The March Violets Oslo Hackney London 28th June 2025 - A Review (Of Sorts)

 

I first heard The March Violets 41 one years ago in my mate Matt's bedroom. This was a time when we were both discovering music away from the mainstream. To the extent that finances allowed you would go and see who ever it was that was playing locally (locally in our case was Brighton). For Matt, whose finances were in better shape that mine, that meant that one week it could be the Subhumans at the Richmond, and The Sisters of Mercy at the Top Rank the next. One band that he latched on to was Leeds's March Violets... for a time he was seeing them in London too. I suspect that at that time the then singer Cleo was part of the draw. Thus it was that I was listening to the likes of 'Grooving In Green' and 'Snake Dance' on a mid week evening when I probably should have been studying for my mock 'O' levels or something.

The thing was that despite his enthusiam for the band and the fact that musically I liked them too, I never went along with him to see them back then. It has only been in the last 12 months or so that I went back and started listening to that old material again and better still there was an album of new material to get to grips with too, the excellent 'Crocodile Promises'. My plans to see them for the first time in London last year were derailed by an unexpected stint in hospital, so when further dates were were announced for this summer I got in quick and vowed to stay healthy!

Saturday was the start of a heatwave across the UK that culminated in yet more record breaking temperatures, but whilst the close knit streets of Hackney were generating steam heat, the dark confines of the venue space at Oslo were delightfully air-conditioned. Our arrival was delayed by the need to find a parking space (always a challenge in Hackney), so there was just time to purchase a shirt from Rosie, and watch the final two tracks from the support before the March Violets took to the stage. Opening with 'Made Glorious' and 'Long Pig', these two tracks being the only ones in the set that I was not familiar with was a great start. 'Crow Baby' brought me back into familair territory and from then on it was joyous. The old was quickly followed by a venture into the new with the brilliant 'Hammer the Last Nail', a highlight from the all round excellent 'Crocodile Promises' album. There is a distinct difference between the old and new material, whilst being unmistakably the work of The March Violets, the new material is more melodic than before. Tom Ashton's guitar shimmers over all and provides a strong counterpoint to Rosie Garland's great vocals.

The good news is that the Violets are still an angry band. Rosie mentioned that 28th June (the night of the gig) was the 56th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York when the gay community started to fight back, but it is a fight that continues into the present day. It is enough to say that Rosie Garland is not a supporter of the new US administration! Let's not forget that as a Leeds band, The March Violets came into being against a backdrop of industrial decline (felt most keenly in our northern towns and cities) and let's not forget that the streets of Leeds and Bradford had until recently been stalked by a derranged serial killer who took the lives of 13 women. Gritty times... that spawned Goth bands all around the city!

Tonight though, anger was turned into a celebration of their songs, each played loud and played purple!

The 'new' 'Kraken Awakes' separated old favourites 'Grooving In Green', 'Steam' and 'Walk Into The Sun'. The latter track really did transport me back to evenings whiled away in Matt's third floor bedroom playing snooker and listening to the band on his crappy old record player!

'Walk Into The Sun'

Oslo, Hackney

28th June 2025

In what seemed to be next to no time, the words 'Goodnight' came from the stage the main set was done. The encore offered up 'Fodder' (well received by an audience with an appetite for more!) and of course 'Snake Dance'.... and then they were gone and we were  turned out into the fading light (it was not quite 10pm) and high humidity of Mare Street.

So that was it, 41 years later than I would have liked I got to see The March Violets. I loved it and I think even Gunta was quite impressed.

Top Rank Suite Brighton 12th March 1980

 

Here's the second 'Nobody's Heroes' related recording, this one (unlike the later Rockpalasst show) happened in Brighton just a week after the album was unleashed on the record buying public.

Unfortunately, as a 45 year old audience recoding of the event, the sound is not that great, but it is a true record of the band at the time and it is the full tour set that includes material from the 'NH' album that would not get an live airing again after this tour.

