Dead Kennedys Interview (Record Mirror 27th September 1980)

Here's an interview from the time of the album release and supporting UK dates that Jello did with Record Mirror. In it he sets out the band's plan to shake America out of its torpor and 'Me' mentality.

 Record Mirror 27th September 1980

IN the early, hours of the morning the packed dance floor of San Francisco's Fab Mab is a sweaty mess of jerking flesh. It's time for Jello Biafra's finest gesture and before you can say 'Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad', the Dead Kennedys' lead singer and strategist has taken a ' flying dive into the audience. Dirk Dirksen, the club's owner, strolls on stage and reels Biafra 'back by his mike cord. Before you know it, Jello's up again, gesturing manically to illustrate a lyric, singing in a punk whine that threatens to become a shriek.

This has been going on for two years. The Dead Kennedys have perfected their act 6,000 miles and four years away from the English punk explosion. Is San Francisco a cultural backwater or just a different battlefield? How come an American punk band are zooming up the charts in a land supposedly taken with 2 Tone and the new psychedelia, with an album recorded on a British label and unreleased in the States? Questions, questions.

A few nights after the Kennedys' farewell gig at the Mab and three days before he leaves for Britain , Biafra meditates on such topics before and after dancing his head off to Texan punkband Really Red. Biafra is an ex-hippie, something of an anarchist and ex-Mayoral candidate for San Francisco. He got over 7,000 votes because he's a good tactician and because he's got a sense of humour. When the Dead Kennedys toured in the sticks of California they called their visit to redheck territory the 'Turd Town' tour. Biafra's tactics are to be as tactless as possible.

When he explains why, Biafra sounds like he's issuing an official statement, pre-written and composed. He talks like an emphatic newsreader, laying emphasis on every other word: "Americans are governed by fads. They are kept together like rodents by their fear of failing to keep up with the Joneses. They are constantly on the watch for new products to be fed - but only ones that everybody else is buying too. They're very afraid of being weird which is what we've got to convince them is the best thing they can be in these circumstances.

"A lot of the people in this country are basically zombies. You must attack them, annoy them, get under their skin, make them as uncomfortable as possible. Our live shows are basically ways of torturing the audience so that they enjoy it but also go home.feeling different. Unglue the minds of the zombies. We re trying to combat the obedience training."

Now this is all very well, but does a band that specialises in head banging punk really liberate its audience or just create a bunch of media-mirror zombie punks? Punk . still has d very different status in the US however, still remaining firmly underground and thus retaining a vital part to play.

Biafra explains: "Americans are so conservative . They don't have the same access to the media. People in England are primed to be . interested in what's going on; America's a much larger country. News travels slowly and people are conditioned to stick with the old bands."

Biafra contends that "America's behind but it's very much alive. " He swears his allegiance to punk rock while saying the Kennedys are gradually moving from buzzsaw to more morbid, diseases rock, "a further descent into hell.

"Punk rock and garage rock never die, People are always going to like getting hit in the guts with rock and roll . I have since I was seven. Every time bands like SLF, Crass, Cockney Rejects or the Ruts come out they immediately catch on . because people don't care if they're dated, they like it. We' ll keep the . punk base but build on it. We don't want to wimp out and go pop or get so arty that you're basically playing to yourself in the mirror."

'Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables' was the statement of the Kennedy's a year to six months ago. While musically and sometimes thematically derivative of the Pistols and Co. it has manic tinny tranny quality of its own, particularly on such speedy little operas as 'Kill The Poor', which dances as merrily and hysterically as a drowning rat towards the apocalypse. Satire has always been the strength of Californians like the Tubes and Zappa,and Biafra's commitment and love of psychosis takes the satire one step further, towards the mania of Napoleon V's ‘They're Coming ToTake Me Away'.

Jello's favourite scenario, one that is repeated in such songs as 'Chemical Warfare', 'I Kill Children', and 'Stealing People's Mail', is the trashing of the normal, fat, complacent white consumer by a psychotic on the loose. Biafra takes as much delight in portraying psychotics, red-neck and otherwise, as does John Cale, whose 'Sabotage' Jello admires. Don’t you get a little carried away there Jello? Are you criticising the culture that produces such warpoes or becoming one yourself? And why don't you go out and literally eat the rich if it fascinates you so much?

