Stiff Little Fingers

Stiff Little Fingers literally exploded onto the punk music scene first appearing in Sounds weekly music paper in July 1978. Formed in Belfast Northern Ireland in 1977, they were originally called Highway Star and more rocky until they were influenced by The Clash & Sex Pistols and together with journalist Gordon Ogilvie’s lyrics transformed themselves via a Vibrators song off the Pure Mania LP.

While the cynics were writing off punk, here was a band that justifiably could sing about repression and no future. Piledriver punk sound, allied to infectious hooks with apolitical and personal lyrics all delivered in Jake Burns’s rasp/growl.

Suspect Device was their self-financed single picked up by John Peel and played on repeat. Major tour with TRB, Rough Trade in a first released their first album, Inflammable Material, to critical acclaim and a surprise hit in the album charts.

The band then signed to Chrysalis and carried on. The challenge for them would always be how they would progress but that falls out of this site’s time frame. For many these and The Undertones would arguably represent the best of Northern Irish punk not least because of their commercial success.

Stiff Little Fingers performing Suspect Device on Ulster TV 3rd June 1978

Suspect Device / Wasted Life
(Rigid Digits March 1978)

No ifs, no buts, no maybes – one of the greatest debut singles ever. The power, the anger and the passion roar off the grooves of this like an express train and by the time it finishes with ‘We’re going to blow up in your face!’ your heart rate is in the red! Wasted Life is just as good an really a double A single.

For heavy rock fans, the riff may sound a little familiar with Montrose’s Space Station #5 but who gives a fuck!


Alternative Ulster / 78RPM
(Rough Trade October 1978)

Produced by Ed Hollis of Eddie & The Hot Rods fame, and from the aborted record deal with Island, this is Stiff Litle Fingers at their most anthemic. As soon as those opening chords ring out the hairs stick up on your body. Was written to be used as a free flexi for the punk fanzine Alternative Ulster but the writer Gavin Martin thought the song was rubbish! Pure punk perfection


Gotta Getaway / Bloody Sunday
(Rough Trade April 1979)

The last single with Rough Trade and a perfect segue from singing about ‘the troubles’ to more universal worries like escaping from what sometimes feels like a suffocating home life when you’re a teenager. It also doubles up as a poignant reminder as many Irish people emigrated or came to England or further for jobs and /or a new life


Straw Dogs / You Can’t Say Crap On The Radio
(Chrysalis September 1979)

Playing safe as it were with a song about South African mercenaries and the brutality of war complete with butcher’s carcasses on the cover. Nice challenge to new boys Chrysalis who managed to get it to a creditable #45.

Inflammable Material
(Rough Trade February 1979)

It may be hard to believe nowadays in the age of Facebook and posts of one line that have a picture of an album and ‘discuss’ by it but music journalism was taken very seriously. There were four weekly music papers and NME & Sounds were the most prominent and influential. A new album was a point of major anticipation and journalists wielded a lot of power in how they perceived the music. Paul Morley was a new journalist from Manchester and had been involved in and supported the punk scene up there. He had become known as a more intellectual writer and if memory serves me was one of those in the ‘punk is dead’ camp but I may be doing him a disservice as I recall he also gave the Angelic Upstarts first album a good review.

Anyway the review which is short story length (and they often were like this), is repeated in full below and sums up the album perfectly. 1979 was the resurgence of punk – we had the UK Subs, Skids and Ruts albums to name a few of the classics that came out and Infllambale Material was arguably the best of the bunch. I played mine to death. Every song is a classic and the whole thing hangs together perfectly from artwork to music to lyrics and again arguably the match for The Clash’s and Pistols’ albums.

Anger from Ulster!
The Stiff Little Fingers debut Explodes In the UK!

