Stiff Little Fingers — It Was A Great Gig, So It Was
Legendary Northern Ireland punk band Stiff Little Fingers are playing the Metro in Sydney as part of their Australian tour and my mate Dave has been in touch, wondering if I want to go. I’m thinking that it might be easier to get into this gig than it was the last time I saw the band play live. That was in a pub in Armagh, way, way back when punk really meant something.
In their heyday, Stiff Little Fingers were a force apart, a screaming white noise shriek. Their bam! bam! bam-a-lama classics, like Suspect Device and Alternative Ulster, still stand tall beside the best from the Dead Kennedys, Black Flag or even the Ramones. While the Clash used the bomb-blasted Belfast of the late seventies as a photo opportunity, Stiff Little Fingers actually lived there. And they used that background of on-going conflict as a main theme in their music, articulating the pain, rage and frustration of their peers, disaffected and alienated teenagers like myself. They had vision and talent enough to be able to deconstruct the fury of a generation living in (what was then) a civil war zone, and disgorge it into a beautiful three-chord howl.
Don’t believe them
Don’t believe them
I tell ya, question everything you’re told
Just take a look around you
At the bitterness and spite
Why can’t we take over and try to put it right?
From Suspect Device — Written by Jake Burns, Gordon Archer Ogilvie
When I first heard Suspect Device, their debut single in 1978, it was a moment of delicious electric epiphany. The same feeling as when I first heard the Pistols’ God Save the Queen or Anarchy in the UK. At long bloody LAST! At last, somebody was overtly proclaiming what everybody felt. There they were on the radio, belting it out, shouting it out, screaming it out, in complete plain words. These were people who knew what was going on. This was completely real. This wasn’t Boney M’s fake disco-pop Belfast. These were people who really got it. They understood the type of crap we all had to deal with.
And when some months later, when that same tinny radio in my bedroom spat out Alternative Ulster, the spiked hair on my be-pimpled head stood straight up on end. This was like a prayer of faith. This was a song that spoke directly to me, went straight to the cortex, the naked lunch. This was a message that gave me hope for the future.
Shortly after, I heard Stiff Little Fingers were going to be playing a rare gig outside Belfast, in Rice’s pub in my local town of Armagh, and I knew I had to be there. I also knew it was going to be difficult — since I was already barred from that pub. It wasn’t easy being a punk in those days — especially in a small, rural town, with a nasty little war going on. These were violent and anxious times. Some weeks earlier the burly mustachioed bouncer in the pub had literally kicked me and my home-made leather jacket out into the street and warned me never to come back.
But I was not going to be stopped.
On the night of the gig, I got myself a carry-out of a half bottle of vodka and hung around in the street outside the venue till it was time for the band to come on — and then I managed to slip in with a party of latecomers while the bouncer was distracted. Nervously trying to remain unnoticed (which wasn’t easy, as I was the only punk in the place), I skulked at the back… but when SLF started to play… I erupted. Just couldn’t help it.
It was like as if they were my band. Nobody else seemed to care. This was the very first punk gig in Armagh and the crowd of long-hairs in the pub were either bemused or confused. This wasn’t the usual Lynyrd Skynyrd covers type band that they were used to and they really didn’t know what to make of SLF. Meanwhile, I forgot about the bouncer and went completely mental. I made my very own Alternative Ulster, right there in front of the stage.
Take a look where you’re livin’
You got the army on the street
And the R-U-C dog of repression
Is barking at your feet
Is this the kind of place you want to live?
Is this where you want to be?
Is this the only life we’re gonna have?
What we need
Is an Alternative Ulster
From Alternative Ulster — Written by Jake Burns, Gordon Ogilvie
The band played a flaming white-hot set from their first album, Incendiary Material, and it was a holy celebration of pure joy — just so perfectly, perfectly right. The right band, in the right place, at the right time. Precious magical live music, like James Brown at The Harlem Apollo, the Clash at the Music Machine, Crazy Horse at the Filmore East, Dylan at the Manchester Free Trade Hall. The band played those guitars like they had stolen them, while lead singer Jake Burns roared his head off with complete and utter commitment, cutting through the apathy of most of the crowd. A big bursting wave of noise that I desperately tried to wrap myself around.
When the short set had finished, and both the band and myself were dripping sweat-soaked and spent, the bouncer and his moustache came up from behind and grabbed me. He didn’t appreciate my interpretative dance technique. At least this time he just pushed me out the door, rather than booting me out. And he was laughing — he thought all this punk codology was hilarious.
I still didn’t leave.
I hung around outside, and as people were leaking out, I waited for a chance to sneak back in again. My mate Damo opened the door for me and I slipped through.
Stiff Little Fingers were cooling off upstairs. Damo and myself joined them and they made us very welcome and were happy to have a yarn. I slumped down beside Jake Burns awkwardly, and spilt the remains of my vodka down his leg. He didn’t mind. He was soaked anyway.
Then the bouncer appeared again, looking ominous — so I thought it wise to make a move.
Completely elated by the sheer brilliance of the gig we had just witnessed, Damo and myself wandered around to the only other pub that was still open — but got kicked out of that one, too. Coming back across town we were stopped, searched and questioned by a security patrol — British soldiers from the Black Watch regiment. And they weren’t being especially friendly. In fact, they told us they hated punks. It was pretty intense.
I really didn’t care. I knew I had just seen one of the best gigs that I would ever see, that anyone would ever see, and nothing else mattered. Now I was going to have to walk home five miles in the rain and that didn’t matter either.
Stiff Little Fingers are still playing live — and by all accounts still putting on a great show. Good luck to them. Whether or not I make it to the Sydney gig, I’d like to thank them for being such a positive inspiration in my life — a powerful influence for good in what were very dark days.
Thank you, Stiff Little Fingers.
