35 Years Ago: THE 4-SKINS release The Good, The Bad & The 4-Skins

Daily Noise - / 2017

35 Years Ago: THE 4-SKINS release The Good, The Bad & The 4-Skins

East End Oi! classic by the THE 4-SKINS, released this month in 1982.

The second half of the LP is a live recording.

For the mugs in Ealing

4-SKINS were an infamous live act well before the album due to the Southall riot in 1981:

We played the gig with The Business and The Last Resort. We'd been playing venues like The Bridge House with these bands, and having crowds of about 650 plus. Most of the coaches that night carried fans of The Last Resort. When we got there the coppers said some Asians had set up a sort of picket. We didn't want any trouble so we said we'd go and talk to them. They said we don't want to talk to fascist pigs. We left it at that.
Then when we were playing on stage, the windows just caved. Molotov Cocktails, the lot. If someone's going that to you you're gonna fight back, and that's what the skins did. We managed to get most of our gear back into the van.
There was a lot of crap spoken about Southall. On the news they were holding up crisp, white National Front leaflets and saying look, we found these in the pub afterwards. The pub was completely burnt out, so how could they have found crisp, white leaflets. Also there were a lot of birds there. Many of them got hurt as well. We wouldn't have brought girls along if we thought there was going to be trouble. The Business were nearly beat up as well. It was all out of our hands. The thing that pissed us off is you've got people like Monsi and Bushell, saying don't believe what you read in the press, but they all believed what they read about us.
- Tom Hoxton, Punk Lives, 1983

Before that they were building a growing following after their songs on Oi! The Album ("Wonderful World" / "Chaos") and Strength Thru Oi ("1984" / "Sorry").

In 1982 they also released the Yesterday's Heroes 7". Their second and final LP - A Fistful of........4-Skins - followed in 1983.