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Jake Burns is the only original member still in SLF, the others having dropped out at various points since the band reformed on an occasional basis in 1987 "just for beers and fun" and then on a more permanent basis in 1989 where they made a conscious decision not to just trog through the back catalogue every night: "when we reformed, we did actually say that we weren't doing it for the nostalgia trip. If we were going to do it, we wanted it to be right, to be recorded and to be as valid as it's possible for us to be". Since then, Bruce Foxton, ex-Jam, has joined on bass and Steve Grantley (of Horse!) on drums and it's this line-up that recorded the new album in a little over a month earlier this year. There's a couple of real pop songs on the LP, "we've always written fuckin' pop songs!", and a startlingly good cover of the Grandmaster Flash classic, "The message", "a lot of people will be surprised at SLF attempting a rap tune but I think we've added enough of ourselves to make it blend with the main body of what we do. Certainly the themes of disenfranchisement, disillusion and a desire to better yourself are central to everything we've tried to do since day one." It was certainly enough to get me over to the gig and asking for an interview, which took place after a tortuously elongated soundcheck had put everyone in a bad mood..
[For those unfamiliar with the Lazy Journalist machine, Bruce and Jake pick words from one side of the board and a little robot character chooses random questions for them from the other side. The first board is Smash Hits questions, the second Clint Eastwood, you get bonus points for working the questions out, the band get points for working out the connection to Clint.]
Hovercraft
Bruce: It's a Vibrators song - or is it a lyric?
Jake: It's a song called "Stiff Little Fingers"...it came about 'cos
we'd actually got our first gig booked and we didn't have a
name--well, we had a name, we were going to be called The Fast..
Bruce: As in "bell"?
Me & Jake: eh?
Bruce: Belfast.
Jake: Nah, we just played everything...fast really, like everybody
else. A couple of weeks before the gig we found out there was another
band with that name so we told the promoter that we'd get back to him
with a new one. But then he phoned up and said that he had to have a
new name for the ad in the paper, so I just picked up an album cover
and [mimes scanning the track listing] said "we're called Stiff Little
Fingers", thinking that we'd change it later. But then we got reviewed
and it was a good review, so we were stuck with it.
Bruce: That's something I've learned today!
Jake: It's a good name, it shortens well and it looks good on the back
of leather jackets.
Cable Car
Jake: Ha Ha! There's one for ya!
Bruce: I think they should legalise cannabis--I don't think there's
any proof that it leads to harder drugs.
Jake: I agree with that...I don't think you need anyone to tell you
that if you take heroin you're gonna die, and I don't think that
marijuana does you any more harm than alcohol.
Bruce: Tell that to Bugs or Bonkers or whatever it was called.
Jake: Ha Ha! Drugs Bunny.
Me: Am I missing something?
Jake: Headline news. There was this girl who fed her pet rabbit on
marijuana leaves and the rabbit got so stoned that it didn't run away
when the pet dog mauled it...it came to an untimely end...So let that
be a lesson to ya!
Bucket
Jake: Not at the moment.
Me: Not after that soundcheck?
Jake: No, soundchecks are always like that...
Bruce: You sensed it was a bit, err...tense, did you?
Jake: In general I don't feel lucky--every week I watch the lottery
and think "well that's a quid saved, 'cos I'd never have picked those
numbers"...and that's from "Dirty Harry".
Me: There's always the hackneyed musician's quote for that one though,
"I'm lucky 'cos I'm doing what I love and I don't have to get a 9-to-5
to pay the bills."
Jake: Yeah, everybody says that..
Bruce: I was going to say that!
Jake: But I suppose from that point of view, yeah...we could be
working down a mine, if there were any mines left, of course.
Telephone
Bruce: I could've done that in '78 when the Jam played the Reading
Festival: the Pirates were the Good, Sham 69 were the Ugly and we were
the Bad--on the Melody Maker cover the following Wednesday.
Jake: Ha ha ha! I can't top that
Frog
Bruce: I get frogs in me garden.
Jake: Soundcheck that runs easily...
Bruce: Short drives in the bus...
Jake: Newcastle beating Man Utd 5-0..
Me: The simple things in life then?
Jake: Ha ha! Actually, beating Man U. 5-0 was my perfect day...we went
down the pub to celebrate afterwards and I found a tenner. And, of
course, that's "Dirty Harry" again.
Elephant
Jake: Not the lottery!
Me: Are there any ambitions you'd like to fulfil?
Jake: Buy Newcastle Utd--but I think you'd need more than a few
dollars.
Me: Any people you'd like to work with, that you might have to buy
in?
Jake: Bob Clearmountain, there's a few big-name US producers, like
Jerry Harrison who did the Live album, "Throwing copper", the sound on
that record is amazing...and that was the follow-up to "A fistful of
dollars".
Bruce: You really are Clinted-up.
Me: What other current bands do you rate? I hear things like The Seers
and Crazyhead in "You never hear the one that hits you" and
Offspring in your version of "The message" and one or two other places.
Bruce: I'm glad you like "The message", we're getting mixed reactions to
that.
Jake: A couple of people have said The Offspring...and I know
Crazyhead, I've got the "Desert orchid" album and they supported us,
maybe 5 or 10 years ago. Hmm, when we did "You never hear the one that
hits you" it wasn't supposed to come out like it did, we were
listening to the backing track in the studio and giving it "AN-GUS!
AN-GUS!" I mean, AC/DC for God's sake! I don't mind being compared to
Crazyhead though...What do I rate? Sugar are a great band, Live I've
already mentioned. I tend to like people that are, err...it's that
thing, young bands are quoting us as an influence and so obviously the
people that are my influences are like Elvis Costello for the
songwriting and Tom Waits, although that doesn't come through in
anything I do.
Bruce: I quite like Radiohead and some of the stuff REM have been
doing.
Me: That's all guitar bands though, do you go for any dance music?
Drum'n'bass or techno or anything?
Jake: Steve's into that, he's much more dance-aware than us...
Bruce: Comes in handy sometimes though...
Jake: Yeah, we did have one interview where the bloke started on about
Trip Hop and Hip Hop, it sounded like events at school sports day to
us!
Me: Alright, staying with the old stuff then, do you think that the
Pistols reforming and these touring parties of old punks playing their
old songs devalue your efforts?
Jake: I think that's a valid point...but it's nice when somebody who
doesn't know that much about the band's history likes it, that makes it
all worthwhile y'know?
Bruce: Neither of us would deny our roots and disown punk...
Me: I don't think you should.
Bruce: Exactly, but we do want to move on, we want to be
current...
Jake: Just last night we were roped into playing what they'd term a
Punk Festival and, I mean, it makes your heart sink--not because
people are there celebrating, like we just said, that's great--but it
makes your heart sink when you realise that all the other bands are
just standing up there and going "...and here's another one we wrote
20 years ago". You might as well be in a cabaret band.
So there you have it, they might look like your dad and yes, they might have lost some of that anger, but they've still made a good album, even by contemporary standards, and their sense of humour is still intact. They can still do the business live too, even if Northampton's Derngate is a somewhat odd choice of venue: the sight of 100 or so punks (young and old) trying to get a moshpit going across two rows of seats and old lady usherettes with little torches looking intimidated by the mohicans, not to mention the incongruous pink decor, no drinks/no smoking rules and the announcement that we should take our seats as the show would start in 3 minutes all combined to give an air of the surreal to the occasion. The important bit was done right though, the music is what counts and even I, cynic that I am, was impressed. They don't expect you to love them, or even like them necessarily, but don't just dismiss SLF along with all the other punk chancers, and look for a pop single out in September on Spit Fire records.
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