Stiff Little Fingers

Glasgow Barrowland

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THERE is something surreal about the Barrowlands tonight.

It is not the first time that these original Belfast punks have landed on Glasgow for St Patrick's Day and this time it was with one of the key bands of late 70s punk and post punk Ruts DC in tow.

Back in the 70s both bands were young, brash and with fire in their belly, which was the essence of punk and with fiery chart hits to boot.

If their young selves could see what they looked like now forty years on, a little greyer, a little wider,  you would think they might cower in disbelief.

There will be those who might say this has to be the complete antithesis of the punk ethos of nonconformity, opposition to both mainstream culture and the status quo.

Have these bands not just become the mainstream; the establishment that the rebels are supposed to be sticking it to.

Why is everyone here?

Well for some it could be described as a pretty desperate attempt to remember what it is like to be a rebellious youth.

Others, and the majority hear would fall into this category, could not actually give two hoots and are here to lap up two of the best bands from the birth of pund together on stage.

Yes, there is a huge nostalgic twist to this, no question, but does not every gig-goer rely on that to a certain degree. Most people go to see bands based on a memory of something, whether it be the last album or a previous song or songs. It's just that many in this crowd are going back a little bit further.

Describing this as a nostalgia fest is actually doing a disservice to the bands and in fact the 2000 who pack out the Barrowlands and go absolutely potty throughout.

Teenagers, middle-aged, elderly, men, women, boys and girls, turn this magical former dancehall into a celebration of being alive as much as anything else, with most SLF songs being greeted with the kind of rapture reserved for a finale.

This is not the kind of response you would expect for a band whose last album was four years ago and whose prime time was nearly 40 years ago.

Yes, they may play some less familiar newer songs, although their last album is a good four years ago, but you cannot beat the majestic punk anthems from when this band broke through. And they leave their best in Suspect Device, Johnny Was and Alternative Ulster to last on a memorable night.

Earlier The Ruts DC arguably showed off an equally glittering array of anthems from Babylon's Burning to In A Rut, all of which sound as relevant now as when they were first written.

This, however, is all about SLF and the band are greeted with chants of "Fingers" before a plectrum has even struck a guitar string.

They do not have to say this venue is special to them, they show it in the urgency and passion of their playing, feeding off a crowd that has more bounce than the Duracell bunny.

It is the 27th time they have played their annual St Patrick's Day show at the Barrowland Ballroom - they even made a DVD of the 25th anniversary gig in 2016 - and you would think that they might get tired of it all. Not a bit of it.

Front man Jake Burns, who recently turned 60, announces: "Saturday night, Glasgow, how'ya doing, you all right? We're Stiff Little Fingers." The crowd go wild and so the band tear into Wait and See as if it was the first time they had played it to a live audience.

Formed in 1977, at the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, Burns and co articulated their outrage in a punk framework. A year previously a total of 297 people had by then lost their lives because of the conflict. While there is a very different climate in Belfast over 40 years later, and Burns now lives in the US, there is no doubting these songs have enough about them to make perfect sense.

Burns plays the opening riffs to their signature song Alternative Ulster and then says with tongue firmly in cheek, "nah, let's not bother with that", before ripping into the verse.

The moshing down the front gets that little bit more frenetic over a song, that said more about the boredom of that war-weary generation than it did about the politics.

“There’s nothin’ for us in Belfast. The Pound’s old, and that’s a pity. OK, so there’s the Trident in Bangor. And then you walk back to the city.”

Burns says, "thank you very much goodnight", points to the crowd and exits stage right while the rest of us get set to leave the warmth and euphoria to walk back to the city centre in the snow in Spring.