"In a sense it's more effective to put these things across in a song than do them in real life. Son of Sam never got to make a record, he got put away instead. I think it helps people who are stuck in ruts but have violence bubbling inside them in their daydreams, to find that/there are people who think the same as they do."

Somehow I don't feel Jello's real interest is in comforting the psychotic in everyone. As America boringly drifts towards a neo-fascist President like Reagan, Jello is more concerned to see the slumbering anger released. In any form.

"A vacant stranger is someone who may seem perfectly quiet and normal for decades on end and then suddenly breaks out and performs some violent act that forever brands his name in the history books. Vacant strangers are the creative criminals, there's one in all of us, and it's about time he came out.

"Vacant strangers' do good things as well as bad things," Jello adds as an unconvincing afterthought, fact is, like any decent satarist or home loving boy, Jello is half in love with the monsters that his country produces and thus the diseased state of the country itself: "I think in order to expose something completely you have to immerse yourself in it. I learned, as a method actor, to immerse myself in other characters. Some of the characters in the songs are characters, some are parts of me."

There's a part of 'Jello that wants revenge, that wants the blood of his complacent compatriates. It's a nasty, giggling, bullying side and Biafra indulges it - in his songs at least: "Evil fascinates me. In order to expose situations rather than just say 'I hate it' I prefer to immerse myself in it and expose it from within. "

Yes sir, there's a vacant stranger in all of us and as far as Jello is concerned it takes a band as tactless and tasteless as the Dead K's to put us in touch with him: "Americans have very thick sugarcoated skulls and they have to be beaten over the head." Jello admits the dangers of being misunderstood by his audience as encouraging the monsters the band's attacking through immersion and, for once, is stumped: "The irony worries me and I haven't really thought of a solution to it yet."

There probably isn't one. Because Jello belongs in that great old American tradition, the trash syndrome. He loves and hates the trash, the sheer godawful tastelessness that is so much a part of America. So he attacks it in his songs, particularly the normal white middle-class version that eats polyester and wears popcorn (spot the deliberate mistake!) while championing it in the band's name and elsewhere.

Oh yes, about that name which still works a lot more powerfully than, your average mega-chord: "The Kennedy assassinations torpedoed the American dream. In the fifties there was nothing but talk of big cars and better this, life here was supposedly getting better everyday. Nobody believes that any more. The assassinations were the end of the American Dream and the beginning of the 'Me' generation.

Jello Blafra lives-in a melodramatic world of B Movie . scenarios .. America is a lot sicker than he is and he's a dab hand at diagnosing it, even if, as he perhaps worries, he's a part of that sickness. He's part patient, part doctor, part mutant, part moralist. He hates the 'ME' spirit of America most of all.

"We're coming from a tradition that is no tradition, a culture that has no soul unless you count lust and greed. That's the Protestant work ethic, 'God helps those who help themselves' Americans have twisted this so they believe, 'I must help myself above all so I don't care whose back I stab'. I want everything right now for free. The American empire is crumbling right now due to the same sort of mental laziness and corruption that brought down the Romans and the English.”

I enjoy it when Biafra says these things. Shock and confrontation are not in fashion right now, probably never are in California. Serious as he sounds, the Dead Kennedys are above all humourists with trash comics as an inspiration, B Movie camp and garageland .They are second generation punks putting out the first San Francisco punk album because only England would put up the money. There's still no one doing that here, though maybe the arrival of.Rough Trade will change that.

The Kennedys are proud of their San Franciso scene roots: "We come out of a scene that's been thriving for three years and we' re very thankful to finally get an album out when so few bands have been able to do so. It's kind of a sick joke when you think of the people over here like the Dils or the Avengers who didn't get an album out when they deserved to and were slagged off in the European press for being clones of bands that had started off with influences from American bands. There's a lot more where we come from."

Well , there you have it, the arrival of another spokesman and another band from San Francisco with 'Dead' in their name. There's not much that's grateful about this lot however. Thank God someone's treading on a few toes in America today.

Sure the Kennedys are dated, headbangers in style and music, trash anarchists in Iyrics. Sure there's a nasty adolescent bully in Jello's lyrics just bursting to get out and get violent with a few innocent bystanders (innocent bystanders and vacant strangers, what a . combination!) but Jello's right, punk is here to stay and the Kennedys . are saying the unsaid, being loud and obnoxious, in California at least.

