For those of you thinking "what are HardRockHouse doing giving space to right wing fascist skinheads like The Business", well let me clarify. You see, back in the day when the Oi! scene started up, all of the headlines were centered around bands like the 4-Skins and Angelic Upstarts and their respective, supposed, National Front sympathies and anti-police stance, a case of tabloid journalism at its most sensationalist. 

The truth is that those bands, and the Oi! scene overall, never really had this outlook. Yes the Upstarts had more than their fair share of run ins with the boys in blue but read around the issues with the benefit of hindsight and draw your own conclusions, you may see things very differently. Any violence associated with gigs was more generally due to the crowd's football alliances than any other reason, the national front/bnp links no more prevalent than with any other genre of music. Oi! was really a more conscious move to bring punk back to a street level, eschewing the more middle class backgrounds of some of the successful bands of the time, owing as much to the likes of Sham 69 and even Status Quo as the Ramones or the Sex Pistols in the raw ingredients of its sound. 

The Business came through in the "second wave" of Oi!  and despite a hiatus are one of the few old school bands still plying their trade. This EP combines three new tracks coupled with a live document of a show at the Marquee from 1982. The three new tracks on this record demonstrate all the classic trademarks of the scene. Short, punchy songs with football terrace style choruses that just beg audience participation, especially the call and response sections in “1-2-3” and this, allied to the live tracks, neatly showcases both the appeal and the limitations of the genre.  

The fact that these songs rely on a very formulaic structure means there's little to distinguish the new tracks from their live counterparts and this despite the fact that a quarter of a century separates them. It must be an absolute blast to see The Business live though as these songs are tailor made for a packed club and it's not hard to imagine an audience belting out the choruses along with the band, the record though is a little too one dimensional.

Let us know your views on Mean Girl

Track Listing

Mean Girl
Till The End
1-2-3
Loud Proud 'N' Punk
Blind Justice
Suburban Rebels
Harry May
Smash The Discos