Paul Morley NME, 10.2.79

I was hardly expecting it but . . . even more so than “Never Mind The Bollocks” which turned out to be comedy – much more so than “The Clash” – which turned out to be quaint – as astonishing in its impact as “The Ramones”, “Inflammable Material” is the classic punk rock record. A crushing contemporary commentary, brutally inspired by blatant bitter rebellion and frustration, that supplies neither questions nor real answers but consistently explodes Fuck off; Leave me alone! in the most scalding, dirty way since the set slogans “Anarchy In The U.K.” and “White Riot” were laid to rest.

Straightaway, it hits hard, shakes the speakers, leers, leaps and dazes. “Suspect Device”, a known classic song. that managed to transcend limp production when released on Rigid Digit Records last year, has been cleaned and organised by producers Geoff Travis and Mayo Thompson (see Penman’s Rough Trade article, page 21) so that the two guitars of Jake Burns and Henry Cluney strike out in such fiery fashion you can’t help wondering why such an ‘outrageously nasty sound hasn’t long been a rigorous necessity in rock’n’roll. The album’s guitar sound is not for the squeamish. Merciless and malicious, it has both depth and barbarity; the guitars fight and feud, the battle is wild and selfish. You don’t just feel and hear the guitar, you almost see it. Makes The Clash sound tender.

Yeah, but if that isn’t enough, coy-looking bespectacled Jake Burns’ diabolically bloodthirsty vocals make Joe Strummer sound like a crooner and match Lydon move for move in terms of agile malevolence and extreme retaliatory intimidation. The lashing, vitriolic combination of voice and guitar is so profound it would only require a competent commitment from Ali McMordie on bass and Brian Falcon on drums and there’d be one classic rock’n’roll sound. As it is, McMordie has a witty, scurrilous range of runs and Falcon’s control is a lot more doggedly beneficial than has been suggested.

After “Suspect Device” just the whole side is glorious. Eight songs coagulated with spite, soaked with antagonisation, smarting with resentment, driven by real anger much more than faint petulance. Remember, these four guys lived slam in the middle of an environment that none of us can ever fully comprehend. I can only imagine that the forbidding atmosphere in Belfast must drip with tension, rancour, jaundiced confusion, fear and frustration, a kind of frustration none of us can understand; and much of this record, especially side one, comes unnervingly close to capturing and conveying a picture of the grey outrage of life over there, whilst the rampage and roar of the rock immaculately complement the aggression and vengeance of the songs.

Three of side one’s outbursts, and four of side two’s have words written by Daily Expressman Gordon Oglivie, a spot of peculiarity that debases “Inflammable Material” with a little of the feeling that can ruin the Pistols and Clash for some the suggestion of a presence of cynically motivated svengalis using the group for mischievous or disturbing ends.

Oglivie came to the group along with fellow newspaperman Colin McClellan, and it was at their suggestion that the group concentrated on expressing emotion and experiences from within their unique and atrocious predicament. Both are journalists working at an infamously foul form of reporting, and although the group readily disclaim accusations of puppeteering, prejudiced suspicions are unfortunately-easily aroused by the involvement.

Certainly it may be coincidence but Oglivie’s lyrics, (“Suspect Device”, “Barbed Wire Love” and “White Noise” on side one, “Law And Order”, “Rough Trade”, ” Alternative Ulster” and “Closed Groove” on side two) do seem a little glib, especially “Noise” and “Groove”.

Yet ultimately, in the same way that even if “Anarchy In The U.K.” was written by John Betjeman or Alan Bennett, Rotten’s stinging, sly vocals made it totally uncontrived and his own – in the same way that Rotten was just too ‘good’ for McClaren’s plans Stiff Little Fingers, by sheer virtue of their obviously genuine indignation and virulence, surpass any such manipulation here. If McClellan and Oglivie, and likely enough I’m doing them a disservice, are ‘up to something’, then the snarls and sourness in Finger’s execution wreck it all. There is just no sign of lack of commitment or identification with the words, this again superbly typified on the awesome, “Suspect Device” where Burns delivers some twee couplets like it’s the last thing he’s ever going to do.

