Two days have gone by, and my ears are still ringing.
Stiff Little Fingers, the pioneering punk band from Belfast, played to a hugely enthusastic audience Monday night at World Cafe, many of them leather-clad, studded, and pierced in places I’d rather not think about. And me, fresh from the office in a tweed sportcoat and khakis, a symphony in corporate browns and tans. (I felt like a salesman at an Amway convention who’d blundered into Sid and Nancy’s wedding reception.)
I’ll admit from the outset that, yes, I probably have lived under a rock for the past 56 years. Until a few weeks ago, I’d never heard of Stiff Little Fingers. But I followed the links to the “artist’s MySpace site” from the World Café Web page, and listened to a few of their tunes, and right away, I thought: Interesting. To my ears (still intact at the time), SLF sounded very unlike what I expected to hear. That is to say, they sounded … musical.
What I heard were great, snarling yarns of anger and general pissed-offness, and yet nothing about SLF’s songs seems cliché. It all rings true. The guitarwork (by Jake Burns, who is also the group’s lead singer) is easily on a par with anything I’ve ever heard Pete Townshend play. The energy level of the band is far in excess of what one would expect from a bunch of guys who started playing together 30 years ago—and who look a lot like your average, paunchy guys-next-door, the type you’d not be surprised to see on a Saturday morning, queuing up at Sears to buy cans of semi-gloss wall paint.
Naturally, I had to go.
Unfortunately, I did not have time to swing by the house and pick up my ear plugs, so I decided to risk it. How bad could it be?
It was bad. And, oh, it was good. It’s safe to say that one SLF concert probably did more damage to my hearing than 10 years of playing drums in a bagpipe band. I won’t tell you that it was worth it. (Believe me, if you want to keep hearing and playing music, it is never worth it.) But it might have been an acceptable sacrifice.
To celebrate their 30 years in the business, the band performed tunes from “Inflammable Material,” their 1979 debut album. (“Like CDs, but bigger, and made of vinyl, and you could play both sides,” Burns informed the younger crowd.)
As with most punk bands, alienation is SLF’s stock in trade. But I think you could argue that kids coming of age in Belfast 30 years ago would have had a unique worldview.
Take for example, these lyrics from “Wasted Life:”
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
Or these, from “Barbed Wire Love:”
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
Alrighty, then.
It might all seem silly and trite, I suppose, except that Burns spits out those now ancient lyrics with such conviction, and backs them up with guitar hacks of such volume and ferocity, it’s as if he’s shoving all of that pent-up angst through a musical wood chipper.
At the same time, I can only stand back in breathless admiration of Ali McMordie, who wields his bass like a battle sword; guitarist and backup vocalist Ian McCallum, with his daring leaps; and drummer Steve Grantley, who pounded sticks into kindling the whole night long. It’s reassuring to see guys my age who can still dish it out. They can hold their own with any band on the planet, regardless of age.
All that, and you’ll probably never hear “Barbed Wire Love” used to peddle Cadillac Escalades. And Jake Burns will never perform a duet with Cher.
Thank God.