Imagine being a 15 year old schoolboy in the sleepy idyll of a small village that called itself a town. You’ve made the effort to go to you nearest decent record shop to see what the next inspired choice will be, the next addition to your fledgling record collection. Peel had obviously been the catalyst and the list was growing. I only earned £2.50 a week paper round money plus £1.50 from the pockets of my parents, so the choice had to be wise and punctilious. Choice made,the journey on the bus back was made much less tedious by the visual exploration of the outer sleeve, and on the odd occasion where care had been taken by the record company, the inner sleeve and lyrics. Today’s purchase was the debut album by Stiff Little Fingers.’Inflammable Material’ with its stark black cover of 9 images of a single flame. Desolate titles such as ‘State of Emergency’, ‘Wasted Life’, and ‘Barbed Wire Love’, spoke of life on another planet, far removed from the sanctity of my surroundings. I couldn’t wait to learn about their lives in a foreign land over the sea. Granted it was the Irish Sea and Belfast was a literal stones throw away, but it may as well have been on the other side of the world.

Off the bus, run home as fast as the Six Million Dollar Man, up the stairs into my brother’s bedroom, take that Barclay James Harvest shit off the turntable, carefully take out the record holding it by the edges (after all this was a weeks wages I was holding),and put the needle on the record. And wait……
INFLAMMABLE MATERIAL IS PLANTED IN MY HEAD!!, IT’S A SUSPECT DEVICE THAT’S LEFT 2000 DEAD!!
What the fuck? I am now witnessing the aural equivalent of having all my teeth kicked out. They are then picked up off the floor and reinserted into my mouth. In the wrong order!
Ears and gums bleeding all over the place, I regain a certain amount of consciousness, dust myself down and strap myself in for the next 13 slices of an angry,shouting, Northern Irishman surrounded by 3 more enraged souls.
The Clash had posed with the English soldiers in Belfast, but these guys were living it day in day out. But amongst the negativity of their situation the positivity of the songs shone through, urging people of whichever religious or political persuasion to try to change things, or at the very least think about it. This was an album of its time, it gave me and thousands of other people an insight into what the ‘troubles’ meant for our generation. The only thing we saw was bleak footage on the news; bombs, death, riots in the streets, bricks and bottles and Molotov cocktails.
Alternative Ulster was released as a single the previous year 1978, so I had an idea of what to expect. That song is one of the best examples of punk and in the top 5 singles of many people, and the album expanded the issues SLF were wanting to convey. Not schoolboy ramblings or 6th form poetry readings, but songs about isolation, cultural ignorance and racism concerning the ubiquitous Irish jokes as well as the stereotypical language used by those morons concerning corner shops, muggers, pimps, spongers, etcetera. In language that pulled no punches. Preaching to the converted maybe, but educating at the same time. These are their experiences, real life without a gimmick in sight.
The record had no fillers and included a version of Bob Marley’s ‘Johnny Was’, with more than a hint to The Clash’s reworking of Junior Murvin’s ‘Police and Thieves’. Despite Jake Burns’s gruff delivery there are choruses in abundance and pure pop tunes, which much later would evolve into the polished, toned down sound of bands such as Green Day and Blink 182. Even the token love song on it was an incendiary blast of lust between the divisive, repressive regime of their environment.
Whereas the Undertones sang about chocolate and girls,(also a truly great band), Stiff Little Fingers kept upping the ante even after signing to a major label in the form of Chrysalis. Straw Dogs and At The Edge both uncompromising singles. There legacy still lives on and they still continue to fill venues across the world, playing to original and second generation fans.
But it all started on that morning in February 1979.

My ears are still ringing.

This plastic sign, crudely slotted into a block of wood was my first experience of V.I.P. treatment, aged 9. It was placed on a table, adjacent  to the stage of the Buxton Working Men’s Club where my father would ply his trade every Saturday and Sunday evening. It meant that UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES was anyone other than those named on it, plus their respective immediate families, allowed to park their behind at that particular area.

This brazen example of a social hierarchy was open to exploitation; it justified our inherent human right as a family to swan in at any given time before a performance, in the knowledge that our place would be unoccupied and awaiting our arrival. Unfortunately my father was not the egotistical type so we would invariably turn up at the same time every week, and while he set up his kit and did the necessary tweaking and tuning, my mother and I would take our place with a Snowball and Blackcurrant and Lemonade respectively.

In all the years of attendance (about 5 years), I can’t remember a single instance of an interloper causing us any undue distress, so it goes to show that this small plastic and wooden notice served its purpose in the respect of the audience members knowing exactly where they stood. Or sat in this instance.

A lovely piece of history for me that I now own, after it was liberated from the club when he retired from playing. Both the organist and drummer are now both consigned to history. As are a vast number of social clubs, which ever political party they were affiliated to. Happy days.