Maybe Jello, East Bay Ray, Klaus Flouride and Ted will upset a few city councils on the English tour. About time too. California Uber Alles.

Dead Kennedys Music Machine London 8th October 1980

 

On their first UK tour, promoting the debut album, 'Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables', here are the Dead Kennedys in London on 8th October 1980. The set on this night features ten of the fourteen tracks that appear on the album.

FLAC: https://we.tl/t-U6niLnvgiA

Artwork: https://we.tl/t-q2Ip8Jg0ie

Top 30 Punk Albums #3 Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables - Dead Kennedys

 

Thinking now of an album from beyond our island shores. For sheer balls, this album released in September 1980 can lay a reasonable claim to be America's answer to 'Never Mind The Bollocks'. Jello Biafra and Co. set out their stall in 1978 in a way that conservative America was not ready for. Without even considering the music the very name, 'Dead Kennedys' was incendiary! Remember this was just a short 15 years after a sniper's bullet took out the nation's presidential golden boy and ten years after JFK's brother, Robert, shared a similar fate in 1968.

Biafra's stage presence during DKs gigs balanced the role of lead singer with that of performance artist. Like Rotten before him, Biafra would provoke a reaction from his audience. Moreover, the band's antagonistic relationship with local law enforcement was such that the members of the San Francisco Police Department often attended their home turf gigs and not with a view to enjoyment.

With their debut album, 'Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables', Dead Kennedys declared war on the American Dream, systematically attacking corruption and hypocracy observed both internally and in US foreign policies being followed by the US Government at that time. These attacks set Jello Biafra's razor sharp lyrics to East Bay Ray's killer surf guitar riffs and Klaus Fluoride's pounding bass. And all this was achieved with a large dose of vicious humour... surely the element that would have enraged the targets of the band's songs the most!

It's funny that I read a BBC review of the album when thinking whether to use this album in the list. The point of that review was that like 'pre-distressed Ramones T-shirts' now avalable in Next that effectively lay waste to a band's legacy, Dead Kennedy's have suffered the same fate and the potency of this first album has been lost. On this point, I think that it is important to consider those reviews that were contemporary to the album's release, such reviews suggest the opposite of the BBC position. The two that I have found are not full of superlatives at all. The music press were very critical of such music at the time, as they were tired of punk and to them 'Fresh Fruit' was more of the same 'punk by numbers'. In contrast, more recent reviews associated with various rereleased formats of the album cannot get away from the fact that Dead Kennedy's were the band around which a whole new punk rock scene coalesced, namely US hardcore. Nor can they escape the fact that the band subsequently influenced some of the US bands that formed in their wake that have gone on to be some of the biggeest bands in the world. In short, Dead Kennedy's have attained a status within punk that they never really enjoyed whilst they were together (with Jello).

The thing that keeps this album so vibrant is that the subject matter of the songs is (sadly) as relevant now as it was in 1980... even more so I would say. Ronald Reagan was a worthy adversary... but up against Trump he was a pussy cat (or should that be a chimpanzee?)

Here's a couple of UK reviews:

New Musical Express 27th September 1980

Record Mirror 27th September 1980

O2 Academy Glasgow 29th January 2022

 

Apologies, I have no idea how I came into posession of this one from 2022. It would appear that it originated from a sale on eBay. The notes with it indicates that on this, the second of two nights in Glasgow, 'Sometimes' was played but is missing from this recording for some reason. Anyway, other than a missing track this is quite a good recording of the night's proceedings.

FLAC: https://we.tl/t-ro19RkX478

Artwork: https://we.tl/t-0uJ38FOzB2

Penetration Interview (New Musical Express 11th November 1978)

 

"Every night before I go to sleep/Find a ticket, win a lottery/Scoop the pearls up from the sea/Cash them in and…”

The Meek Shall Inherit... Gobbing fans, coloured vinyl, having their gear ripped off, etc, etc. IAN PENMAN admires the soundchecks.

Camera Eye: PENNIE SMITH

A SINGING comes across the stage, and collides with its echo. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to-now.

