Category: Music

No Detention: Craig St Leon on Criminal Class

In a review from January 1981, Gary Bushell dismissed Criminal Class as ‘too slow’ after seeing them play in North London for the first time – but I would argue they were already pointing towards a darker, heavier strain of Oi that would later come to define the genre, as it moved from the loosely defined, almost ‘fictional’ category of Bushell’s early compilations into a more concrete style of skinhead music with its own distinct traits.

No song better captures Criminal Class than ‘Fighting the System’: a slow, menacing track. The lyrics read as a call to revolution. The central breakdown, laden with foreboding, represents the insurrection, after which the same steady march resumes beneath a rising dawn.

I spoke to Craig St Leon, vocalist in what was one of Britain’s earliest skinhead Oi bands. Most photos were sourced from the excellent Oi! The Archives page and used with the admins’ permission.

Matt Crombieboy

Craig outside Winson Green Prison, Birmingham, 1980. Photo by Mark Osbourne

Hi Craig, can you tell me where and how you grew up?

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Still Ilford: Morrissey’s East London

From early on in his solo career, Morrissey has held a strong fascination with skinheads, skinhead girls, suedeheads, and East London, defiantly championing a world on the brink of being bulldozed by neoliberal power. At Layers of London, Andrew Stevens has created a map of Morrissey’s East London locations, which you can explore HERE. This is his introduction.

Can anyone speak of an “East London demi-monde” for Morrissey? I thought as much a decade or so ago, penning this in the foreword for a new edition of Richard Allen’s Suedehead (Dean Street Press), as across much of his career the once avowedly Mancunian singer has returned consciously and decisively to East London – not as a heritage object but as a living myth. This distinction matters. Raised in Stretford, not Stratford, East London becomes in Morrissey’s imagination less a bounded geography than a portable identity: a code that can be adopted and inhabited. The bombsites and bath houses, spit-and-sawdust pubs and boxing clubs of Bethnal Green, Wapping, Dagenham and Plaistow form a counter-map to the depicted metropolitan glamour of Piccadilly and cabaret queens of the Royal Vauxhall Tavern. They are the stages on which he has repeatedly located a defiant, wounded, theatrical working-class masculinity – part elegy, part provocation. 

From ‘Your Arsenal’ tour programme, 1992
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Where the Boot Boys Went: Wayne Barrett talks skins, punk, glam and Slaughter and the Dogs

This interview feels special to me on several counts. First, I caught up with Wayne Barrett during what he says is his farewell tour under the Slaughter and the Dogs banner, closing exactly 50 years of this seminal punk outfit’s history. Second, Wayne chose to play the band’s final dates in my adopted homeland, Italy – a country he feels a special connection to (the band’s last album even bore an Italian title).

Third, it’s December, and with my birthday approaching, I’m reminded of the gift I received on my fifteenth: a record called Punk – A World History Vol. 3, which ranks high among the albums that shaped my taste in music. Part of a dodgy bootleg compilation series, it introduced me to a handful of ‘second-tier’ – but actually more enjoyable – figures of the original punk wave, such as The Boys, Chelsea, and of course Slaughter and the Dogs, who remain among my all-time favourites. Sitting somewhere at the intersection of bootboy, glam and punk, they were in some ways the perfect band.

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Running with the boss sound: Billy Idol and the skinheads

I never thought we’d end up mentioning Billy Idol on Creases Like Knives, but here we are – he references skinheads on his new single ‘Still Dancing’, released a couple of weeks ago. The third verse goes:

Skinheads stomp
Right down the road
Teddy Boys stood
Clutching their combs
Reggae blitz rock
Deep to the core
In Brixton
Punks trying to riot
Up on the high street
Causing a ruckus
Who wants to fight me?
Pogo slam
No need to remind me

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Dirty Job, Klasse Kriminale, Kryzys and others: record reviews

Before the year draws to an end, let me squeeze in just a few reviews, mostly of records that people have sent or handed me in recent months. We’re still in no danger of ever becoming a ‘professional’ publication – as always, some of these good folks have been waiting for months to get their stuff reviewed. I hope they still appreciate the thoroughness and sincerity I’ve tried to put into these write-ups. Many thanks to Timebomb Records, Un Vie Pour Rien, Hellnation, Magura, Golpe de Gracia, and Manufaktura Legenda! All reviews by me this time.
Matt Crombieboy

