Stiff Little Fingers Not Stiffs Yet

Horseshoe Tavern

Toronto, ON

on Jun 13 2006

Steve McLean (CHARTattack)

06/14/2006 4:30pm

Still riding high after witnessing the Blue Jays rip the Baltimore Orioles 7-1 at the Rogers Centre (and having a Vernon Wells home run ball land five seats to my left), my disappointment that The Tossers cancelled their opening slot for Stiff Little Fingers was short-lived as I caught most of a high-energy set by Toronto's Hostage Life.

The singer's right arm was in a sling, but that didn't stop the quintet from delivering a high-energy show of old school, British-influenced punk. The merch person gave me a free CD sampler, and I'll definitely give it a listen as I was impressed by the young band.

Stiff Little Fingers helped form the soundtrack to my youth and their 1980 album, Nobody's Heroes, ranks among in my 10 (and possibly five) favourite LPs ever. SLF formed in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1977, named themselves after lyrics in a Vibrators song, and released two classic and two solid albums before first splitting up in 1983. Their incredible live show was captured on Hanx!, titled after an acknowledgement of "thank you" issued by singer/songwriter Jake Burns after finishing a song.

The band reformed in 1987, and their incredible live show is still going strong all these years later, with Burns at the mic and playing guitar. Original bassist Ali McMordie has rejoined the band, replacing former Jam member Bruce Foxton, who was helping keep the rhythm the last two times I'd seen them.

The group brought out three big guns to start the show, "Tin Soldiers," "Roots, Radicals, Rockers And Reggae" and "Nobody's Heroes." "Silver Lining," which Burns called the closest SLF ever got to making a Motown song, followed after a newer track.

"I asked for a wee glass of wine and the bastard just brought me a pint glass full of it," Burns joked before turning more serious to reflect on Joe Strummer's effect on his music. Surprisingly, the two men only ever met four or five times, but the former Clash frontman made enough of an impression on Burns that he wrote a song dedicated to him called "Strummerville," which included the outro to "Clash City Rockers."

While The Clash rank with The Beatles as my favourite bands, and they're often credited with introducing politics to punk, SLF wrote even more meaningful songs that cut deep into politics and personal issues that affected the youth of the day. But the spirit of rock 'n' roll is just as important to the group, as witnessed by their performance of the title track to 2003's Guitar And Drum album.

Sandwiched between "At The Edge" and "Fly The Flag" was "Barbed Wire Love," SLF's only love song — though, it's about getting ripped to shreds by romance. Burns wrote "Wasted Life" when he was 19, but it still resonates today. After 70 minutes, the set closed with "Suspect Device," and it got the most fist-pumping response of any song.

The military drumbeat that started as the band returned to the stage made the first encore song easily recognizable as SLF's cover of Bob Marley's "Johnny Was." After ripping through an extended version of the song, they left again, only to return a couple of minutes later to jump into "Alternative Ulster," a night-ending number that probably produced the biggest of many crowd sing-alongs.

Call me a grandpa if you will, but screamo isn't punk rock. SLF's most memorable songs were written while the group members lived in the midst of a virtual civil war in Northern Ireland, and even their choice of covers — including "Johnny Was" and The Specials' anti-racism, anti-stupidity anthem, "Doesn't Make It All Right" — always put the band in the shoes of the downtrodden. If you're not familiar with any of the songs cited in this review, do an online search for their lyrics and find out what punk really was and what it still should be about.