"You'll never hear Stiff Little Fingers played in an Irish-themed pub in America, because those places don't consider us Irish," says Stiff Little Fingers frontman and founding member Jake Burns. "It's mainly because we've never worn a shamrock. And that's the thing - I'll bet you've walked into those Irish bars and seen the Dropkick Murphys on the jukebox, and they're about as Irish as Mom's apple pie. If we can ever have shamrocks and shillelaghs in our music, or brought them out on stage with us during our shows, I have no doubt we'd be getting played in those establishments. But realistically, if you go to Ireland, the Irish are more than vaguely embarrassed by that whole shamrock, shillelagh, beer-drinking and top'o'the'mornin' nonsense. It's not what we're like. It's very condescending. It's your archetypal, stupid drunken Irishman stereotype nonsense. It's not something that we like to play up to."
[Pictured: Jake Burns]
What Stiff Little Fingers has done for over 27 years is write consistently political and thought-provoking music about everything from censorship to homelessness to the perils of war. Screw U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday" - SLF's "Alternative Ulster" ("Take a look where you're livin'/You got the Army on your street/And the RUC dog of repression/Is barking at your feet") paints a much more vivid picture of Ireland during the '70s than Bono ever did. Their first release, 1978's Inflammable Material, is a must-have for anybody who ever thought they were punk rock. And, while some of their later efforts dangerously risked destroying the SLF legacy, nobody can ever say that Burns gave up the good fight and stopped writing music with a message.
"It depends on your initial take on what you want to do when you join a band," Burns explains. "I know a lot of people just want to get in a band and sing songs about cars and girls. And that's fine. There's a place for that, pure entertainment - I've got nothing against that. It's just not what I'm interested in." He pauses, laughing. "Sorry, I'll take that back - I was just as interested in cars and girls as the next guy, but I'm not interested in writing a song about it. I need to get concerned or angry about something before I feel it's worth actually writing a song about, and that can be anything from what happened in New York on September 11, 2001, to just seeing the number of homeless people there are sleeping on the streets, for example. It doesn't have to be a specific political event or political thing that inspired me to write a song, but they tend to become political simply because these are the issues of the day that affect everybody. Some people become politicians when this moves them, although I think more and more people are just career politicians rather than through any sort of altruistic ideal. But my point of view, if I get angry, I write something. I don't go out on the streets and march up and down - I'll pick up a guitar and a pen and write a song.
"Generally, I try not to judge when I'm writing," he adds. "I try and just highlight the problem. I don't necessarily say, 'This is wrong,' and I certainly don't put forward any sort of solution to it, because I'm not a politician, I'm a songwriter. So, you know, some people get uncomfortable because they feel that we're talking about things that we shouldn't be talking about, but as far as I'm concerned, if it's impinged upon my life, then I've got as much right to comment on it as the next man has."
Stiff Little Fingers' newest release, Guitar and Drum (Kung Fu Records) featuring Burns on vocals and guitar, Steve Grantley on percussion, Ian McCallum on second guitar, and The Jam's Bruce Foxton on bass, hails back to the good old sound that made SLF so great to begin with. True, Burns can't belt out the lyrics with the painful sounding gravel-in-the-throat rasp that he used to in his youth - he sounds more like he's singing now - but he makes up for it with pure and contagious enthusiasm. Lyrically, the songs are exactly what one would expect to hear from a band that once compared falling in love to stepping on a landmine. The thing that made SLF great, though, was not that they had a message in their music, but the delivery of the message that made the lyrics stick in your head for days afterwards, the way nearly every song they wrote could be an anthem for such a wide range of causes they could find work playing political rallies for years to come; and this new album is no exception. These songs just beg to be screamed along to, and to break furniture to, in sheer old school punk rock joy. If Burns only writes music when he's angry, then I've got half a mind to find out all the things that gently annoy him to the point where he's in a constant state of being pissed-off, just so he keeps putting out records like this one.
As it is, though, my questions seem enough to keep him in a ranting and raving mood. "I think everything, certainly in the music business more than most businesses, goes in cycles, and I think, at the moment, we're pretty much right back where we were before punk rock really happened, except then, it was all sorts of progressive rock bands and stuff that were boring the life out of people, you know, the likes of Yes, and Genesis and people like that," says Burns when asked about the current state of music. "Whereas today, we're being ruled by a bunch of vacuous teenagers who would all be better employed on Broadway shows instead of getting in my way on the television on American Idol and Pop Idol and all those sorts of hideous programs. I think that the actual mainstream music business is so controlled by the three or four major companies who force-feed us all this crap, that they don't actually realize that there are thousands and thousands of people out there that don't want to listen to that." He laughs. "You know, when I was young, rock'n'roll music was something that made your parents look at the television and go, 'My God! What is that noise? Turn it off!' whereas now I get the impression that they're more likely to look at the television, see your Justins, and your Britneys, and whatever, and sort of tap along and go, 'Well, they look like nice, clean-cut kids. You can watch that as long as you'd like.' I refuse to believe that the entire future of the music industry is based on a couple of fucking Mickey Mousketeer Club fucking members."