The soundcheck constructions and interruptions Still interfere but they're merely making up the theatre for the night. Now, the coloured confidence of the lighting is unnecessary. The singing finds its place regardless, without the accustomed relief of the stage's rainbow.

This is another. One slightly familiar, massively closer. A hypnotic, fragile motif, somewhere over gift wrapping and labels, complaint and retaliation, pointless spite and the steep boredom of movement through a leisure industry.

To feel this feel you have to un-listen, for the gesture and angle lack extravagances. It is hard to tell whether there is 'mystery' at work, but there is definitely an unknown quality, the one usually referred to as a mystery.

And then there are three voices:

the First: "this is boring..."

the Second: "this is Heavy Metal…”

the Third: "this 'rock music' is dead…”

PAULINE cuddles into the front passenger seat, eating her favourite sweeties. Her bitter black hair is cellotaped into a spiky arrangement of plaits, and people don't pretend they're not looking at her (maybe she's a punk rock star!)

Robert Blamire, Penetration's bassist, is driving the car, one of two moving the band from London to Huddersfield for the opening date of a British tour; the second in Liverpool, the third back in London, the Roundhouse. Neale Floyd, one of the band's two guitarists, sits in the,back reading George Melly's Rum, Bum, and Concertina. I'm in the back, but I'm just a journalist, intrigued by the myth behind and upfront: life on the road!

The two cars stop at the inevitable (mythical) motorway services station; drummer Gary Smallman and new-ish guitarist Fred Purser vacate the other car with record company PR and Penetration's tour manager.

Everybody uh uhs the food - it's hard to tell whether it exists as anything beyond a projection of what you imagine it'll taste like, based on what you know it looks like.

We ha ha at certain rock bands, press articles; Penetration's debut album "Moving Targets" is faring a degree better than the second album of a certain other Virgin act, favourites though this other act reputedly are with the company. Relatives in the leisure industry.

That Second voice is mentioned, in passing.

HUDDERSFIELD is a fish 'n' chip shop town, a grey town. We arrive in the early evening, and the population looks grey as well, Friday-returning-home. A voice without a number says that developments suggest that for certain people the line between fish 'n' chip and rock 'n' roll isn't very clear.

In Huddersfield this seems appropriate, but doesn't really make much sense. Later, Penetration, waking up ,finally meet for the soundcheck in the night's venue, Huddersfield's Polytechnic - one of those late '60s institutions that make a brave attempt to appear bright and current and don't succeed, Penetration are greeted by two plain chaps from the Poly Entertainments Committee: sensible, 'punk' badges on sensible sweaters:clutching dinky cans.of pale ale like identity cards, chit chat of ho ho and yeah I know and so forth -they too make a brave attempt to appear bright and current.

Penetration seem slightly underwhelmed by their soundcheck, but I love it, and fell them so.

What? It's an integral part of it all! The soundchecks gradually improve over the weekend, stretching and shading to reach an incomparable point on Sunday afternoon.

The space operating between soundcheck and performance is something to wonder at , trace the clipping into place, the tidyng, timing, toughening. Falling into projection, the flecks of influence and successive levels, the piecing together of these, and sometimes the improvisation - this the most remarkable aspect: a stray noise suddenly seized on and stabbed, scratched , twisted into something other than 'self-indulgence' or 'communication' – it finds its place without the accustomed relief of a song's limited structure.

Penetration are good at this and sometimes, surprised, almost reluctant to admit to it. Pauline perfectly still, diminutive, hands slung in pockets, singing out of rainbow fatigues, her chill, piercing, mischievous voice cooing and snapping, often much lower than in performance, then raw and uninhibited into a curling, crashing lash of noise, still 'rock', not lapsing into endgame.

And left as a blunt echo in the emptiness, no-applause to justify its existence.

Within Penetration there is a potential and desire for experiment, a definite commitment, don't worry at the moment about any 'innocence'.

There's always the wiring and acoustic positioning as well- always the background, beforehand, rushing, rig. Tonight Neale's amp has burst somewhere inside, and obstinately resists repair.

The band's road crew have always been friends; it works. On top of this (always) are the 'Hounslow Mob' - six Penetration devotees from London who early on wiped out the line between 'follower' and 'friend'. They seem to lose jobs and the trivial like to pursue Penetration - they get a name check on the "Moving Targets" sleeve - shifting gear, flogging ephemera, forging autographs, dodging skinheads :They try to sell me a Tshirt. I try to resist.