After 'Straw Dogs' Jake deftly addresses the crowd on the unacceptability if lobbing glasses at the stage. Perhaps it was down to the Brighton audiences, but I remember Jake's pronouncement from the same stage offering to take someone out for gobbing when I saw them at the Top Rank in 1988 (here).

Thanks to Sewer Rat for the recording. Cheers!

MP3: https://we.tl/t-u0u2B6KGoU

Artwork: https://we.tl/t-v6lwsNalgE

Tour ad (Sounds 8th March 1980)

Westfalenhalle Dortmund 30th November 1980

 

So here then, as part of the 'Nobody's Heroes' album thread is the first of two associated live recordings. This first one, whilst of superior quality, being an audio rip of the 'Rockpalasst' television broadcast, is already in wide circulation. It does however, showcase the album quite nicely.

What a brilliant piece of music TV broadcasting Germany's 'Rockpalasst' was, a type of programming sadly missed... and I say this from the perspective of someone who is trying to avoid all manner of vacuous Glastonbury footage this weekend!

FLAC: https://we.tl/t-lWbynPycC5

Artwork: https://we.tl/t-1ATDLaqF1w

Stiff Little Fingers Interview (Record Mirror 8th March 1980)

 Here's acontemporary interview from Record Mirror from the 8th March 1980, the week of the 'Nobody's Heroes' release.

POLITICS AND CHIPS

Pic: George Bodnar

I’m sitting in the Chrysalis Press Office with my plastic bag and my Dudley Reporters notebook, my coffee, cigarettes and lyric sheet. On the wall there’s a cartoon-cut-out from one of the dailies: “You are lazy, drunken and ignorant about Art, Literature and Music” the doctor is saying to his patient. “Why don’t you become a rock journalist?” Ha ha, Chrysalis.

There’s Chris poole, press officer, casually country that’s read white and blue/Gimme the British way honest and true/Gimme the chance to be one of the few”…

There’s Chris poole, press officer, casually hinting at the song’s irony and how it’s open to misinterpretation and all that stuff. ‘Fly the Flag’ from whence the lyric, is a new Stiff Little Fingers song; by intent, it’s a stab at bland patriotism, though it could be taken to represent the absolute reverse. Danger:

“That’s very much how we imagine the philosophy of someone who voted for Thatcher in the last election,” defends Jake Burns, “and to try and enhance that irony, we built Rule Britannia into the guitar solo – it should hopefully make people realize it’s a piss take; before you know it, you can end up with moron Nazis jumping around to it if you’re not careful.

“Hmmm I see.”

Burns is essentially the front-man Finger; in glasses, trilby and Inflammable Material T-shirt, he’s arrived with a tongue like a dead fish – it was his birthday party last night and he drank a lot. Jake Burns is 22…

Now he sits in an official Chrysalis interview room, three floors up on Stratford Place, where you can look over at Oxford Circus roof tops and dull sky, nursing cans of lager.

Ali McMordie sits with him; Ali, the bass playing Finger, drinks a lot, too. He contents himself with odd comments, asides, and Burns does the talking…

Stiff Little Fingers: a potted historical saga of formation for “fun”, as a recreation in 1970s Belfast – “Because there was nothing else to do” (McMordie). A saga of rejection letters from record companies, of a capsized contract with Island, and of a chart album for Rough Trade – ‘Inflammable Material’; That was the start of things.

‘Inflammable Material’ was loud and spiteful – an album bulging with ferocious frustration, flaws lying in occasional lapses towards News At Ten sloganeering, attributes lying in its seemingly limitless supply of ugly, concentrated venom.

“ I still stand by those songs,” reflects Burns. “I still feel as passionately about them as I did then – we still play them – but it’d be hypocritical to do new songs in that vein, simply because we don’t live there now… and we lose either way. If we write songs about Belfast now we’re copping out – and if we don’t we’re still copping out.

