Having already done Red Alert’s We’ve Got Power with the late Steve Smith in this series, it seemed entirely natural and would be remiss not to extend the same treatment to Red London’s This Is England. Thankfully bassist (and occasional Angelic Upstart) Gaz Stoker and mainstay frontman Patty Smith were quite game and dusted off 40 years of memories since the release of their still urgent debut. Matt and Stevo heard all about regicide on Wearside, life inside Durham Prison, urban riots, the Falklands, nightclub brawls and the bomb, so just the usual for an Oi album from 1984 then.
Continue readingTag: Sunderland
Malice in Sunderland: Trev HAGL on North East Oi!
Trev HAGL, to anyone outside of the world of Oi and North East punx, the name needs no introduction. For the rest of you however, Trev has valiantly kept the fires burning for Oi through thick and thin since the 80s, even when others packed up and went home.
Editor of innumerable zines over the years, most notably HAGL (‘Have A Good Laugh’), which spoke truth to power during the fag-end of Thatcher and the dark days of Major, ‘stalwart’ doesn’t really do justice for a man who lives it as he sees it and generally spends his time in pursuit of well-crafted tunes, cheap beer and a good laugh (or ‘savage amusement’, another zine title). Continue reading