Where Have All the Boot Boys Gone? Stewart Home reviews a Cherry Red compilation

It’s not unusual to see someone described as an original skin, but for now original bootboy seems less of a thing. Although I caught the end of the skinhead reggae boom via the tunes that made the UK charts off the back of that scene in the early seventies, I was too young to embrace its fashions. When I started secondary school in 1973 bootboy gear was all the rage but the look was more associated with football than music. What did we listen to? Some of the bands on Mark Brennan’s Where Have All The Boot Boys Gone? (Cherry Red) compilation – like Mott The Hoople, Sweet and Slade.[1] But there’s also stuff here I didn’t hear at the time and other tracks that belong to a later era.

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