“I don’t believe in standing up and preaching to people – I think it’s wrong trying to use an entertainment medium to do that. Individual problems are only solved by individual people – I mean, it’s understandable what’s happened to us… we were only singing about our lives in the first place, but if your life happens to be in Northern Ireland you’re immediately classed as political, so you can’t win…”

Burns and McMordie drape themselves about the interview room while George Bodnar flexes his lens; they’re not quite sure how to pose. Stripped of stage and album polemics, there’s a fair air if stroppy light-heartedness about the pair that is quite endearing – there’s no real concerted effort to shield their faults or limitations.

Burns constantly breaks into his own streams-of-thought with “I donno,” as if surprised he’s expected to divulge actual answers and solutions to problems.

Ulster?

“Ulster? It’s far more subtle than bullets whizzing past your head; it’s like… there’s Belfast Shopping Centre, let’s say, which is packed on Saturday morning – but go there at six o’clock at night and it’s empty, absolutely deserted… and that’s because people just don’t go out at night.; you’re scared to. It’s never so much a physical thing as a war of nerves, ‘cause if and when something happens it’s all so unexpected. But because it’s unexpected it’s all the more frightening.

“The last time I was in Belfast, walking down the main street, I saw a building on fire, just thought, Oh, a bomb. And then I stopped and thought Wait a minute – there’s a building on fire and that’s all you think about it??”

McMordie: “It’s amazing what you learn to live with – something like that happens over here, and it’s totally different.”

Was that part f your reason for leaving?

“Yeah,” answers McMordie, plus, the way things are over there, everything’s geared up to keeping you in Northern Ireland, growing up, getting married, living close to your folks. I don’t think we really wanted to be part of that…”

That as it may be, guitarist Finger Henry Cluney still resides in Belfast.

Burns, presently resident in Earl’s Court, occupies a place with manager, co-lyricist and Daily Express personage, Gordon Ogilvie, someone whose presence must’ve proven initially suspect, perhaps?

“Well at first we were a bit wary, a bit suspicious,” goes Burns, “suspicious of what he was going to do – that he’d try putting words in our mouths; but he hasn’t done that… he’s written lyrics we haven’t liked, individual words even. I’ll tell him look, I can’t sing this word… if he comes up with something I’m not sufficiently annoyed about, something I can’t put myself into, it’s handed back.”

There’s no way you’re likely to be trapped singing things you don’t associate yourselves with? A shaking of heads and no-no-nos from the two Fingers. Much stress is placed on “experience” as the fuel of creative activity – otherwise Stiff Little Fingers don’t function. Jake Burns talked about his ‘Tin Soldier’ …

“That was written about a friend of ours, Alan, who’s actually in the army; that’s perfectly true, everything in that song. I sat up with him until about three in the morning, in a hotel, and he told me evetything about it.; about how he got into it, what he’s done to get out – hes even swallowed silver paper, so it’d show up as shadows on his lung – he’s tried claiming he’s homosexual, all for the good it does…”

“Tin soldier/he signed away his name/Tin soldier/No chance for cash or fame/tin soldier/Now he knows the truth/Tin soldier/He signed away his youth…”

Pop goes the missive: still, the Jake Burns across the table from me is barely the embittered Belfast youth who spat “We’re gonna blow up in your face” on ‘Suspect Device’: nor, for that matter, is he a vitriol-pumping upstart who goes “You oughta scratch from the human race/You are a waste of a name/A waste of time and a waste of space” on ‘I Don’t Like You’.

“Well that was a joke,” he maintains, “something Gordon wrote – he still won’t tell us who it’s about; it shouldn’t be taken seriously… we do tend to do so far over the top sometimes we end up halfway down the other side.”

You said it. But haven’t Stiff Little Fingers - perhaps through their own exploits, perhaps not – been placed very much in the role of political crusaders, purely because of their more extreme outbursts?

Burns: “We were really crusading against anything. We were never really standing up to anything; all we were doing was pointing it out – look, this is what happens, this is why you’re looking over your shoulder at night.

“I refuse to believe we’ve affected or changed anything – it’s just not true, impossible anyway. As a political situation it’s insoluble.”

Do you think that music should have any real function?

“I don’t know if it can have, I don’t think it’s that strong a medium; we’re not politicians.”

