Echo Wanderer wrote:Almost all of this is true.
However,I am bit surprised you don't mention Suedeheads(who became the Glamrockers),Bootboys(who became Oi!boys and set the blueprint for the skinhead look),and Oi! as well.All those subsects came from Mod too,not just skinheads.And speaking of Skrewdriver,they did NOT start out as a neo-na.zi band,the were an punk rock and Oi! band.After the first incarnation disbanded,they adopted the skin look and that's when the new facist movements began to take notice of them and became thier main audience.Unfortunatley,they also adopted the facist manifesto,due to the fact that the new members were believers in it.In fact,Ian Stuart played in Rolling Stones cover bands before he started Skrewdriver.
As for being a trad skin,I was one in the 80's.I was also 2Tone.The roots are still in me.It's really the SHARPS who gave a lot of us a bad name(here in the states),in my opinion.Neo's were violent,but small in numbers,whereas SHARPS were more a popular trend,and far more violent,attacking pretty much ANYONE they deemed racist.A lot of the neo's here were redneck/racist metalheads who thought punk sound was far more "tough" than metal,as it was becoming too glam in the 80s.In fact,just before the first "Crosover bands" came about(ie:DRI,who predated thrash metal by about 5 years),the "dirtheads"(as we punks used to call them) began calling themselves "Hessians",which refers to German mercenaries employed by Britain during the Revolutionary War,and can also refer to German nationalists of WWII.
I concur that it is sad that the media lumped he whole of shinhead culture under a banner of facism because of a few boneheads.The media were the ones who gave the facists the name "skinhead",though the term was originally coined in Jamaica as a "clean-cut young man"(also see "baldhead").There are countless interviews out there with Laurel Aitken in which he mentions that racists used to come to his shows in the late 70's,but never gave him problems because ska and Oi! had so many connections.
Well to be fair - there were omissions of Skinhead minutiae since I titled it "Skinhead History 101", not "Skinhead Advanced Placement Studies".
Suedeheads: absolutely the bridge between that blue collar street culture and early glam. Not many people know, for instance, that early Heavy Metal pioneers Slade (who wrote 'Cum On Feel The Noize', which Quiet Riot later made famous) were originally a skinhead band that went suede first. BTW, for those wondering -- a Suedehead meant literally that -- Skinheads with pretty short hair, but not bald.
Oi! Boys: yep, the British Pub Rock contingent of the Skinhead set who were into what could be called power pop as much or more than Soul or R&B. This was the scene that produced members of bands like the Damned and the Clash - before Punk hit big and stole its thunder. It's interesting that Oi! produced Communist, Anarchist, and Fascist bands alike. I still love listening to Oi Polloi.
And as for Skrewdriver - it's sad because they were actually a decent band at one point: Stuart had, ironically, a pretty soulful voice, and you could hear the Stones influence even up into their later idiot racist phase. Too bad he turned out to be such a huge asshole.
In the U.S., SHARPs fighting first with Nazoid crews like Hammerskins, C.A.S.H., W.A.R., A.Y.M., etc. caused a big commotion because nobody on the outside could tell 'em apart; after the fascist crews split for places like Portland and Dallas, the SHARPs in other cities started going after each other and anybody else they felt like -- usually so-called "freaks". When for a brief instant it looked like the Skinhead scene and the hardline Straight-Edge thing (a la Choke from the band Slapshot) looked like they were combining it got really scary; the subcultures were at each others throats. Thankfully that never came to pass, and the metal thing you mention happened instead for better or worse (I still hate the term "moshing!") The Hessian thing came from somewhere else in my understanding though: I'd never heard of the German Nationalist connection. Rather, I'd heard it came from the fact that the Hessian mercenaries of the War of Independence wore their hair unusually long for the time since they were sort of dandies or whatever. Interesting though, I'll check it out.
D.R.I. - the 'Crossover' album. Yeah, I remember when that was actually contentious! Showing my age...
Shoot, we used to see red-laced bootboys at Ska shows too... and hardcore shows (like Bad Brains, lol)... and speed/thrash metal shows. In my area most of the guys who were Boneheads (izan skins as we called 'em) that didn't flee turned into Rockabilly cats, the closest thing to an ethnically White cultural movement they could find. Escaping into the past to be buried with its dust...
I'm glad to be alive here & now, although youth subculture these days mostly disappoints me. Underground electronic music and everything that came from the Dub diaspora are some of the few bright shining lights IMHO.
PS: thanks spooKs!
