", the band changed it to the less controversial The INFAS. A new album & single were released. Both were titled "Sound & Fury" and were released under their new name the INFAS. After all of this the band began to fade away. An attempted come back came in November 1985 when they played a gig in Leeds. It was a good start but it was evident that the band couldn't have that certain something that they had had in the past. An LP of this gig was released by link records in September of '86 as a fitting testament to one of the finest Oi! bands of all time