Jake Burns of Stiff Little Fingers

While many of the bands at the forefront of the movement are now mere footnotes in the history books, there are others, including Stiff Little Fingers or SLF as they prefer to be known, who continue to play not only the anthems of the time, but are also creating new music packed with stinging social commentary to an ever growing audience of today’s disgruntled youth.

As SLF head out on the road once again for a two month European tour, including a gig at the Brook in Southampton on Thursday, the ethos of what punk stood for is not only alive and well, but is finally gaining a certain level of acceptance.

For SLF’s guitarist, lead singer and founding member Jake Burns, it’s a period of time he recalls fondly.

“Punk for me was like I had found a club I wanted to be part of. We were in the second wave of punk with bands like the Skids and the Ruts; we played together and hung out together.

There was a friendly rivalry, there were a lot of like-minded people who you could relate to, and the musicians and fans both understood what it was like being young in the UK at the time,” says Burns down the phone line from Chicago.

Formed in Belfast, Northern Ireland during the height of the English and Irish troubles in 1977, the band quickly developed their own sound.

As with most punk bands they were selfsufficient, arranging their own gigs, making the posters and even their own record sleeves, as Burns explains: “When we released one of our first singles Suspect Device, a friend of ours photocopied 500 sleeves at the local polytechnic, the problem was they came out on these big sheets of paper, so we stayed up all night cutting them out and gluing them together.

“The late great John Peel played our single every night for about ten nights, and we were shouting at the radio “stop playing it”.

It went on to sell 30,000 copies. We always vowed that if we ever made any money off the single we were going to buy sleeves,”

he says with a laugh.

Due to the exposure on the John Peel show the band’s first album Inflammable Material in 1979, reached number 14 in the UK charts, and was the first album from an independent label to enter the charts.

A move to London soon followed, and a year later saw the release of the second album Nobody’s Heroes which included the singles Straw Dogs and At The Edge, which led to the bands infamous appearance on Top of The Pops.

The band was forbidden from ever being on the show again, due to the accusation from the BBC that they didn’t take it seriously as they weren’t playing live.

Three more albums followed, before the group decided to call it a day.

Burns went on to form a short-lived group with ex- Jam bassist Bruce Foxton, who would later join SLF as their permanent bass player in 1991.

Burns reformed the band on a temporary basis in 1987, but after a sell-out tour of Germany, the reunion became permanent.

The group has lost none of its anti-establishment credentials, with the single Beirut Moon withdrawn from sale on the day of release, due to its alleged criticism against the government for not doing more to free hostage John McCarthy.

With an extensive tour and talk of a new album, SLF are back and doing what they do best, highlighting the concerns of your average citizen.

“I always write about what I know or have a strong feeling about. Growing up in Ireland during the height of the troubles, I tried to put as much social commentary into my songs as I could.

“When things go badly and it hits you on a personal level, you feel like you’re the only person in the world.

“Our songs are aimed at people who are living in the same environment and we just want to let them know that they are not alone, that we feel the same, and together we can create a voice that may bring about change.”

n The Brook, Southampton, Thursday