Paris on Oi!

French Oi has always had a special quality, hasn’t it? I first learned this when visiting family in my birth town Warsaw many moons ago and randomly buying a bootleg tape titled Son de la rue from a street market stall outside the Palace of Culture. It was the days of a flourishing black market, and on every street corner you’d find 4-Skins and Blitz pirate tapes democratically displayed alongside Metallica and Madonna ones. Son de la rue compiled some of the best cuts from the Chaos en France series – Komintern Sect, Snix, Camera Silens, you name it – and I’ve remained a fan of frog Oi ever since.

January 7, 2023January 8, 2023 by Crombieboy Categories: MusicTags: Chaos en France, French Oi, French skinheads, Paris on Oi!, Paris skinheads, Skins de France, Tchernobyl Oi Leave a comment

A skinhead in Paris, 1979-83

Paris skinhead band Swingo Porkies, early 1980s

While the original wave of skinheads remained a strictly British phenomenon – the closest the French came to mod were the minets – it didn’t take long for the late 1970s revival to cross the Channel. As the Sham Army turned concert halls into battlefields and skinheads began to proliferate across Britain again, a small gang of punks in a working class banlieue of Paris took note. Around 1978, Farid, Pierrot, Fan, Fabian and a dozen mates swapped their spiky hair and leather for clean-cut crops and MA-1 jackets.

August 3, 2016July 1, 2022 by Crombieboy Categories: Skinhead historyTags: French skinheads, La souris deglinguee, Les Halles skins, Paris skinheads, Skins de France, Swingo Porkies, Tolbiac's Toads 9 Comments