Cockney Rejects are an Oi! punk band that formed in the East End of London in 1977. Their 1980 song "Oi, Oi, Oi" was the inspiration for the name of the Oi! music genre.
Their biggest hit record in the United Kingdom, 1980's "The Greatest Cockney Rip-Off", was a parody of Sham 69's song "Hersham Boys". Other Cockney Rejects songs were less commercial, partly because they tended to be about hard-edged topics such as street fighting or football hooliganism. The band members are loyal supporters of West Ham United F.C., and pay tribute to the club with their hit cover version of "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles", a song which has been sung by the West Ham supporters at the match since the 1920s. Other singles to chart in the UK were "Badman," "We Can Do Anything," and "We Are the Firm" (all 1980).
The violence depicted in their lyrics was often mirrored at their concerts, and the band members often fought to defend themselves (often from supporters of opposing football teams) or to split up conflicts between audience members. Jeff and Mick Geggus (who are brothers) had both been amateur youth boxers, and had fought at the national level. Cockney Rejects expressed contempt for all politicians in their lyrics, and they rejected media claims that they had a British Movement following, or that the band members supported the views of that far right group. In their first Sounds interview, they mockingly referred to the British Movement as the "German Movement" and stated that many of their heroes were black boxers.
The Biography appearing in this section is attributed to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockney_Rejects. Portions of this Biography may be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, version 3.0 or any later version, available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. Additional terms may apply. See Wikipedia Terms of Use for details.
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