Ali McMordie butts in. “Well, perhaps it can – there are bands over there who’d seen us or seen the first album come out, and then decided to do it for themselves. I think it was Ian Dury on Something Else – he’d been playing in Ireland – he said the best thing for people to do was to just start their own things.”

Burns thinks for a moment, says “The solution to Northern Ireland’s problems is 10,000 punk bands?”

The deliberation flutters on.

Stripped of their Ulster environment, their social polemics and their barbed-wire spoof attachments, the Stiff Little Fingers of ‘Nobody’s Heroes’ and ‘At The Edge’ are cleaner, tidier, more… crystallized, more… personal. Jake Burns?

“Personal? It couldn’t not be. The newer songs were written about things particularly close to us… like ‘Wait And See’, which was about the last drummer… and had quotes from my father in it. It was also about how, when you’re just starting out, say in Northern Ireland, you just can’t get gigs – if you’re not playing country and western or Top 30 cover versionsthere they don’t wanna know.”

McMordie: “Hell of a market for show-bands there. Its’s all people seem to want to listen to.”

And now, of course, things are different. For all their naiveties, shortcomings and connotations, SLF’s most lasting quality is the air of pride, of dignity that pervades their work: and besides they already have so many faults and built-in paradoxes it’s hard to be suspicious anymore.

“What’s best,” Burns is concluding, “is it’s nice to know now, that somewhere in Northern Ireland there’s a show-band playing a cover version of ‘At The Edge’… and that the guy who wouldn’t let us into his hall two years ago is now paying them a hundred quid a night to do that song.”

That’s it.

No new ground, no revolutionary insights – purely because the SLF institution has few strings attached: they don’t wear masks.

Burns and McMordie reminisce the events od last night’s party, McMordie claims the remnants of the alcohol, I look for the toilet, then take my leave via the plush Chrysalis lift and the plush Chrysalis reception area, where all those plush gold discs line the wall, and out onto plush Stratford Place again – all the tall buildings and important offices. Two Fingers are in there somewhere, I think. Seems funny than…

And of course, this feature has no punchline.

Top 30 Punk Albums #1 Nobody's Heroes - Stiff Little Fingers

 

The second offering from Stiff Little Fingers, 'Nobody's Heroes' was released in early March 1980, just a year after their 'Inflammable Material' debut was release. A good work rate but not an uncommon one when it comes to the first two albums from a band with a strong live reputation. The band were not quite done with material drawn from teenage years of living with 'The Troubles'. Why would you drop that so soon when you are one of the few bands from Northern Ireland writing and recording such stuff? However, the scope of the album is much broader than that of its predecessor with songs about leaving home 'Gotta Gettaway', the hard road to recording success 'Wait & See' and the issues of fame once you get there 'Nobody's Hero'. A surprising inclusion is 'Doesn't Make It Alright', an anti-racism track by The Specials that had only been released five months earlier on their eponymous debut. Then a classic and still a classic 45 years later. True to form, the album also contains a couple of big anthems in the shape of 'Fly The Flag' a biting commentary of the new politics of Margaret Thatcher and her Tory Government, then not yet 12 months old, and 'Tin Soldier' a song describing the folly of a young man's enlistment into the army.

All told a great album and one of a classic consecutive trio of albums by SLF starting with the aforementioned 'Inflammable Material'.

Here's what the critics had to say at the time.

New Musical Express (1st March 1980)

STIFF LITTLE FINGERS
Nobody's Heroes (Chrysalis)

I CAN scarcely credit that it's a full 12 months since the release of 'Inflammable Material', that astonishingly strong first album by Stiff Little Fingers, so resoundingly does the impact of its brash impassioned outburst still ring in the ears. Within an instant it smashed all suspicion that the young Belfast band had merely been adopting the surface style of terrorist turmoil (its barbed wire imagery would fit punk chic like a dream) to conceal a lack of substance; in fact there was a commitment and vision to match the vividness of the 'Iocal colour' absolutely.