Outside the Poly and into the car, descended upon by local fans, all of who look to be aged between 12 and 15; Pauline is bemused. Back to the hotel and some fish 'n' chips?

PAULINE isn 't feeling too good, her cold is worsening, and she's sick on the Poly gymnasium left wing before going on stage.

The band aren't wholly satisfied with the night's show (and the next one at Liverpool will bear them out) - but it is still v. good, good to be back, a homely chemistry between band and audience, a very pure reaction, romantic, begging, and it isn't distorted or manipulated.

After the encores, there's the dressing room ritual siege spearheaded by the eternal local-extrovert-fan - the one whose line between 'sycophant' and 'psycopath' is very suspect. Tonight's is a dumpling skinhead, whose reminiscences and nonsense loop and loop (the things Pauline has to put up with). The previous evening he'd been to see Buzzcocks, and got up on stage in "joost a fookin' Gee string! - gorrit in British 'Ome Stores like, walked in there, they thorr I were fookin' mad! 'D joost finished work 'tabattoir like…"

The psycopath asks Pauline three times how it feels being a sex symbol, and four times how he thought "present single were fookin' shit at first".

I ask Pauline how it feels being asked how it feels being a sex symbol- she is a married woman, after all ...

"I can't take it seriously, really…”

By the end ofthe night even the plain chaps from the Poly are drunk, asking for autographs on filthy pulp, leaving with the chorus of "Hurry Up Harry". Pauline's amused. I look for Huddersfield's street life but can't see it.

We leave in the morning with two parking tickets.

LIVERPOOL is a betting office city, a dull brown city. We arrive in the late afternoon and things look sadly shabby in the autumn sunshine, Saturday and deserted – Liverpool vs. Everton. There's a substitute voice.

Eric's Club is cramping and pleasant, a good rock club, Penetration are scheduled to play twice, the normal night time to be supplemented by an afternoon matinee for under-eighteens, an

Eric's tradition, even for the unlikeliest (Magazine?).

Penetration's soundcheck is even more absorbing than the last, but the afternoon performance is off-key, ill-balanced, unconfident. I slouch against a wall, out of range of pogo-spilt lemonade, picture Howard Devoto as Mr Punch, think about role diffusion and cheese rolls.

Somewhere between not being able to get a meal at the hotel and the second show one of the band's cars is stolen, the other broken into and left.

Into another place. Spurred on by the relative failure of the afternoon (Pauline: "We went down well, but to me it didn't mean anything, because I knew we weren't really involved, I want to get personal satisfaction out of it as well as the audience liking it…") the evening is faultless, exhilarating, unselfish and unselfconscious, fast, bouyant, joyous – when was the last time I thought I had to use that word?

I don't need to tell you how irresistible and irrepressible Penetration are on record but .at their live best the concealed and perfectly cautious undercurrents of the songs are cut open, charged, fully enjoyed. Confidence rises, Pauline especially thriving off the increasing momentum of the mood, more and more aggressively happy, improvising- in and out the vocal lines, stopping and laughing into the rhythm, texture, the band responding - shiver and smash.

The lovely thing with their music is its internal movement, in particular the emphatically judged, held back, launched drumming - hear the gathering introduction in "Nostalgia ". You  have to un-listen to the power they present - it's nothing to do with bombastic, spewing, gorging Heavy Metal: this is a new, hard modern rock machine, perhaps unique…

Penetration don't mistake their position, don't merely transpose old treats and screen , them with a superfluous sense of the heroic or violent or perverse, some wet artifice or sentiment; the use of conventional tension and tone (and time) is responsive to an untainted attitude - a lineage between means and end, not mileage. They_keep their balance, and it smiles.

The darkening and crossing outline of "Too Many Friends", the lJevation and dizzy sensuality of "Vision", the judicious guitar in "Movement", all breathless, dangerous, and still undeniably… There's no guilt. The two versions are so appropriate - Smith's "Free Money" and Shelley's "Nostalgia" (what kind of co-incidence that the authors have the same initials?) - the dreaming, wish, and tender, curious unknowing of both; Shelley and Smith were aiming for that romantic, fully empty effect - money isn't free , nostalgia isn't promising.

