Customer Reviews

Stiff Little Fingers: Song by Song

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Stiff Little Fingers have been a favorite band of mine for a number of years now, mostly for their first two albums, Inflammable Material and Nobody's Heroes. This book has some really interesting insight into what made them tick. It's basically a really long interview between Alan Parker (SLF Superfan), and Jake Burns. It's got some pre-band and pre-first album background on them getting their start, and then takes on a format of basically going through every track on every album and having Jake explain what it was written about, when, and why. They also stop and note lineup changes as they occured between albums and tours and whatnot.

The information it has is really great, as well as easy and fun to read. It definetly made me pull out SLF records that I hadn't listened to in a while, like Go For It or Flags and Emblems, and give them another listen. I really wish it was a bigger and broader book though. I wanted more touring stories, and it would be nice to hear what other folks from the Rigid Digits roster have to say about being from Belfast's best. So it's a good read, but not a comprehensive band bio by any means.

Bought this after seeing SLF play in Chicago 06.06. They still deliver. The book is a long interview conducted by a superfan who interjects himself too much for this to be journalism. What is missing is in fact the actual lyrics to the songs they are talking about. There's some true funny bits and some interesting factoids and its a fair read, but overall it's a loosely charted conversation that could have better served the subject.