There's a whole lot of talk going on at the moment about Oi! and streetpunk being trendy and people jumping on the bandwagon. As a big fan of this style of music myself, I'd like to say a few words on the topic.

As far as the skinhead subculture goes, that was first big, well hell 15 or 20 years ago. We were still taking our cultural cues from our old motherland England. We had the first wave of skins over here due to our close cultural ties, with people still travelling back and forth frequently to England. I mean for fucks sake, we were still singing God Save the Queen at school then. So in the late 60's, early 70's we had ska listening sharp dressing skinheads in Australia, most of which eventually evolved into Sharpies, the small time hoodlum subculture most notably occupied by such Australian luminaries as Rose Tattoo band members and Chopper Read.

So by the time that Oi! punk came around in the early to mid 80's Australia followed suit with leather jacketed spiky and mohicaned punkers and bomber jacketed and crop haired skinheads. Some time in the mid to late 80's, hardcore was spawned and took off like a rocket. Most notably as a hotbed in the US where a whole hardcore scene was given birth to with the likes of Black Flag, Minor Threat and Bad Brains as spearheads. Eventually it grows into a specific subculture of its own spawning things such as straight edge and NYHC.

And guess what else is happening at the same time? America starts being our dominant cultural overlord with shitty sitcoms, sports and army bases eroding Britains influence on our way of life. And with these cultural ties, comes the spread of the form of punk known as hardcore. Gee imagine what people were saying when skinheads and punks started getting into hardcore punk rather than their traditional Oi! and punk bands… bandwaggoners? Sellouts perhaps?

The weird thing now is that Oi! is big in America right now, so of course, Australia still taking it's cultural cues from the US, is following suit as the records, fanzines, websites etc trickle through to us. The thing I reckon is weird is that we are being influenced by a British subculture via America before it gets here.

Now I reckon that the progression of hardcore has a lot to do with the rise of Oi! and streetpunk in Australia and probably the punk scene of the world. Hardcore seemed, to me at least, to evolve to positions far removed from it's roots- a pretty piss poor youth crew revival, bad metal masquerading as hardcore, and whingey emo. No wonder people were attracted to street level punk rock, and not X'd up frat boys, not vegan firestormers, and not overly sensitive Vinnies shoppers.

Me I like hardcore I like streetpunk. I'm a fencewalker. I read somewhere or rather that Victory records were going to put out a record called something along the lines of "Oi and Hardcore: It's all streetpunk to me". Well that pretty much sums it up for me, if it's no bullshit, and it's real then nine times out of ten it will usually appeal to me.

Let's just hope now that hardcore fans and streetpunk fans can co-exist peacefully and this Oi! revival doesn't get carried away with itself, and we see skinheads in Teenbeat magazine ala Greenday.