But Penetration play those songs, Pauline sings them as though they had been written for no-one else. Echo is now used on Pauline's voice for that quiet, glittering "Free Money" beginning, and the combination of image, that tantalising voice , and a ringing, lonely reverberation  there's nothing to compare it to now - a penetration which makes the word seem like it meant to whisper, or to sleep, ,then this snapped into the speed of the latter stage of the song, sharp and cold and sad.

In their own songs there's more often than not a plea or avowal; when disillusionment is present there's a feeling that the person has learnt rather than lost from the experience. Is this necessarily 'innocent'? - and is this the Penetration innocence so many have been at odds to convey? They certainly don't seem calculating in their actions... are they ‘innocent’?

Pauline: "I don't know. I think, well we can't notice what other people notice, but I think there is a certain innocence about us.

"I don't know why, but some of them (songs) sound sort of fresh, as though... it's something exciting for us, and we're not just going through the motions. We can't really tell like…”

At a high point in the Liverpool show Robert had fallen over - all six foot plus - but far from this throwing everyone off, they actually seemed to rejoice in it- all grinning healthily. (Falling over gets you accepted - Ed).

"We haven't created an image. Say, for instance, it.had been The Clash, and Mick Jones had fallen over, it would have been… well, he did fall over at the Music Machine - and had to kick Strummer when he got up. We just made a joke out of it."

Other things aren't so lightly taken... "Oh, at the moment there's one thing that's really annoying me - and that's this 'Heavy Metal' thing. Everybody's absolutely fed up with it; it seems to be the in term to use to slag off…"

The guitarists have their say on this. Not suprisingly, Purser more than Floyd, easy, 'cos he plays more lead breaks… "People say 'Oh, he's too flash, he uses technique too much' but I don't, I just play what I think fits.

"Yet people automatically think 'How shall we class him? Metal- because he uses a little bit of distortion and bends his notes.' They should have seen me about two years ago when I first started - then they would have seen a HM guitarist. HM is about self-indulgence, non-progression. When they do 'progress' the guitar or bass progress in speed or pose and the drummer in his solo.

"HM is some people's taste, what they like, but why should it be aimed at us and used as a slander?"

Neale: ''Probably just trying to annoy us…" And when I asked why they should want to do that, Pauline replied , "To corrupt our innocence.”

ARE they -pleased with "Moving Targets"? Pauline: "One thing we're not happy with is the luminous vinyl."

Did you have any say in that?

"Well, they did ask us, but when it was put to us, they said it wouldn't affect the sound quality.

We didn’t ' want 'THIS RECORD GLOWS IN THE DARK', And when we heard how bad it was we went mad…”

Who's working against whose interests?

Virgin gave Penetration a choice of (four) producers (yes, by jove, some companies give you no choice at all) and that aspect of "Moving Targets" did turn out well- if you can actually hear the Howlett/Glossop production under the fizz and grind luminous vinyl surface noise.

Pauline asserts that any act who claim to have 'complete artistic control' are telling fibs, and this is true. Penetration have never made a fuss, or name, out of it but it turns out that…

"We didn't have a contract until the Marquee gig, three and a half months ago. We had the one-off single, "Don't Dictate" with Virgin and we thought they'd sign us up after that, and they didn't. Then they released "Firing Squad" and we were still waiting…”

Robert: "They waited until like almost a week before the option ran out before they told us.

The Marquee gig was when they told us they wanted the album."

Pauline: "When we think about it, at the time (after "Don't Dictate") I don't think we were ready to be signed up - there's been a lot of changes in the band, Gary Chaplin left, and Neale came in, about February…”

"In the beginning we tended to be ignored by the rock press, and it used to get a bit annoying, like there were lots of other bands who we knew we were better than and who were getting more coverage. But in the long road it's worked out well, because a lot of bands who got coverage very early on in their career have burned themselves out straight afterwards."

SUNDAY, and back into London for the Roundhouse show. Camden is a whole-food restaurant town, a colourless town. Everybody has to hang about in the empty, draughty Roundhouse. Pauline plays drums; the soundcheck shrugs, balances. They play that incomparable version of "Free Money” but I seem to be the only person listening. Two reggae bands are on the bill, and  plump, beatific Rastas in pumpkin hats and immaculate clothes potter about like characters from a Noddy story, pre-set to permanent go-slow.

