Bits Of Kids

A-Side: Bits Of Kids
B-Side: Stands To Reason

Label: Chrysalis CHS 2637
Producer: Nick Tauber

Released: 03/09/82
Purchased: 09/10/82

Stiff Little Fingers | Bits Of Kids | (Chrysalis) 1982 | Dave Hepworth shrugged at the OGWT set behind him and sighed, “The man can’t sing to save himself!” He was right about Jake Burns, of course, but this pseudo-Springsteen rant, retrofitted to UK culture, almost convinces me otherwise. Even if I’m not a fan, shows me why SLF are not just an older Ejected . . . (Sounds, 28/08/82)

Oh, the horrors of social conscience . . . even though it has kept SLF going for more than a few years. ‘Bits Of Kids’ cranks up to the full barrage of slashing guitars and “marching” drums before you begin to realise just how bad it is.

“It’s always bits of kids” they moan; if only they realised they should be old enough to know better. (Record Mirror, 28/08/82)

Before the advent of punk, Stiff Little Fingers used to regale the good headbangers of Belfast with their stirring renditions of the greatest hits of Deep Purple, The Who & co.

Now that punk’s good and gone they’re trying to edge their way back into the “rock” field with big beefy choruses and chords that can probably only be played by an arm that revolves 180 degrees. Grating. (Smash Hits, Sept 1982)

FINGERS OUT!

Do Stiff Little Fingers still have a conscience?

JAKE BURNS is playing a tape of SLF’s new album in a hotel room high above New York’s Broadway. “How can I be a teenage rebel at 24?” he asks rhetorically and shakes his head. We are nearly through side two and Jake is already on his fourth tequila.

“You’ll have to carry me home tonight,” says Jake to new drummer Dolphin. Dolphin is feeling a little delicate today. Veterans of the class of punk, 1978, these two are fools for that rock and roll life-style. Particularly the drink.

This is not to say that these lads don’t have their differences with rock’s status quo.

“How many punk bands would have Bertrand Russell in the lyrics?” asks Jake. “We’ve never been just thrash and mayhem but the new album is really different . . .

‘Now Then . . . ‘ even includes an SLF acoustic song, ‘Price Of Admission.’ “That one’s about sexual double standards when it comes to promiscuity. Rock and roll is particularly bad when it comes to double standards. You meet all these musicians who screw around because they’re on the road but they lie to their girlfriends back home because they reckon they have to keep them in the dark to keep them. And if their girlfriends sleep with someone else while they’re away, they can’t bear to hear about it.”

AS JAKE’S explanation of ‘Admission’ suggests, SLF are still working their consciences to the bone and, despite a couple of acoustic guitars, still playing full frontal hard rock. Jake insists that he and the rest of the band are no longer the hotheaded finger-waggers of old. In fact, Mr Burns’ new theme is maturity.

“We’re beginning to learn to reconcile ourselves to exactly what we believe. I’m a lot more tolerant than I used to be three years ago, a lot more sensible. Rather than just rushing into an argument without thinking, I stop and listen to what the other person’s saying nowadays. I find myself agreeing with people I never used to — like my father. There is a hell of a lot to learn from older people. I haven’t grown out of playing the guitar but I have grown out of arguing.”

SLF are proud of their past and insist that they’ve been misjudged. “Because we’ve always been honest, people have put the boot in. We’ve been murdered for trying to be too right on. You try to be honest and they tear you apart.”

If the old SLF were hotheads, the new boys are wiser men: “It’s piss easy to write teenage rebellion songs, telling people what to think. We try to take a more realistic point of view now, checking out all the angles before rushing in blindly.

“The new songs aren’t so much bald statements as arguments within themselves. We try and present two opposing arguments and leave the listeners to make up their own minds.”

SLF’S NEWFOUND maturity seems a long way from the rush of anger of their debut, ‘Inflammable Material’. Jake insists that he’s still the same person: “Those songs were statements of fact. We were simply saying: ‘This is what’s happening in Northern Ireland: People wanted us either to be ‘royalists’ or ‘loyalists: We just stood up and said we were sick of the whole thing.”

Now the only solution to the Irish situation that Burns can see is one put forward by Ian Hunter. “He suggested that the only way to deal with it once and for all would be to take an entire generation out of Northern Ireland when they were born and let them grow up without hatred. When the older generation had all died off, they could move back and start again. It’s terrible but it’s the only solution I can see.”

Meanwhile three-quarters of SLF live in England, make records and tour. They’ve survived. “In the early days of punk, everybody was trying things for the first time, they were fresh and new. Some have got cynical and some have got more positive and more professional . . . ”

I’ll leave it up to you to decide which camp SLF have joined. Still, there’s no question of Jake Burns’ integrity. Like the man says: “I’m the kind of person who gives back the tenner he gets in the change by accident.” (Record Mirror, 25/09/82)