Where have all the skinheads gone?
 

...to paraphrase Slaughter & The Dogs.

Off at a tangent a little here, and not strictly music orientated, but something thats bugged me for a while.
This may be a UK only observation, but to me ska seems to have lost its crowd. Look around at any gig you go to these days and the place is bouncing with skaters, punks, metalheads (whaaaaaaat???), wannabe surfers and assorted other 'types', but no sign of the traditional ska fan, the skinhead.
Sure, you stick a 60s ska legend on and you'll find them all dusting down the Fred Perrys and brogues, but face them with a new offbeat band and where the hell are they all hiding?
Has ska become a cross section thing, or has skinhead become so tainted with the racist brush that it is a no longer acceptable fashion statement?

The odd thing is that there are a lot of bands out there that still hold to the skinhead style on stage, but it's not picked up by their fans.... weird.

Is there still a real scene in the UK?
In the US it has definitely been in the periphery for a couple decades at least. When I was in high school in the late 80s/early 90s the only skinheads were kids who threatened to kick my ass and take my Doc Martens (just 3-holes) and also liked to fight with other skinheads, usually over racism or more general violent gang issues. I don't think any of them were even into Jamaican music. Since then, in the US, skinheads are generally tagged as violent racists and it seems that almost nobody even knows what an original skinhead is.

Now, my current town (austin, texas) had a shop devoted to skinhead things but it recently moved to Phoenix, Arizona I think. Anyway, I don't see too much of the real thing around here. Occasionally a band like the Toasters will play and presumably bring them out

Bowling

i always thought it was pretty obvious.

it's like people wanting to use the swastika symbol for it's original purpose of a good luck charm. regardless of any individual's intent the current social stigma associated with those styles and symbols will continue to trump any sort of past tolerance and justification.

Fun fact:
Morrissey once tried out for Slaughter and the Dogs

This is true about the swastika, but I just want to point out that it really is used as a symbol of good luck in a great many countries. If anyone happens to see someone walking around with one, just try to remember this. A way to tell is that the Nazi swastika is positioned to look like a diamond while its traditional use is positioned to look like a square.

This was a random aside, I know, but there have been several occasions where the person I am walking with doesn't know the difference and wants to start something. Though it would be smarter these days to just do without, there are people that are not willing to give up hundreds of years of tradition in using that symbol to the Nazis.

^ right and i totally agree with you, but the fact remains that there's a large scale social taint applied to certain symbols.

the swastika had been a recognized symbol for centuries if not a millennium or two prior to being re-appropriated by the nazis. it's unfortunate that something with such a long and diverse history became tarnished like it has.

on the other hand, the skinhead 'culture' has only been around for a handful of decades and had hardly finished establishing itself and anything before becoming associated with national and racist movements. not to say that all skins are bad, but if i need to actively ask the individual which side of the fence they're on in order to find out, then i'm left to wonder just what kind of distinction there really is between the so-called sides.

racist or anti-racist it still seems to me that both sides are using race as a distinguishing factor in dealing with others.

There is a skinhead movement in the UK, it's generally people my age - 45 - or older who keep it going. Oddly, and contrary to popular belief, the majority are either left wing or apolitical, and refer to the right wing skins as boneheads.
How can a culture so rooted in black music be racist? Ska and soul... the twin seeds of the skinhead scene.


Though they may possibly be bowling I suppose.

the exact same way that a symbol of good fortune can be re-branded to mean hate.

Thats REALLY stretching it a bit, isn't it?

I don't think there is anything in any history lesson I ever took that suggested that the National Socialist party of prewar Germany was ever anything than racist, whereas the skinhead movement of the late 60s/early 70s, and again in the late 70s/early 80s were anything but racist.
There was certainly a racist element - same as there is any group of society - but to suggest that they somehow hid that racism behind a veneer of loving black music shows nothing more than a complete lack of knowledge of the skinhead scene.

Look more into the history, and there has always been a large left wing element to skinhead, even in its darkest days. 2-Tone was a profoundly anti-racist musical movement, SHARP were active from the mid 80s through to reasonably recently, and both AFA and its descendant Antifa have strong skinhead connections.

So... where have all the skinheads gone?

London skinheads going to the 1970 F.A.cup final,(Chelsea F.C.) the original skin's where not racist, far from it as they embraced the Jamaican reggae/rocksteady music...






http://www.musicbanter.com/members/g...970b-800wi.jpg

i'm not saying they started as racists, nor that they were all racists. fact remains that the style got taken over by racists and is seen as a racist style to the majority of people out there today.

you wonder where they all went? hmm... if i kept getting compared to a racist i'd change my style. especially a few decades later, not unlike the way hippies cut their hair and started washing with soap once they learned the hard way that free love wasn't going to feed their babies. yes, there are some diehards that want to adhere to the ideals they had in the 60s and that's their prerogative but at the same time things have moved on since then. just because it meant something once doesn't mean it still means the same thing.

seems to me there's an element of gang mentality at play between both sides of the issue. plus the whole 'but we like raggae and ska so we can't possibly be racist; those are black styles' reeks of political correctness gone awry. just like corporate photos that make sure they have the most photogenic faces of every ethnic group possible to make sure the public sees how tolerant they are.


i think the better question is, why would you want to be a skinhead in 2010?

why would you want to be a christian in 2010?

Social pressure? Can't think of any other reason that makes sense.