But that was 12 months ago, 12 months that have seen Stiff Little Fingers establish themselves as another successful act in the rock'n'roll circus and so, inevitably, become more distant from the situation which ignited and hurled them on their headlong flight.

Where 'Inflammable Material' was a frenzied expression of breathless escape, an outpouring of fresh energy mingled with stale disgust,'Nobody's Heroes' catches the band in a phase of growing self-awareness: still running, but allowing themselves a glance at how far they've come;still militant, but coming to terms with the realisation that like patriotism, anger isn't enough - foul realities require understanding as well as that; still in the realm of the political; but trying to deal sometimes with the more purely personal also.

Above all, they seem to be trying not to repeat themselves realising that each repeatition grows necessarily more hollow than the last - to spare us the sad spectacle of shellshock rock degenerating into agit-pop.

The lyrical diversification on this album is reinforced by.a certain broadening of musical horizons too - not too pronounced as yet, but the signs are there. Not surprisingly; therefore, 'Nobody's Heroes' is not an album to match the sheer obsessive and single-minded thrust and attack of its predecessor, because that stage is past and rather than be content to mimic it, SLF sound determined to develop.

It’s not a perfect record in any sense, but it's a hell of a good one, The twin guitars of Jake Burns and Henry Cluney, with the powerful back-up of bassist Ali McMordie and new(ish) drummer Jim Reilly, still mesh to form a-rock'n'roll unit of deadly effectiveness, full of demonic momentum and ever-present inventiveness.

The harsh rasp of Burn's voice gives everything,that cutting edge which, tethered to the urgency of the songs; makes complacency impossible; there's no comfortable way of accommodating this music, only outright rejection or complete acceptance. Which is exactly the way things should be.

KICKING OFF with 'Gotta Getaway', a forceful assertion of independence and purpose, the band cartwheels through 'Wait And'See', which is a sort of proudly defiant potted history of the group coupled with fond farewells to the original drummer Brian Faloon.

'Fly The Flag' pours withering scorn over the reawakened rat-race mentality that's being stridently proclaimed as our economic and moral salvation, and to hell with those who can't keep up.

'At The Edge' is another reminiscence about the teenage impulse to strike out for unknown freedoms, not the most novel theme for a song but breathing a fierce authenticity from every note all the same.

Side one closes with ‘Nobody's Hero' itself- a slightly defensive piece of self-justification (prompted, one suspects, by a review of last year's Lyceum show) to the effect that Burns emphatically rejects stardom and neither, by the same token, can he take responsibility for righting wrongs.beyond his control. Talk of heroes, he's saying; whether admiring or accusing, only distracts from the real problem, our inaction and passiveness.

'Bloody Dub' opens the second side and being an instrumental, its title could look at first like the gratuitous use ' of the vocabulary of tragedy simply for cheap effect. It isn't. 'Bloody Dub' is far better than a throwaway reggae workout; the best exposition yet of the band's potential, it's an expressive and almost shockingly evocative piece of work. Shattering glass and grating guitar drive the message home as well as any words could ever do.

The album's most surprising inclusion, however, comes in the form of a cover version: The Specials' 'Doesn't Make It All Right'. Given SLF’s concern with bigotry in all its different manifestations, the lyrics follow on logically, and it's not their first excursion into a reggae-based song either (the last LP had Marley's' Johnny Was'); but the band's frantic approach works against the restraint and simplicity inherent in the song, and it compares unfavourably with the original.

'I Don't Like You' is just a semi-serious stream of vindictive invective rather on the lines.of Cooper Clarke's 'Twat' ("If a thought came into your head / It would die of loneliness… You don't.entertain ideas / You simply bore them") and 'No Change' continues to explore the personal aspects of the band's present situation as it relates to the lives they've left behind.

'Tin Soldiers' finishes the side on a more stirring note, a bitter tirade for recruiting sergeants everywhere and typical of the Fingers' razor sharp whirlwind of noise.

