Images may be subject to copyright
On this day, 14 February 1979, Irish punk band Stiff Little Fingers played Cardiff’s Grannies Night Club.
Prior to becoming Stiff Little Fingers, Jake Burns, vocals and guitar, Henry Cluney, guitar, Gordon Blair, bass, and Brian Faloon, drums, were playing in a rock music cover band, Highway Star, in Belfast. Upon the departure of Blair (who went on to play with another Belfast group, Rudi), Ali McMordie took over on bass.
Cluney had by this time discovered punk, and introduced the rest of the band to it. They decided that Highway Star was not a punk enough name, and after a brief flirtation with the name "The Fast", decided to call themselves Stiff Little Fingers, after The Vibrators' song, which appears on the album Pure Mania.
Stiff Little Fingers, especially the frontman and main songwriter Jake Burns, were heavily influenced by The Clash and Elvis Costello. According to Burns, "what [The Clash] did more than anything else was give me the confidence, through its lyrical subject matter, to realise it was OK to write about my own life and experiences."
The group started to write songs about growing up in the Troubles in late 1970s Northern Ireland. Among the first Stiff Little Fingers songs were "State of Emergency" and "Breakout".
SLF's decision to write songs about the experiences of young people growing up in The Troubles proved controversial. Some Northern Ireland punk bands felt songs about the Troubles were exploiting the sectarian conflict. There was also criticism and suspicion over the involvement and influence the management team, especially Gordon Ogilivie, was having on the band. The political differences were reinforced by musical differences as SLF's rockier punk sound contrasted with the more melodic pop punk of The Undertones and Rudi. Some of the criticism was simply down to band rivalries and jealousy.
There were a number of well-publicised arguments; The Undertones accused Stiff Little Fingers of sensationalising the Northern Ireland conflict, while they retorted that The Undertones ignored it. Michael Bradley, The Undertones bassist, tells of a confrontation in 1979 between The Undertones’ John O’Neill and SLF's Jake Burns: "He launched into Jake, not physically but verbally. Slagging his records, slagging the journalist writing the songs and slagging the band." Michael Bradley now describes ‘Suspect Device’ as "a great record, although at the time we weren't impressed, probably because they'd made a record before us".
