Your TOP 5 Oi releases

I am using this to check some out. I never really got into it ,but for the past year or so I've been iching to see what I have been missing. I know some of you are intot it so help a brother out and stear me into a direction of what to check out. Top 5 favorites or even 10 if you want. Its appreciated.

To be honest, I find it hard to listen to most Oi albums from start to finish (and if you ask me what I listen to most, the answer is usually Oi). Here's a few worth checking out (includes Oi, "street punk", and RAC (since you guys like TMF so much))...

1) Pressure Point - All three full-lengths are good. First is very oi (Youth on the Street). Second (Cross to Bear) is more punk influenced. Third one has much more of a hardcore influence.

2) New Glory - Backlash. At least one of the guys went on to Starkweather, from what I hear. Good album, very nationalistic. It's RAC, but the white power tendencies only come through on a few songs. If you like patriotic/nationalist stuff, this is for you.

3) Hated & Proud - Let Freedom Reign. All of the comments on (2) are true here, but this is before H&P became a white power (WP) band. Good, catchy, fairly-intelligent (patriotic) lyrics... overall, pretty great album. Some shitty tracks (only one or two), but worth getting.

4) Tommy Gutless - Death, Honor, or Glory Bound. Maybe not oi, but still really good. On Street Anthem Records. Been getting a lot of play recently, but haven't decided this is a classic yet.

5) Ducky Boys - Dark Days. Came after No Gettin Out, which is a bit too stripped-down for my tastes, but before Mark became a great rock-n-roll musician (emphasis on the word "musician", since Mark developed some fucking amazing talent). I got a new copy recently and have been playing the shit out of it.

6) Badlands - anything you can get. It's all good, but not really oi. More like oi/punk-influenced acoustic/rock music. This is an awful description, but an amazing band. Threw it on again the other day for the first time in a while, and several songs still grabbed me... mostly the acoustic ones. Think of really early Johnny Cash if he was writing lyrics for a skinhead audience. Good stuff.

7) For those OK with RAC... Skrewdriver "Hail the New Dawn", Brutal Attack "Stronger than Before" & "As the Drum Beats" and damn near anything by Skullhead (haven't heard "Return to Thunder" yet). Those are probably the best oi-style RAC albums I've heard. Some other decent stuff, but these are the classics.

8) Cocksparrer - most. No actual ablum stands out, since they all have some really good/great songs and some really shitty songs. "Bloody Minded - The Best Of" is a good best-of collection (some of the other best-of collections suck, so get the right one).

Some other shit that's really catchy, but that you should probably download first... Perkele, Main Street Saints, Templars (all good, but tends to get old after a while), and The Business.


Feel free to ask for more later (since I'll be sober then). And feel free to ask for copies if you're kinda sketchy about buying some of this... send a u2u.

And if you get really adventurous, you can drive out to Allentown this weekend and see several of the bands that were mentioned (and a few hardcore bands like NRSV and Step2Far)...

http://www.craigdowntown.com/index.htm

Click on the East Coast Oi Fest link at the top of the page. I have a feeling I posted this before, but can't remember.

Or, here's the flyer, if I somehow figured out how to make it work:


Tickets are $20/day, or a 3-day pass for $45.

Hey, I recommended Hail the New Dawn! But if someone really wants the stuff off All Skrewed Up or Boots&Braces/Voice of Britain, just claim it... I've got extra copies (well, more like bought a bootleg discography for cheap a long time ago, which makes the other CDs unnecessary).

So, up for grabs...

One copy of "1977-83 Complete Studio Recordings", which has all the stuff mentioned above.

One copy of B&B/VoB.