Dirty Job: The World’s Decay LP
(Timebomb Records / Hellnation / Subculture for Life)

One thing straight away: this is my favourite Oi album of 2024, and it hit me somewhat by surprise – even though I’ve been following the band’s activities from quite early on. Formed in the Milan area by members of bands such as Ostile and, formerly, Brutti e Ignoranti and Stanley, they first landed in my adopted hometown of Bologna in February 2023, playing at the Forever Ultras’ clubhouse. They immediately stood out from the majority of young Italian Oi bands by maintaining a certain skinhead orthodoxy, both in sound and appearance, rather than dissolving it into ‘ultras rock ’n’ roll’ or coming off as just ‘random tattooed dudes playing street rock’. The music struck me as harder than most of their peers – not faster or heavier, but harder – and disciplined to the point of feeling almost a little militaristic. Ancient ‘war Oi’ like Vengeance sprung to mind.

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The Price of Integrity, or: Rip Off’s Road from Bologna to Certaldo, 1980–83

Rip Off from Bologna are mainly known for one fateful event today: their performance at the Certaldo Oi festival in 1983, which became notorious as the ‘Italian Southall’. Vocalist Rozzi delivered a speech threatening to “hang the punks and the communists”, while two members of Rip Off’s crew stood on stage giving fascist salutes. All hell broke loose in the crowd. The whole night turned into one continuous mass brawl, and in the aftermath, Oi bands in Italy struggled to get gigs for years.

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Strength thru Concrete: The Foundations of Béton Armé

If you haven’t heard Béton Armé yet, you’re really missing out. I may be late to the party, but I’m fully on board now. Their sound combines melodic, classic Oi with prime Chaos en France-style vocals and the odd dash of hardcore. Everything stripped down to the essentials – a wall of sound like huge slabs of… well, reinforced concrete, which is what the band’s name means. Big singalong choruses and that raw, lo-fi sound we all crave. I saw them at Beach, Beer, Chaos in Badalona this year, and they absolutely floored me. Curious to know more, I sent a few questions to Oli (guitar) and Dan (vocals), and they didn’t disappoint.

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Tremende times: the gritty ska grooves of Bologna

Creases Like Knives presents itself as a webzine dedicated to “reggae, punk, Oi, hardcore, soul, clobber, style” and “strong views” (that’s our description on X). But since the founder mainly listens to Oi, punk and glam/bovver rock, the articles tend to revolve around those genres. I figured it was about time to make space for other things as well. And what better way to start than with Tremende, one of Italy’s longest-standing ska bands, active since 1989, based in Bologna, and almost entirely female? Matt and I met up with their vocalist Antonella, who was more than happy to chat, at Serena 80, a club with a football ground and rehearsal space. Later on, the rest of the band joined us, and we got to watch some of their rehearsal.

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Take A Razor To Your Head: The Crazed

Here at Creases, we’re not afraid to dip a toe into other subcultures if the influences (and MA1s) fit. Last year one-time teenage Psychobilly Paul Wainwright published a book version of his at-the-time zine The Crazed, which carried interviews with the likes of The Meteors, Demented Are Go and Skitzo. The book itself, The Resurrection of The Crazed (Earth Island Books), is an altogether deeper dive into the subculture once referred to (by a compilation of the era) as The James Deans of the Dole Queue. Andrew Stevens dug out his dictaphone and recorded this with the author over a snakebite or several to hear more about stomping at the Klub Foot.

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Nabat, Force Majeure, Asedio and others: Record Reviews

Been a while since you heard from us, hasn’t it? Last December, we celebrated what had been an exceptionally productive year for Creases Like Knives. Then, as if to undermine any hopes we’d become a ‘proper’, ‘professional’, or regular publication, we only gave you one article in the whole first four months of 2024. The truth is precisely this: we aren’t professionals, nobody’s paying us, and we just happened to have lots on our plate lately. One thing’s for sure: Creases Like Knives isn’t ceasing operations – I think in some form we’ll always be around. But our levels of activity will vary, depending on what else life throws at us. In this sense, apologies to the good folks from Common People, Primator Crew, Une Vie Pour Rien, Hellnation and Ballroom Blitz Records who sent us most of the albums reviewed here – we made some of them wait for ages. All reviews by me this time.
Matt Crombieboy

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