My record shelf has slowly been joined by a stack of punk and hardcore books, and I’ve come to see them as just as essential. They put words and stories to the noise, filling in the history behind the records.
Some of the heavyweights are here—American Hardcore for the big picture, NYHC and Making a Scene for the New York chapters. Those books let the people who built the scene speak for themselves, and it feels like listening in on a conversation you weren’t supposed to hear.
The autobiographies are the rawest reads. Harley Flanagan’s Hard-Core and Roger Miret’s My Riot aren’t pretty, but that’s the point. They show what it really meant to live inside this music—fights, survival, and sometimes destruction. Oi! listeners will recognize a lot of familiar themes here: working-class struggle, violence on the streets, and music as a way to carve out identity.
Black Flag gets covered from two angles: Spray Paint the Walls as the historian’s view, and Rollins’ Get in the Van as the blunt diary of someone who lived it. Together, they remind me how relentless and transformative that band really was—even if it’s far from Oi!, it’s the same uncompromising spirit.
Then there are the books that zoom out—Burning Fight looking at ethics and politics, Making a Scene freezing New York in photos, and the punk icons like Sid Vicious: No One Is Innocent or Hey Ho Let’s Go: Ramones adding the mythology.
Recommended reads if you’re into Oi! and want a way in:
NYHC (Tony Rettman) – raw stories of a tough, working-class scene that overlaps in spirit with Oi!.
Hard-Core: Life of My Own (Harley Flanagan) – survival, violence, and street culture in book form.
My Riot (Roger Miret) – an inside look at the struggles of a frontman who lived it.
American Hardcore (Steven Blush) – not Oi!, but essential for understanding how hardcore and street punk shaped each other.
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