I keep being told to wrote a blog, so here are some thoughts that I thinked!There is no set topic, just my brain wave patterns expressed in words
I play drums so don’t be surprised if there are a lot of posts on the subject
Also tattoos … I have lots of tattoos.
Londoner
Twitter: @quinn_drummerSieg Heiling? Then piss off out of my gig!
Let me first of all get one thing straight. I’m a very liberal person. I believe whole heartedly in free will and that there are very few occasions that you should be told what you can and cannot do. I also believe whole heartedly that you are free to believe and think whatever you want to believe or think. This can be summed up in a famous quote by Voltaire, which I have tattooed on my back, “I may disagree with what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it”. I for one am not of any religious orientation what so ever and I’ll happily admit that I think anyone who holds any belief in a supernatural being that is solely responsible for the creation of an infinite universe with only one inhabited planet totally fucking nuts. But then those people will think exactly the same as me for believing, nay, knowing the opposite is true. However I won’t storm up to them and force them to try thinking the way I think or believe what I do, I will hold lengthy discussions on the matter come up on a stale mate and go home happy in the knowledge that I live in a country where I am free to do so.
I am exactly the same when it comes to politics. Absolutely everyone holds differing political views. Even if you are of the same political persuasion as someone else you are undoubtedly going to disagree on a number of things and how we should deal with them, which is why you can talk for hours down the pub with your mates on one issue and all throw up different ideas and opinions on it and leave pondering things that may never have occurred to you before.
The reason I write this is because I play in a band, well several bands actually, but this particular band I speak of today is the London Diehards. We are an Oi band, from in and around London (obviously) formed a few years back and I have been playing with them for about a year. In that time I have seen so much shit flying it’s like being stuck in a wind tunnel with 1000 diarrhetic elephants after a curry eating contest. It seems everywhere we turn someone is trying to convince the world we are right wing, Nazi loving, ethnic hating band that is intent on spreading our racial hatred where ever we go. This is simply NOT TRUE.
There is one individual that is famous for this that anyone with even the slightest of connections to the UK Oi scene will know by name. He seems to find joy in running Facebook groups and blogs and websites dedicated to smearing the name of many a good band on the basis of incorrect rumours, miscalculated and ill informed connections and general lazy fact gathering. Now it is not he that I am here to fire down, that’s why I haven’t put his name in print. The people I am here to fire down are the selfish, idiotic, racist scumbags that tarnish an almost unblemished UK Oi scene. I am talking about the unwelcome far right of our group that seem to find it acceptable to turn up at a show and start throwing Sieg Heils left, right and centre in front of a band while they are playing. Now personally I really could not give two fucks where your political allegiances lie, if you want to frog march every one of an ethnic background out of the country then so be it. It’s never going to happen, chances are if you tried you’d end up incarcerated quicker than you can say Islamic Fundamentalist, which is actually a very long time judging by some news footage of EDL members on demonstrations. Just remember this, chances are your GP, Doctor, Fire Fighter etc is of ethnic origin and chances are one day you’ll need him or her to save your life.
Anyway as always I digress somewhat. I am not altogether against anyone that leans heavily on the far right pillar coming to our shows, you have as much right as anyone else to attend. What I do object to is having you stand their throwing Nazi salutes wearing fascist symbols on your jackets and stomping around having your picture taken while we are on stage … or even while you are in the same venue as us frankly.
It’s hard enough for us to get gigs at the best of times because we’ve been tarnished and stigmatised with the far right. As it stands the venue for the show on Saturday was kept a secret to avoid it getting unwanted attention for ill informed left wing do gooders that think they are helping society by telling the venue owners that they had inadvertently given permission to the promoter to run the next Nuremburg Rally and even then the venue pulled the gig just a few days before it was meant to go ahead and we had to relocate everything from Hayes to Essex. And is it any wonder why? It’s not because the bands set to perform sing songs about our higher racial authority as White Brits, its not because we turn up to gigs to promote racial genocide of the masses of hard working foreigners that live in this country. It’s not because our singer used to be a member of the BNP (a rather ridiculous rumour started by same internet demon of the PC Mafia) and it’s not because we go on stage with a flaming cross as a back drop, because none of these things are true. It’s because a few selfish bastards who come to our shows, pay good money to get in and then stand at the front Sieg Heiling us and the rest of the crowd from the entire hour of our set. People take pictures at shows, these pictures end up on the internet and then because people see two or three small minded individuals throwing Nazi salutes around they put 2 and 2 together and make 5.
Apart from the fact it’s blindingly disrespectful to all the bands that play these shows, to the venues that are willing to put them on despite the rumours they hear and to the promoters that go out on a limb to put these shows on, it’s also making it more and more impossible for those shows to even happen. I nearly pulled the gig myself last night for reasons I won’t go into but that link to the content of this post. I assume you come to these shows to see us play, I assume you enjoy our music (most of you were wearing our band’s t-shirt so an accurate assumption I’ll presume) and I assume you want to continue for us to write and record music (music that if you actually bothered to pay attention to the lyrics and the context you’d realise were predominately working class, slightly left wing, anti-government, anti-terrorist [but not anti-Islamic or any other religion or culture], anti-hate songs) and play shows, then for fucks sake stop giving fuel to the internet trolls that sit at computers all day with a metaphorical magnifying glass trying to find evidence that we, or any other generic Punk and Oi band want to purge this wonderful, multi-cultural country of ours of all our non-indigenous population. Which is a completely bullshit phrase to use anyway because none of us are indigenous. Geography, History and Science would all seem to agree that we migrated over thousands of years starting our journey in Africa.
As I have said, believe as you wish, think as you will but please, if you want to Sieg Heil then piss off out of our gig and go and do it in front of Skrewdriver or Nick Griffin. You can all throw your hands into the air and praise Hitler in the sanctuary of your own far right meetings not at a Punk and Oi show and especially not at one I’m playing, because next time I might not be so forgiving and refuse to play meaning you’ll have blown £10 on a poxy arm movement.
