With Putin threatening us with nuclear war and slaughtering civilians in the Ukraine I felt like a dose of fingers!!
Fuck you Putin!!
Today’s Music to Keep Me SsSAAaaNNnnEEEe in Isolation – Stiff Little Fingers
Today’s Music to Cheer me up in Isolation – Stiff Little Fingers
For me they were the best of all the Punk bands – an outpouring of anger focussed on the Irish problem which was in full spate at the time. Clever lyrics, variety, power and fury.
I loved it and could identify with its anger. That first album – Inflammable Material – was a masterpiece.
Every time I’ve seen them they have been brilliant. After the concert they have always been friendly and welcoming – quite unlike the indifference of some bands.
To day I’m going to be Playing SLF loud (until my wife tells me to turn it down.
Stiff Little Fingers – Doesn’t make it Alright.
A song about racism covered from the Specials. The lyrics say it all. I love both versions.
DOESN’T MAKE IT ALL RIGHT( B. Goldberg / J. Dammers )
Just because you’re nobody
It doesn’t mean that you’re no good
Just because there’s a reason
It doesn’t mean it’s understood
(Chorus:)
It doesn’t make it all right
It doesn’t make it all right
It’s the worse excuse in the world
And it doesn’t make it all right
Some people think they’re really clever
To smash your head against a wall
Then they say ‘You got it my way’
They really think they know it all
(Chorus)
Just because you’re a black boy
Just because you’re a white
It doesn’t mean you’ve got to hate him
Doesn’t mean you’ve got to fight
(Chorus)
It doesn’t make it all
It doesn’t make it all
It doesn’t make it all right
Stiff Little Fingers/Bob Marley – Johnny Was
I love this Stiff Little Fingers version of a great Bob Marley song.
Bob set it in Jamaica – an innocent victim of the gangster rude boys. Stiff Little Fingers transferred it to Ireland in the midst of the bloody troubles.
Both highlighted the supercharged emotion of a mother who has just lost her son to a senseless killing. It could be about any city, any gang-related murder. So tragic. So stupid. So unnecessary.
Bob Marley’s version was more mellow and laid back. He poured his emotion into the song. It was full of sorrow. Stiff Little Fingers added anger.
For me the strident duelling guitars and military drumbeat heighten the emotional impact. When are people going to grow up and get above this madness?
JOHNNY WAS(Marley)
Woman hold her head and cry
Cause her son had been shot down in the street and died
From a stray bullet
Woman hold her head and cry
Accompanying her was a passerby
Who saw the woman cry
Wondering can she work it out
Now she knows that the wages of sin is death
The gift of God is life
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Johnny was a good man
oh yeah
Woman hold her head and cry
Cause her son had been shot down in the street and died
Just because of the system
Woman hold her head and cry
Comforting her I was passing by
And I saw the woman cry
She cried, oh, oh, oh, oh
Johnny was a good man
Never did a thing wrong
Take it down
Johnny went out on a Saturday night
Never hurt anybody never started no bar room fight
Johnny never did nobody no wrong
Never hurt anybody never hurt anybody
Johnny was a good man
Johnny, Johnny, Johnny…
Johnny was a good man
(Repeat)
In a top floor flat in the middle of the night
There’s a man with rifle and Johnny in his sight,
I said oh no, we can’t let that kind of thing happen here no more
Oh no
Johnny, Johnny, Johnny…
A single shot rings out in a Belfast night and I said oh
Johnny was a good man
Can a woman’s tender care
Cease towards the child she bears
Johnny (Repeat)
Stiff Little Fingers – Wasted Life
So many people caught up in these violent uprisings. IRA, ISIS, Boko Haram, Protestant Paramilitaries, Taliban.
They all think they can change the world with a bullet and a bomb. All they create is misery!!
They waste peoples’ lives. They waste their own lives.
WASTED LIFE(Fingers)
I could be a soldier
Go out there and fight to save this land
Be a people’s soldier
Paramilitary gun in hand
I won’t be a soldier
I won’t take no orders from no-one
Stuff their fucking armies
Killing isn’t my idea of fun
(Chorus)
They wanna waste my life
They wanna waste my time
They wanna waste my life
And they’ve stolen it away
I could be a hero
Live and die for their ‘important’ cause
A united nation
Or an independent state with laws
And rules and regulations
That merely cause disturbances and wars
That is what I’ve got now
All thanks to the freedom-seeking hordes
(Chorus)
I’m not gonna be taken in
They said if I don’t join I just can’t win
I’ve heard that story many times before
And every time I threw it out the door
Still they come up to me
With a different name but same old face
I can see the connection
With another time and a different place
They ain’t blonde-haired or blue-eyed
But they think that they’re the master race
They’re nothing but blind fascists
Brought up to hate and given lives to waste
(Chorus: repeat)
Stiff Little Fingers – Barbed Wire Love
Using all the language of the conflict they created a song about a love affair that crossed the boundaries.
