Ain't no party like a moonstomp party

When I was in high school, I used to run with an awesome, crazy guy named Skinhead John. Despite growing up in McLean, VA, he was an Oi! boy 100%. He once flipped a car in a drug-fueled escape from the police, and in the days before Jackass and viral videos, he was making home videos of his various misadventures, one of which involved a sword and a very stoned punk kid. Because when you're a teen in northern Virginia and can't drive (either by parental rule or legal order), there's not much to do. We mostly sat around and smoked cigarettes and listened to British skinhead music and swapped stories about our various scenes. (It was like "The Ballad of Jimmy and Johnny" come to life.) Despite his upbringing, he was down with the boots-n-braces, working class, drug dealing skins and their one-two lockstep anthems, and I was content to do dumb things to my hair and get drunk on American beer and get amped on the manic energy of punk and hardcore.

One of the things we shared, aside from a passion for Guinness (which was fucking black gold when you're 16) and chain smoking, was a love of a contemporary NY band called the Templars, the only US Oi! band to really capture the verve and hooligan fuckedness that captivated us about those old Blitz songs. It helps that band mastermind Carl Templar can actually fucking play guitar instead of the three same barre chords played in the same chugga-chugga order. I also love how ragged and raw most of their recordings sound - they set up a studio in a garage and said fuck it, let's kick out the jams. It's really fucking hard to create that gusto in an expensive studio, recording separately. I've had several aborted attempts at starting bands. Usually it splinters because I get sick of each person trying to perfect their own part and then trying to ram our circle into someone else's peg. That night I spent with Josh randomly jamming at his practice space after we got drunk and went to the worst strip club in town was probably the best experience I've ever had playing music. Sometimes you gotta plug in and hold on, and that's the vibe I get from the Templars.

They rampage out of your speakers in all kinds of fuzzy Teenage Shutdown glory, marching in in a riot, stomping their boots as a warm up to kicking you in the face. They might be the best Oi! band America ever produced and would be the only reason I would ever travel to New York City, the second worst thing about the US.

Police Informer - http://www.mediafire.com/?4dz4lzmltv9

Video Age - http://www.mediafire.com/?y92ku4hwe1z

Make Your Mark - http://www.mediafire.com/?mw3qgmrm12l

FTW - http://www.mediafire.com/?yymoylycwum

The 60's Are Over - http://www.mediafire.com/?mylpdymsl5x

Frontline - http://www.mediafire.com/?2seymcugcmt

Pride - http://www.mediafire.com/?lyuonjmmbve