For me, it’s the four apparently self-penned tracks which follow that vividly evoke and provoke more than anything on the record. “State Of Emergency”, is hard and unbelievably embittered, fuelled by swirling, surging guitars:

“So please don’t just sit there
Let’s try to break but
From all the hatred, suspicion and doubt
Try to change your life
That is no life at all. “

Hear it and flush. “Here We Are Nowhere” sneaks a snappy arrangement into 56 seconds, a three verse tantrum of emptiness. “Wasted Life” splatters disaffection and contempt all through its three minutes with a curt loveless chorus sung with timeless-despair:

“They wanna waste my life
They wanna waste my tine
They wanna waste my life
And they’ve stolen it away”

All through the album “they” remain elusive and anonymous, something that somehow intensifies the feeling of anguish and alarm. Fury is directed everywhere and nowhere. “No More Of That” is a short and definite retort to the distant “they”, sung determinedly by Cluney.

“Barbed Wire Love” ironically sets a teenage romance within harsh imagery (kneecaps, booby traps and bombs), although there’s a better song to be written about romance and this kind of war. Emphasising the irony, the song does overtly reveal a unique, penetrative pop sensibility that leaves every Fingers song with a discreet but memorable hook. Burns’ vocals can do subtle, magical things with a melody, too, as on “Breakout”. “White Noise” has a particularly finely balanced Oglivie lyric – a crudely pedantic attack on bigotry, but great musical dynamism.

Sounds also gave the album a 5 star review

Side Two lacks the obvious fluency of the first, but still has plenty of memorable moments. ” Law And Order” is the most obviously Clash-derived track – and again, Burns gives the words life and reason. An interpretation of a reggae tune, Marley’s “Johnny Was” invites vague comparisons with Clash’s debut album and their “Police And Thieves” , but whereas Clash went into it as structure and rhythm, the Fingers approach it as sound and spirit “Johnny Was” rolls out an incredibly mature, totally justified eight-minute epic, that splutters and bursts into view, then settles into an easy, absorbing rhythm, guitars inevitably causing the damage, with Burns proving the versatility of his voice.

“Rough Trade” is a passionate comment on the Island affair (a recent mess where the label seduced and then foolishly dumped the group), Burns sneering the lyric with extraordinary distaste. “Alternative Ulster” is presumably a remnant from the Island period; it’s produced by ex-Hot Rods manager/producer Ed Hollis. Again, it may be my imagination but it starts off sounding a little like the Rods or at least has a separate, uncomfortable pop slant – a shade smooth occasionally.

“Closed Groove” is a bizarre, tight-lipped, stiff-rhythmed piece – a sadly understated if adventurous way to finish the record. The ringing tone of an unanswered phone stuck at the end of the album, and you’re left feeling numb after all the rage and remorseless intolerance.

Let’s just say in terms of the guitars, Burns’ staggering voice, tile sensitivity and unbridled passion, the genuine, sullen concern, some thrilling moments of drama, the strong evocations of life in Ulster, the perceptive production, the severity and variety – even, in a way, the imperfections – this is a classic. Nothing since “Spiral Scratch” and “The Ramones” have struck me as possessing such immeasurable intuition.

Of course, now that they’re isolated from the tragic ingredients of their inspiration (and maybe that means the music is a success in the only way it needed to be, that it dragged them out of ‘the emergency’ as their songs unashamedly admit is ‘the way’), now that they’re immersed in the rock’n’roll world, they’ll probably never again communicate similar grievances and discontent with such raw exasperation.

But to have made this record and to have done it so positively, is much more than most can be expected to do, For such an achievement can cause problems. Their future is entirely up to them.

Without this in any way being a throwaway statement, it was perhaps always inevitable that Belfast would throw up the viral punk record. There are parts of “Inflammable Material” that are not just exciting or stimulating but quite humbling. It is a remarkable document.



TalkPunk

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