We’d had the summer of ’76 when it felt like the sun would never stop shining (down like marmalade anyone ?) and the pavements were melting. Some of our friends could sense something was stirring in London but for most of us that would have to wait until 1977. Meanwhile as my 14th birthday and Xmas approached in December 1976 a film was released that was so up our parents street it could very well have been made for them alone.

We grew up in a house where the soundtrack swung from Classical music to Reggae but mostly it was Jazz, the great Swing bands and singers (Sinatra, Crosby) and songs from the great musicals which is probably the first time I would have heard the incredible voice of Barbra Streisand. 

When “A Star Is Born” was released I’m sure we all trooped off as a family to see it at the cinema and I gotta admit I was quite taken with it, but most of all I was captivated by Barbra Streisand’s voice. The whole film is worth watching and the soundtrack has some great songs in it. Kris Kristofferson’s “Watch Closely Now” & “Crippled Crow” are great examples of 70’s US FM rock. 

As it’s recently been re-made starring Lady Ga Ga it was in the news again. If Lady GaGa even gets close to Streisand’s imperious vocal on the closing medley of “With One More Look At You/Watch Closely Now” on any of the new films soundtrack then she’ll have worked miracles. This one performance can bring a lump to my throat just by thinking about it. Give it a go, it might just surprise you…

With One More Look At You/Watch Closely Now - https://youtu.be/Inkf7WZJdjc

It’s not that I don’t like The Stranglers, I do…sorta, it’s that they never did seem very “Punk” to me. Although Hugh Cornwell and Jean-Jacques Burnel looked the part, Dave Greenfield and Jet Black looked, well, old and like they might have played in bands that my Uncle, who is 10+ years older than me, may have enjoyedp. It seems like most of the people I know who really like The Stranglers are a few years older than me and had previous dalliances with Prog ! The Stranglers felt like they were the “punk” band it was acceptable for older people to like. 

One thing The Stranglers did do well though was singles and therefore this collection of those small, round (mostly), black (other colours are available) objects of desire is the perfect thing for me. On the same day that I bought the Sex Pistols life changing single “God Save The Queen” my brother and I acquired between us a copy of The Stranglers “Peaches/Go Buddy Go” coupling. “Peaches” we’d heard on the radio and read in the inkies that the version on the record had a rude word on it that wasn’t included in the version Radio One were playing (not sure that clitoris is now considered a rude word but it certainly would have spontaneously combusted Mary Whitehouse’s over lacquered bouffant back then), and every schoolboy loved a rude word. I always preferred “Go Buddy Go”, a pub rocker concerned with boys chasing girls in nightclubs with a little speed reference thrown in to bolster the Punk cred. 

Those two are preceded here by “(Get A) Grip (On Yourself)” which we’d missed as a single but caught up with when friends of ours played us The Stranglers albums…which brings me to another difficulty I have with our asphyxiating foursome, some of the lyrics on those first two albums are well dodgy and I figured that out even at 14/15 years old. Misogyny drips from the lyrics of “London Lady”, “Princess Of the Streets”, “Ugly” and of course “Peaches”, while “School Mam” on their 2nd album is plain creepy. Their record companies weren’t daft enough to think they could put out that sort of stuff as singles.

And their singles were a different matter as they knocked out, one after another, “Something Better Change”, “No More Heroes” and the superb “5 Minutes”, which kicks off with one of the greatest intros on any single by anyone ever.  Later on they mellowed in sound with singles like “Golden Brown” (taking a song about Heroin to #2 on the hit parade !) and “Strange Little Girl”, then ultimately made a pair of singles that are amongst my very favourites in “No Mercy” and “Skin Deep” (sadly those two aren’t on this comp).

The Stranglers are still at it, still making new music and putting on good shows I’m told. I don’t need to wade in any deeper than this.