Pauline goes off to Camden Lock market to buy clothes, new clothes. The audience begin to arrive; there have been suggestions that a crypto-NF skinhead pack - the 'British Movement' are intent on gaining entrance and experimenting with the creative possibilities of concussion.

The fish 'n' chips begin to fall in place, (Surely the rainbow doesn't end in the past?)

The audience is pure 1976; there is a lot of spitting - but only, funnily enough, at Penetration - why is it that no one ever seems to spit at reggae acts? (Man cool- Ed).

The audience react well although certain portions do seem to be intimidated by the presence of skinheads.

When I'm not watching some of the awful people at the front of the stage - waiting for Pauline and then spitting - I observe the crop-haired sector, methodically planning out how and who to disturb. Modern times.

PAULINE says she didn't understand the audience. There's absolutely no malice in her voice.

After the encores and the dressing room ritual tonight, it's on to an oppressively pleasant restaurant in Knightsbridge, Virgin have ordered a set meal for 42 persons, ostensibly in Penetration's honour. Pauline still seems distracted by the grubby, pessimistic feedback from the audience.

At one end of one of the long tables reserved for the Virgin party,-Messrs Steve Jones, Paul Cook, and cronies congregate. Jones runs through his public image variations - throwing food, throwing the table over, crawling under the table, broadcasting the wishes of his libido in a loud, childish manner. He also demands fish 'n' chips.

If only you could see your alternative street heroes! I remember Pauline's comment about people who've burnt themselves out , Glancing around at the general excess and veneer, I turn to Pauline and ask her what she thinks of the occasion, held in her honour.

She says that she doesn't really know, she can't taste the food very well because of her cold.

Now everybody - aaahhh!

Penetration The Underworld Camden London 20th September 2009

 

Unfortunately, live recordings of Penetration of a 1978 vintage are prety rare, so the best that I can do here is offer up this one from London back in 2009. This is a great full set recording that in fact includes most of the tracks from the 'Moving Targets' era and associated tracks of that time.

Pauline and Penetration are still going strong in 2025.

FLAC: https://we.tl/t-535ifkTnGg

Artwork: https://we.tl/t-pqj582BCH1

Top 30 Punk Albums #2 Moving Targets Penetration

 

Most of the music scenes that we have witnessed in this country over the last sixty years or so have been city centric and this of course makes some sense. Our major cities have the inrastructure to support bands coming through, venues, rehearsal spaces and certainly since punk, the wherewith all to record and release records independently. In the UK, London and Manchester can quite reasonably lay claim to punk central status, but there were a few bands who somehow managed to muscle into the scene early doors, despite a considerable distance from those two epicentres of punk cool. Penetration were one such band, they came from Ferryhill, a small County Durham town with coal mining heritage. Approximately equidistant from and to the north of Middlesborough and Darlington, Ferryhill had an established colliery brass band, but as of March 1976 the town also had its own embryonic punk rock band. This new band, taking the name of The Points at the last minute first stepped onto a stage. The event occured in mid-January 1977 when Pauline and Co. were offered a support slot for Slaughter & The Dogs' gig at the Rock Garden in Middlesborough.

The punk rock grapevine served the band, now Penetration, well as within just four months of that first gig they had played the punk Mecca's in London (The Roxy on 9th April 1977 with Generation X) and Manchester (Electric Circus on 29th May 1977 with Buzzcocks, Warsaw, John Cooper Clarke and Jon the Postman - not a bad line up that!). This step tradjectory to becoming a lauded band of the punk genre meant that musical proficiency came to the band relatvely quickly and that is reflected in the meterial that was to form their first album, 'Moving Targets'.

Penetration promo (1978)

As a quick aside, some of the most memorable footage of the punk era, came courtesy of Granada TV and Tony Wilson with 'So It Goes'. This programme featured a number of iconic performances of bands playing in the Manchester area. On 16th August '77, Penetration returned to the Electric Circus (along with The Jam) to be filmed for the show. Penetration's performance of 'Don't Dictate' provided some great television as recalled by Pauline in here book 'Life's a Gamble', 'As we launched into 'Don't Dictate', giving it our all, some moron in the crowd started to flick beer from a bottle aimed right at my face. It was disconcerting and annoying and I tried to dodge the spray. He carried on with more intensity and now I was getting really angry. I tried to grab the bottle from him but couldn't quite reach, so the crowd piled on top of him and he was never seen again. It made for great and exiting footage and Tony reckoned that the Pistols and Penetration were his favourite film clips from the 'So It Goes' series'.

