ALBUM REVIEW: Cockney Rejects: Greatest Hits Volume 1/Greatest Hits Volume 2 Expanded 2CD edition (Captain Oi!)
I was just turned 13 the first time I heard the Cockney Rejects, when I borrowed their second single I’m Not A Fool from a school pal. These were the days when you found new music largely by word of mouth, or by reading weekly music papers, and I was immediately smitten.
I’d got into punk when I started ‘big school’ in 1978, and loved original bands like Sex Pistols and The Clash, but along with Sham 69, Angelic Upstarts and Stiff Little Fingers, the Rejects were a band I could call ‘mine’.
I got my own copy of I’m Not A Fool as soon as funds allowed, found they had a previous single, Flares ‘N’ Slippers, and got that too, and bought the next few 7ins, and the first three albums, as they came out. For a council estate lad like me, the Rejects were real punk. They were from the streets, not an art school, and sung about being working class and proud of it.
It took some bollocks to call your debut album Greatest Hits Volume 1, but they did, and it was one of the best things I’d ever heard. Full of singalong songs about football, fighting and their beloved east end of London, it was essential for any young punk.
It kicked off with I’m Not A Fool, and also included the single Bad Man – which will always be one of punk rock’s greatest two and a half minutes, despite peaking at just No 65 in the UK charts.
But Volume 1 was full of songs which could have been singles; Fighting In The Street, Here They Come Again, Join The Rejects, East End and Someone Like You to name just a few.
OK, some tracks would never have got airplay; Shitter, for example, and Are You Ready To Ruck – still one of the angriest songs I’ve ever heard. I wanted to run away just listening to it (the version they recorded for John Peel is even scarier!).
This re-release by Captain Oi! adds all three tracks from Flares ‘N’ Slippers to disc one of the 2CD digipack set, while Greatest Hits Volume 2 is bolstered by seven bonus tracks.
It basically picks up where Volume 1 left off; it too kicks off with a single, War On The Terraces, and includes two others in The Greatest Cockney Rip Off and We Can Do Anything, but they’re nowhere near its best songs.
It includes classics like Hate Of the City, Urban Guerilla, Sitting In A Cell (With You) and a breakneck version of The Sweet’s Blockbuster. Best of all is Oi Oi Oi, the song which inadvertently – with the help of Sounds scribe Garry Bushell – gave this ‘new punk’ movement a name.
Extras include non-album single Bubbles (celebrating their beloved West Ham United reaching the FA Cup final), all the singles’ B-sides, and two songs from the Bushell-curated compilation Oi The Album (unavailable elsewhere at the time Here We Go Again and (as the Terrible Twins), Generation Of Scars).
There are hints of the heavy metal direction they would head in on songs like Headbanger (Vol 1) and The Rocker (Vol 2), but in 1980 the Cockney Rejects’ rowdy brand of punk was where it was at for this council estate kid. 44 years later it still sounds fucking brilliant. 9/10.
- Cockney Rejects: Greatest Hits Volume 1/Greatest Hits Volume 2 Expanded 2CD edition is available direct from Cherry Red Records HERE.