Most of the words are again contributed by manager/journalist Gordon Ogilvie, as direct and concise as the music which brings them into life. Stiff Little Fingers might be nobody's heroes, but they're still worth anybody's time. Don't hang around.

Paul Du Noyer

In sounds Garry Bushell took a harder line on the album, but it's a review that kind of concurs with my own feelings towards 'Nobody's Heroes', critisisms that for me place the album some behind 'Inflammable Material' and 'Go For It' in terms of the Best of Fingers.

Sounds (1st March 1980)

Mike Nichols writig in Record Mirror was harsher still. And even here I get the point that musically, the material on 'Nobody's Heroes' was in the the style of The Clash circa 1978, but they (like all of the other first wave punk bands) had moved on and that particular musical space was now squatted by the likes of The UK Subs and the Upstarts... and to my ears, whilst I love the Subs and the Upstarts, SLF were a cut above.

Record Mirror (1st March 1980)

STIFF LITTLE FINGERS

'Nobody's Heroes'

(Chrysalis CHR1270)

"NOT PRODUCED by Nick Lowe" is this album's most memorable sleeve note and, by gum, I'm
ready to believe that. Subtle, SLF are not, Jake Burns' vocal chords sounding like they receive a
thorough sandpapering, every hour on the hour.

Rougher than Strummer at his rawest, Burns' voice is the most distinguishing feature of this album, which, Iike its predecessor, has arrived a good two years too late to have its fullest impact.

Judging by the credits, the Fingers are still very much the puppet of Daily Express journalist Gordon Ogilivie, whose philosophy about giving all the lyrics a political slant left the way open for the Undertones to become Northern Ireland's freshest talent.

To be fair, this time round, politics take more of a subsidiary role, though 'Fly The Flag' is hardly an exercise in patriotism, even if it is to be praised for its restrain . 'Wait And See' is a rowdy two fingers at all the band's early skeptics which many young groups are likely to ' be able to identify with, while the single, 'At The 'Edge', is more universal still.

But the unbridled abuse of 'I Don't Like You 'is nothing but a poor man's version of John Cooper Clarke's 'Twat', and .as for covering The Specials' ' It Doesn't Make It Alright', I do a better cover myself - ask John Shearlaw.

Even cornier is 'Tin Soldiers' , doubtlessly based on CSN & Y's 'Ohio' , except anti-war songs weren't even the last decade's thing.

Musically , there's nothing particularly ambitious, and if there still is a market for the three-chord thrash, I'm sure it's more likely to be in the dance hall rather than the sitting room . At times, there s some OK rock 'n' roll , but, I ask myself, is that what the world really needs' at this point in time? An unholy pastiche of the Upstarts, Sham and early Clash? If you ain't got the picture, you obviously do need it.

I don't.  + + +

MIKE NICHOLLS

And just for good measure, here's a final word from Smash Hits.

Smash Hits (20th March 1980)

Top 30 Punk Albums - A New Post Thread

I am a male of a certain age and whilst I am not one for spreadsheets (the only time I will open an Excel spreadsheet is if it is in work hours and I am getting paid for it) I have been known over the years to make lists. Here is one then, a Top 30 of punk albums. My opinion (obviously) and never cast in stone. If I wrote the list on a Monday it would be at least 30% different if I repeated the exercise on the Friday. What I will try to do here is pick an album and find as much contemporary press information related to it, reviews, release information, promo ad material etc. In addition, where possible I will do my best to include a recording from the tour associated with a given album. The order that the albums will be presented in will not represent any preference for one over another, it is enought to know that they are all in the top 30 somewhere.

Let's see how we get on then.

M TELUS Montreal 1st June 2013

 

OK, here's one from Montreal in the United States of America (only joking... I hope!). As a recall, the band had some difficulty with the first night of the tour in Toronto but it was all back on track by the time they rolled into Montreal. This recording has some tracks cut ('Norfolk Coast' and 'Burning Up Time') but otherwise is a nice sounding record of the night.

MP3: https://we.tl/t-QXD4FgZNhk

Artwork: https://we.tl/t-MsNXbxJGO7