Filed under: British
(30 votes, average: 3.27 out of 5)
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Cockney Rejects - We Are The Firm (Zonophone Z10) 1981
The first Oi! band to ever exsist? Cockney Rejects where the first skin band to use the term Oi! which I guess would give them the credit of being the first Oi! band. Never owned the cover for this one but non the less still go the most important part…the vinyl. The band is still touring around in one form or another.
Ira Robbins writes: This obstreperous lot of working class kids from London’s East End were discovered in the early days of post-Pistols punk by Sham 69 leader Jimmy Pursey, who co-produced their first album with Peter Wilson. The Rejects gained immortality of a sort on Vol. II by coining a name for UK skinhead rock with the chanted refrain of the song “Oi Oi Oi.”
Tracks
We Are The Firm
War on The Terace
Posted by: stunt
Speaking personally (as a 40 something yer old skinhead) I’ve never liked, or could take seriously any of the so-called skinhead/Oi! bands created to cash in and rip-off punks & skins alike. The COCKney Rejects were a joke then and a waste of internet space now!
I have really never known enough about the cockney rejects, I never knew they cashed in on the scene. I thought they where a leghit band, I guess all these years I had them pegged all wrong.
The whole Oi! thing was an EMI and dodgy ”music” journalist Garry Bushell’s attempt to break into the UK underground and aiming to create (and succeeded!) a music for ‘’skinheads and ‘erberts”. You only have to listen to any of the ”Oi!” compilations (Volumes 1 to 462) to see what I mean. Mediocre music and bullshit lyrics might be punk to some people, but not to me. In 1980 Discharge played the music I wanted to hear and sang about the things that mattered, not blindly shouting Oi!,Oi!,Oi!. So yeah I think you probably have had them pegged all wrong!!
Cockney Rejects, a cash in? As a 40 plus year old skinhead who was there at the time I can say with some conviction that skin666 has no idea what he’s talking about. Back your claims up, how were they either a cash in or a rip off? Bushell didn’t make the Rejects, they went to him. He didn’t make Cock Sparrer, Menace or Sham either. You’re proof consists of you not liking the music or lyrics. You don’t like it fine, don’t listen to it but don’t make fiction up about it either.
The Rejects were not a cash-in as skin666 states.
They were a street punk band who took punk back to streets and they were never oi either.
Bombhead Bushell labelled them as oi, also the Upstarts etc,etc, etc.
Speaking as an original 77 punk, i was glad a band like the Rejects came along, punk had gotten stale with all the old “punk” bands turning commercial(eg Sham 69) and others turned their backs on punk completely. If you want to talk about cash-ins then i have to mention crap like Crass,Anti-Nowhere League and Poison Girls.
The Rejects,Sparrer , Slaughter and the Dogs, Angelic Upstarts and Sham were never OI! in the first place.
The Rejects had to accept it and just get on with it. A Die-Hard Rejects Fan.Garioch you are correct.
Oi! sucked and still sucks.
I’m too young to have been around back in the late 1970s. However, when one reads the Wikipedia article on the Cockney Rejects, one notices that the second, third, fourth and fifth singles attributed to them allegedly came out on the EMI label. That would be late 1979 to early 1980. I’m inclined to trust skin666 on this one.