I was a tad disappointed to be honest - I don't know why. Other than the brief interview with John Simons, it seemed to concentrate on the donkey jacket brigade. I would have preferred to have heard more about the lineage from 'hard mod' to skinhead to suede head ..... instead we got a lot of the aforementioned bonehead glue sniffing types .... or perhaps the smarter element never existed and it's all just a product of Kevin Rowland and Robert Elms imagination ?

Last edited by chuck power (2016-10-17 02:56:23)

I kind of lost interest as it got into the football violence bit...up until that bit great! But im probably not the target audience and i suppose there is a lot meatier stuff with the politics a documentary can get stuck into

Last edited by Bop (2016-10-17 04:15:52)

Violence based on area was a big thing as well, let alone football or race. I remember talking to a bloke who used to drink with my dad, telling me how he spent a fortune on having a four- tone tonic suit made, which he wore to see the Mohawks playing in London. This would have been c.1969. He had the shit kicked out of him by local skinheads for being from Bristol - entirely ruining the suit the very first time he wore it!

The film seemed to be useful topic for Letts to reflect on multiculturalism and racism. They were not central tenets of the skinhead era.

The music might have been black but I am sure a lot of dance halls controlled their playlists to discourage non whites from turning up. Probably legal to bar them anyway in those days.

I believe the documentary has it's origins in the 'Subculture' short films Don Letts made for Channel 4 (sponsored by Fred Perry).
The two skinhead related films ( an original skin/pre-punk and post punk/2 tone related one ) got a lot of criticism for being a bit 'rose tinted nostalgia' glossing over the violence/racist aspects and this was his attempt to try to do a better overview.

Gary Bushell the self proclaimed 'Voice of Oi' and 'working class spokesman' is spectacularly full of shit as ever, his autobiography states that he picked 'Strength Thru Oi' title for his compilation because of it's Nazi connotations and here there's yet more footage of him denying it ( his Skids comparison is epic bollox as well but thats a whole other story).
It should also be remembered within six months of the Southall Riots he was trying to rebrand The Cockney Rejects as a NWOBHM* act ( *New wave of British Heavy Metal ) as his mates in the band couldn't get a gig because of the violence that followed them and then declaring them the next 'Iron Maiden', so much for his 'champion of skinhead culture' tag.

They seem to have missed out on some of the better voices related to the scene 'Oxford Paul' and Chris Brown, both have written much better accounts of the UK skinhead scene and how it was so regionally different it was almost impossible to lump it together into a single skinhead identity.

The one plus point, it would seem the middle-age skinheads dress is as funny as middle-aged mods in feather cuts.
Tubby baldies should avoid the G9 style Harrington and tight jeans look in particular.

Last edited by Acton_Baby (2016-10-17 10:10:52)

As I don't have a tv and don't pay for a license I'll try check it out on YouTube. Alas all I have heard are pretty scathing reviews.

Finally saw it - well done in many respects yet ultimately I got bored and felt like the whole racism thing was simplified/whitewashed. However my biggest criticism would be zero mention of gays. Their adoption of the skin thing may be sacrilege to older skins, trad and fascist, but gays are a big part of the story - and their presence would have stopped the documentary from getting boring.

Bushell comes across as an apologist for fascism (or in other words: a complete cock).

Btw Don Letts DJed after me when I played at The Big Chill fest a few years ago. I think he complimented my final tune (The Impressions Minstrel and Queen).

It'd explain where a lot of that anger and intolerance was coming from
...closet cases!

Last edited by Bop (2016-10-18 06:34:00)

DJs with non-white playlists? It would probably be illegal to repeat what I heard a doorman call a local non-white outside Hammersmith Palais c1968. However, if you had non-white mates there never seemed to be an issue about them getting entry to places with you.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25142557

You can't capture everything in 58 minutes! I thought Letts did a good job.

Anyway, the whole Redskins as skinhead communist, anarchist, young Trotskyites opens an additional can of worms.

Perhaps the skinhead look is inherently, at the primeval and subconscious level, like taking certain psychoactive substances guaranteed to produce the same experience in the user regardless of culture: a tough, homoerotic, virile version of youth on a mission to cause trouble and overthrow the old order. You can hang anything radical onto it, for it is empty/full and that may explain the contradictions?