The Cockney Rejects channeled the working-class punk attitude of Sham 69, a sound widely dismissed by critics, and thereby helped launch the Oi! subgenre, most visibly with their 1980 single "Oi! Oi! Oi!". Their approach relied on volume, aggression, and deliberately rough execution, laced with irreverent wit and a taste for pointless chaos that spoke directly to disaffected lower-class listeners while also drawing the more extreme racist fringe of the skinhead scene—an association the band never sought yet still provoked widespread condemnation. Jimmy Pursey of Sham 69 discovered vocalist Jefferson Turner, guitarist Mick Geggus, bassist Vince Riordan, and drummer Keith Warrington in London’s East End and arranged their first recording contract. Early productivity was high: two albums appeared in 1980 under the tongue-in-cheek titles Greatest Hits, Vol. 1 and Greatest Hits, Vol. 2. The following year brought Greatest Hits, Vol. 3: Live & Loud!, whose supposedly concert renditions of familiar material were actually studio tracks overdubbed with audience noise, plus the studio album The Power and the Glory, on which the group broadened its palette with acoustic guitars and greater melodic emphasis. The Wild Ones, issued in 1982, steered the sound toward heavy metal. Directionless and uncertain, the band dissolved in 1985, after which archival collections surfaced, among them Unheard Rejects in 1985 and Live and Loud!! The Bridgehouse Tapes in 1987. A 1990 reunion yielded the album Lethal, which attracted little notice. A decade later the group returned with Back on the Street, followed by Out of the Gutter in 2003 and Unforgiven in 2007.