Yeah, I'm not really sure how listening to a particular type of music makes the case that you're not racist. I've certainly encountered plenty of white bigots in my life who loved hip-hop for example.

Who cares as long as the genre is still around?

To a degree, I agree with everything that everybody has said on this thread.

But still, as music-oriented fashions go, I like this style..
http://www.musicbanter.com/members/g...970b-800wi.jpg

and I don't think it's fair that people can't dress that way just because racists adopted elements of it.

As far as the short (not completely skinhead) hair goes and the long-coat and skinny jeans go nothing much has enormously changed, hell i was at the pub with a few looking a bit like them in a non gang-like way a few hours ago...

Yeah, I can see that, current fashion is not really so different. But roll up the pant legs to reveal boots and add 4 more people that look exactly the same and suddenly you're in a racist gang.

Then real question should be where have all the bowling lanes gone?

There's no denying that the term "skinhead" is most often associated with violence, hate and racism. Regardless of what it used to mean, it's now recognized as a symbol of these aspects of society. Very similar to the swastika.

Well that reminds me exactly of Jo Boxer and I don't think they look racist at all.

Yeah, my point (and that of the thread, I believe) is that the skinhead style is not necessarily racist and was originally just another innocent fashion trend. Jo Boxers (had never heard of them and wouldn't have minded keeping it that way, thanks) are evidence of that. But times have changed I guess.

I don't think they're too horrible, there were a few groups that had a song with a Motown sound in the 80's, like The Jam (A Town Called Malice), Katrina and The Wave etc etc. Why Jo Boxer dressed that way I thought they were paying an homage to Our Gang, or maybe Liverpudlian shipyard workers, either way it was a bit nostalgia, I guess.

Boxerbeat would have been a better choice for my money... Still fills dancefloors in the right setting now.

I may have asked the wrong question then - it should have been two seperate ones:

1) How would you define the skinhead look (I think that those who know skinhead on here will give a different answer to those who 'think' they know!)

2) Why should we allow racists to steal something else? They've appropriated national flags with little argument, perhaps those who think that skinhead is more than boots, braces, cropped hair and raised arm salutes should be a little more vociferous in opposition.

I dunno....

Boots and braces are the plumage of the elusive skinhead

Also, there's more than one kind of skinhead, why isn't this being discussed

you have your
boneheads (racist skins)
trads (traditional skinheads who were into reggae/rocksteady/etcwtfever)
sharps (skinheads against racial prejudice)
and your homo skins, I was always told they exist but they're like the unicorns of subcultures or some ****, I have no idea

Boneheads aren't skins. They may look similar, but then so do mods and casuals, but it's an entirely different area of fashion - punk/oi based rather than anything related to the origins.

As for the rest - Trad and SHARP aren't different. SHARP was always a home for the traditional skin, but the SHARP badge was appropriated (legitimately) by a lot of third wave bands. If SHARP had been around in 79, then The Specials would have been a SHARP affiliated band too... you could argue that the 2-Tone scene was the roots of SHARP quite easily.
Homoskins... not a skinhead thing as such, more a fetish thing in the same way as leather boys are too. They're out there, some are involved on the traditional skinhead scene, but sexuality is unrelated to music tastes or fashion.

On a similar note to that about SHARP/trad, you've not included any reference to the skinhead revival of the late 70s/early 80s. There are a lot of skins around who prefer the 2-Tone and later ska sound, and these are generally anti-racist too.
'Generally' is a big word though, and I'd suspect there are as many racists in all parts of skinhead as there are in the wider world, but who just like the 'sound'.

No pun intended.

Lots of sub cultures have fallen by the way side. When I was a kid you had skinheads, the mod revivial, teddy boys, the more colourful side of punk veering off into what became New Romantic, you don't see any of them anymore.

I myself was into the whole psychobilly thing for a while and when was the last time you saw a psychobilly?

Some youth sub cultures are more open and identifiable outside their original context - there will always be a hippy element and probably a goth element as long as popular culture exists because lots of people buy into the whole ethos of it.

It's much more difficult to really understand what being a psychobilly or a mod or a teddy boy really represents. It's not entirely obvious as it is with the hippy thing or goth.

As for the skinhead movement, it's virtually been hijacked and its original meaning has been totally altered. The swastika was originally a symbol of good fortune almost like a lucky clover but that is not what people see now when they look at a swastika, same with the skinhead image.

Anyway who is going to do up 20 hole Doc Marten's in the age of velcro! :)

To be honest, I am quite young, and I did not know the true meaning of Skinhead until only recently. As for the scene, I guess I'm labeled "Stoner" but I actually found Ska through punk music. I started listening to Rancid, and then slowly moved over to other bands like Sublime and Operation Ivy.

Can't comment on the teds or New Romantics, but there are a lot of mods still around, and I was happily pissed with a few hundred psychobillies about 5 or 6 weeks back at Bedlam Breakout.. they're still there, as are the 'roots' skins.

Agreed
 

oi! i compleatly agree with ya on that,im a SHARP skinhead and i love ska and skinhead reggae...i wish there was more shows...as far as the new stuff...ahhh im not sure about.

i agree

[QUOTE=oiboi;867647]oi! i compleatly agree with ya on that,im a SHARP skinhead and i love ska and skinhead reggae...i wish there was more shows...as far as the new stuff...ahhh im not sure about.[/QUOTE) Well documented my man...



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here

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