Three teenagers have learned their lesson: Don't yell "Oi!" in a crowded hall. Someone may think you're anti-Semitic.
The garage-band grunt earned the teens a trip to police headquarters and suspension from school.Gunning for a $100 first prize in a high school talent show, members of a high school band called Utter Confusion warmed up the crowd by yelling "Oi!"
Since the music they play is sometimes called "Oi" - "Oi! Oi! Oi!" is a typical chorus - the three 16-year-old members of Utter Confusion started yelling, "Oi!" to get the crowd going.
The crowd yelled "Oi!" back.
Two people in the audience went to school officials, complaining "Oi!" is an anti-Semitic slur. ("Oi!" sounds like "Oy!" - a Yiddish expression of dismay.) The 16-year-olds, Len Longo, J.M. Burr and Albert Min, were kicked out of their Hasbrouck Heights school for a week and called to police headquarters.
No charges were filed.
"Personally I still don't have a clear understanding of what the whole thing was about," said Lt. Michael Colaneri, the bias officer who conducted the brief investigation. "I guess you could say it was `Utter Confusion."'
"Oi" is a gritty subcurrent of punk born in British garages in the late 1970s. A right-wing sub-cult of "Oi" includes German skinhead bands whose Doc Marten-booted members sing about bashing blacks, Jews, Turks and leftists.
Min said his band meant nothing offensive. He was angry about the school's reaction to the complaint.
"They just made up their minds we were guilty," he said.