Stiff Little Fingers – Barbed Wire Love Lyrics
I met you in No Man’s Land
Across the wire we were holding hands
Hearts a-bubble in the rubble
It was love at bomb site
Across the wire we were holding hands
Hearts a-bubble in the rubble
It was love at bomb site
(Chorus:)
All you give me is barbed wire love
All caught up in barbed wire love
Tangled up in barbed wire love
Throw my leg over barbed wire love
Barbed wire love snags my jeans
Barbed wire love
When I fell it was awful nice
Caught when not suspecting vice
The night was rife with wasteland life
You set my arm alight
[Chorus:]
Blasted by your booby traps
I felt the blow in both knee-caps
Your eyes did shine
Your lips were fine
And the device in you pants was out of sight
[Chorus:]
5 Great British and Irish Punk tracks from the Seventies
Punk was like a shot in the arm for Rock Music, a shake up, a wake up call. It was an indie revolution. Too bad the big companies jumped back in and created the lowest common denominator all over again.
- Stiff Little Fingers – Suspect Device https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKsN5cj9ehs
- Sex Pistols – Pretty Vacant https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcauCclfytI
- Buzzcocks – Orgasm Addict https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2Mi995ggFU
- Stranglers – Peaches https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuT5KUA7iaY
- Clash – Should I Stay or Should I go – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMaE6toi4mk
- A bit of energy for Monday.
- Available on Amazon. In the UK:
Stiff Little Fingers – Suspect Device – Lyrics from the Troubles.
 
  
Stiff Little Fingers were the best band to come out of Punk. They brought their frustration from the streets of Belfast where they were hassled by police and IRA into music. Punk was the ideal vehicle.
Their lives of being shaken down by police and army under SUS laws or threatened by paramilitary bully-boys from both persuasions, of having a religious divided community, a politically divided society and daily bomb scares, threats and shootings was fully explored in the theatre of Punk.
I saw Jake Burns and the band a few weeks ago. My ears are still buzzing and they were every bit as powerful.
This song sums up the violence of the times where ordinary people were caught up in religious and political mayhem. You can’t trust any political or religious fanatics. They have their own agendas.
Suspect Device
Inflammable material is planted in my head
It’s a suspect device that’s left 2000 dead
Their solutions are our problems
They put up the wall
On each side time and prime us
And make sure we get fuck all
They play their games of power
They mark and cut the pack
They deal us to the bottom
But what do they put back?
[Chorus:]
Don’t believe them
Don’t believe them
Don’t be bitten twice
You gotta suss, suss, suss, suss, suss out
Suss suspect device
They take away our freedom
In the name of liberty
Why don’t they all just clear off
Why won’t they let us be
They make us feel indebted
For saving us from hell
And then they put us through it
It’s time the bastards fell
[Chorus]
Don’t believe them
Don’t believe them
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
[Chorus]
We’re a suspect device if we do what we’re told
But a suspect device can score an own goal
I’m a suspect device the Army can’t defuse
You’re a suspect device they know they can’t refuse
We’re gonna blow up in their face
Stiff Little Fingers – Opher’s World pays tribute to genius.
Stiff Little Fingers are my favourite Punk band. They came roaring out of Ireland full of ire, angst and fury. They were railing at the tragic life they were being forced to live in the shadow of the ‘troubles’ with real emotions based on real experience. Life was hard in Thatcher’s Britain for young disaffected youth but it was real murder in Belfast! They were fed-up with the guns, bombs, sectarian hatred, barricades, barbed wire, and being threatened by soldiers, police and paramilitary thugs. Punk proved the ideal vehicle. It all came pouring out on that first album ‘Inflamable Material’. It wasn’t inflammable it was incendiary.
No wonder John Peel loved it. He had a real ear for genuine talent. He immediately saw the genuine emotion that soaked through every sentiment. These weren’t a bunch of kids making stuff up – they were venting their hearts, spleen and lungs.
If the Sex Pistols were brash Stiff Little Fingers were brazen. If the Pistols were hot Fingers were nuclear. Not only that but they had the lyrical ability to put it all down in a form that made it interesting and accessible. Jake Burns had the word play at his finger tips to illustrate the world they lived in. He even managed to inject some humour in between the fury. This was Punk with real teeth. This wasn’t to do with Thatcher’s selective austerity and no jobs for the lower classes, class warfare; this was war with real bullets, bombs, threats and deaths.
Fingers even took the Bob Marley classic ‘Johnny Was’ and made it there own. Where the song was about a senseless gang killing in Trenchtown they transferred it to Belfast. The raw guitar exchange of riffs with their strident ring gave it a sinister edge. It was an anthem to senseless murder and violence. The riffs snarled and spat. The vocals soared with despair.
Fingers were what Punk was all about – protest, despair and fury. It was the voice of disaffected youth who saw that they had no future.
This was my type of music, full of rightful political/social fury at the injustice created by politicians, religious leaders and the businessmen who orchestrated the unequal world order. It was a scream of protest. They made the Irish situation stark for all to hear but also illustrated a problem the world over. The ones at the bottom were being shat on by the tiny minority that ran it all.
Punk didn’t get much better than this!