'Don't Dictate'

Electric Circus, Manchester

16th August 1977

Penetration's stock remained high throughout 1977, with high profile headline and support gigs regularly coming their way, including support to The Stranglers at Newcastle's City Hall on 12th October, as part of their Autumn tour promoting 'No More Heroes'.

Penetration's debut album moved ever closer with news of a release date and UK tour.

New Musical Express 20th September 1978

'Moving Targets' was released on Virgin Records on Friday 13th October 1978. The good news for Penetration was that no Friday 13th illfortune followed the album which was universally well received. Here's what the critics had to say.

New Musical Express 14th October 1978

Paul Morley was a fan as was Jon Savage who wrote the review that appeared in Sounds on 14th October 1978.

Sounds 14th October 1978

Record Mirror 14th October 1978

PENETRATION SCORE A BULLSEYE

PENETRATION: ‘Moving Targets’ (Virgin V2109)

Pre-destined to review this album thanks to someone’s astute (if negative) observations that a) my hair is shorter than anyone here at RM and b) I too, come from Newcastle. Thank God for circumstance, it does carry platinum linings…

Hmm, blink back one previous eye to stage witnessing of Penetration, many, many months ago at Newcastle Mayfair (when they supported a band that they have since overshadowed) left a strong taste of non-anticipation for the album. Still, events, voices, beliefs DO change.

Penetration, the album, the beginnings of conversation and the death of all hackneyed first impressions of the band. ‘Moving Targets’, a movement of excellence.

A mosaic of Pauline sounding like Patti, Pauline sounding like Poly Styrene, Pauline sounding like Nico, and more exact than any, Pauline being Pauline. A deft collection of voice and instrument, blood and mercury, sand and soil.

Tracks reach crescendos in preference to premature wash-outs, consumer endurables of self-penned numbers, a generously donated Peter Shelley song (‘Nostalgia’), and a superbly performed Smith Kaye composition ‘Free Money’.

‘Too Many  Friends’ reeks of eeriness, a hushed waxworks feel, a tuning down. An overall beauty of more than skin deep melancholia throughout the whole album, and a few sharpened hooks to skewer the party converted.

Penetration coming on in style – a superior album from a convincing band. Like I say, excellent… and thanks Pauline for letting me leave on a high +++++

BEV BRIGGS

Musique En Stock Festival Cluses 8th July 2006 DVD

 

I've said it on here before, but when Baz took to the stage at Weston-Super-Mare on 3rd June 2006 and announced 'And then there were four' the game completely changed again for me. But this was summer, a time for far flung festival appearances, so it was several weeks before I went along to Guilfest on 10th July in the company of Paul Cooklin for my first fix of The Stranglers Revitalised. A few days prior to that the band were in Cluses on the French/Swiss border for the 'Music En Stock' Festival. This is an incomplete audience shot record of that gig. It's not the greatest, but it is a record of a gig from a band on the verge of great change, if not in fortune, in credibility. The audio of the full set can be found here.

DVD image: https://we.tl/t-9ubWhIeCsN

Artwork: https://we.tl/t-u3RnH7YK2Q

Badge of the Week #8

 Back in the second half of the '80's if you wrote a letter to JJ he would reply and for a while his responses included a diecut vinyl sticker or two from the French leg of the Feline tour. I had a couple of these, one was stuck on my bass and that cat eventually lost its tail. I cannot recall what happened to the other. This was the image of the sticker with the 'en tournee' wording (25mm).

It's funny to think from the perspetive of the current digital age that there was a time when you could commune of sorts with the people in your favourite bands. Inclusion of an S.A.E. improved your chances of a response. S.I.S. managed this very well... although back then I had Burnel's Somersham address from where he would reply direct. The Stranglers were always really attentive when it came to that kind of contact with the fanbase.... maybe not as verbose in their replies as Paul Weller, but it was always much appreciated and in my book stood The Stranglers aprt from many of their contemporaries.

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)