5 Minutes - https://youtu.be/mePXtiedEmg?si=HuBcb6Bj6KBwEan9

“Inflammable material, planted in my head, It's a suspect device that's left two thousand dead”

That’s how “Suspect Device”, Stiff Little Fingers debut single and the first track on this album begins. Looking back I find it inconceivable now that this album wasn’t released until 1979, getting on for 2 years after Punk Rock’s first rush and it’s difficult to convey now how much of an effect Stiff Little Fingers had on us at the time. At times in 1979 it felt like Punk had been and gone and then along came this album length howl of teenage frustration.

Stiff Little Fingers were formed originally when a group of school friends got a band together to play Rock covers, naming themselves Highway Star (after the Deep Purple song). On the departure of their bass player Ali McMordie took over completing the classic line up of Jake Burns, Henry Cluney, Brian Faloon and McMordie that recorded this album. Cluney had by this time discovered Punk Rock and introduced the rest of the band to it. Jake Burns was particularly taken with The Clash, saying later "what The Clash did more than anything else was give me the confidence…to realise it was OK to write about my own life and experiences". After renaming themselves after a Vibrators song they began to write songs about those experiences.

One monumental independent single, the already mentioned “Suspect Device”, and Stiff Little Fingers were launched onto the world. The lyrics to “Suspect Device”, and 6 other songs on “Inflammable Material” were written by journalist Gordon Ogilvie. He had met the band at one of their early gigs, encouraged the band to keep writing about their lives in Belfast and showed them some words he had written, which the band set to music and became “Suspect Device”. Ogilvie became SLF’s manager,  set up Rigid Digits the label that released their debut single and has been credited by Jake Burns as being the 5th member of SLF.

That debut single piqued the interest of Rough Trade records who took on the band and distribution of “Suspect Device”. In October 1978 they released their second single, the equally powerful “Alternative Ulster” and in February 1979 “Inflammable Material” became ROUGH 1, the first album to be released by Rough Trade Records. 

It begins, as we already know with a re-recorded version of “Suspect Device”. “State Of Emergency” (“You're looking around you, But hate has made you blind”)and “Here We Are Nowhere” (“No shows in town, There is no place to go, Here we are nowhere, Nowhere left to go”)thunder along and then we reach one of Stiff Little Fingers truly great songs, “Wasted Life”. It crashes in with a big, distorted power chord before Jake Burns bellows

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 no soldier, I won't take no orders from no-one

Stuff their fucking armies, Killing isn't my idea of fun

The pressures on young kids in Northern Ireland in the late 70’s weren’t just your normal school, parents, girls problems we were having on the other side of the Irish Sea. You had fully armed British soldiers patrolling the streets you lived on and on the other hand pressures from the paramilitary organisations from whichever side of he sectarian divide you were on to play your part and support the “cause”. Jake Burns makes it very clear he’s not gonna kill for any side in that first verse. By the last verse he makes a comparison between those pressuring the likes of him and some of history’s less savoury inhabitants

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

Over on side 2 there’s a quite fantastic cover of Bob Marley’s “Johnny Was” with Marley’s gentle reggae lilt being replaced my shuddering guitar riffs and impassioned vocals. It’s a story that works perfectly in Trenchtown or Belfast. There really is no let up on this record at all. As Paul Morley said of it in the NME it is a "crushing contemporary commentary, brutally inspired by blatant bitter rebellion and frustration" going on to claim it was better than “Never Mind The Bollocks..”, “The Clash” and as seismic in its importance as “Ramones” !

Surprisingly not a whole lot of the album is about Northern Ireland and the troubles. Less than half the songs reference those two things and one of those, “Alternative Ulster”, while it does make mention of the Army on the street and the RUC is really just about being a bored teenager with nothing much to do. Jake Burns has said of it "Everybody refers to it as "the Irish record" but…there's probably 4 out of 13 (songs) that refer specifically to Northern Ireland. The rest of it is just disaffected teenagers kicking against the world”.

Wasted Life - https://youtu.be/8nx8adlkvFw?si=iMi8c4Irypk4Q7aQ