The Story of Oi! A View from the Dead End of the Street
Softcover | first edition | unpaginated
Published by Babylon Books, 1981.
Written from inside the movement by punk poet Garry Johnson, who featured on several of Bushell's Oi! compilations. Johnson maps the lineage from the original late-1960s skinhead scene and its deep roots in Jamaican ska and reggae through to the working-class punk that hardened into Oi! by the end of the 1970s. Part memoir, part manifesto, part poetry, including a firsthand account of the Southall riot. Johnson frames Oi! as a class project, not a racial one, at a moment when the far right was working hard to co-opt it. Long out of print, very scarce.
Text by Garry Johnson with contributions by Garry Bushell.
Condition: good