Welcome to "the most evil record ever made". When it was released back in 1981, Strength Thru Oi! put up more establishment backs up than even Clockwork Orange...But then again the music is somthing else. Twenty two years on, Strength Thru Oi! still stands as one of the most powerful street punk collections ever assembled. This is a GREAT album, exciting, inspirational street rock at its best, full of energy, life and teenage defiance. And where are the Nazi lyrics, the Hitler Youth anthems??? There aren't any..although we have got a poem about sex and beans. There is Deidree's A Slag, about coronation streets Deidre Barlow; We're Pathetique by Splodge (oh rally ye blackshirts) and Blood on The Streets, a clearly non-racist warning from RAR stalwarts Criminal Class. The common theme, the one single shared attitude you find in these songs is not about race but CLASS. The worse thing bands could be legitimately accussed of is glorifying violence. Not racial violence, but violence towards the police or rival gangs. I will put my hands up and admit Strength Thru Oi! is about yob culture. Enough to upset the Mail, certainly, but no-onewith half a brain. But even then my notes slag off street gangs for "fighting eachother like silly bastards". I am proud of this album and proud i told the truth about Oi! when the shit hit the fan in 1981 and ever since, though it has left me labeled a "Nazi" by middle class Left and a "Commie" by the real Nazis that attacked me at the 100 Club and published my adress in their hate sheets. Fuck them all. Oi! has lasted for more than two decades. No pack of lies could have done that. It wouldnt have spread to every country in the world if it was what the lying Daily Mail said it was. Those who bothered to check us out, like Alan Rushbridger of the Guardian found the real truth: We were working class, we were patriotic, we were street socialists. We were everything New Labour arn't. Who did we hate? The establishment, plain and simple. In my own words again: ' proud to be Cockney, proud of our culture, building workers and office clerks making our own lives when the system told us we had none'. Gary Bushell, May 12th 2003
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