I remember having a 90 minute tape from this punk kid I used to know called Pigula. It was painted pink with what appeared to have been a nail polish and tagged SLF with a black permanent marker. Looked so ill. Inflammable Material was on Side A and Nobody’s Heroes on side B. I listened to that tape until it fell apart. Literally fell apart.
There’s nothing else I really need to be saying at this point. Maybe just a mention that like a lot of other 70s punk bands, with time they lost almost all of their energy and, in my opinion, From about GO FOR IT on there was nothing about them that would appeal to me anymore. Early recordings do stand the test of time though.
EPs
First press of Suspect Device was released on 17th March 1978 (St Patrick’s Day) and printed in quantity of 500. Some of the original hand glued sleeves have the band’s take away orders scribbled inside them. They wrote what they wanted to eat, someone fetched it and then they realised they didn’t have enough sleeves, so used those as well. I’d like to get one of those.
This is the standard 2nd (and later presses) sleeve for the 1st EP on RIGID DIGITS (The Rough Trade re-press has a RT logo on the back). All of the records listed below came with this version of the sleeve. This records was re-pressed several times by Rigid Digits. Around 20,000 were sold in total between 1978 and 1979 when the Rough Trade re-release came out.
This one looks just like the 1st press but it came with the printed sleeve.
Yellow labels version, According to Roland Link this was most certainly the 2nd pressing
Fairly rare pure white (A-side) and cream (B-side) labels.
The layout of the fonts changes a little and the “RECORDS” is missing from under the RIGID DIGITS logo
Another, similar to the one above but this time both, A and B label are cream:
and different version of the red labels (these are more of a brick colour), no “RECORDS” under the RD logo and another (3rd??) different layout of fonts on the labels
And back to proper red labels, yet another different layour of the labels and what’s interesting, this is th eonly version that features: “Original Recording: Belfast 1978″ at the very bottom of the labels. Finding this one took me a lot longer than finding any other version of this 7″. I may just be unlucky but chances are that there are much fewer around of this version than any other ones.
ROUGH TRADE repress (the only difference in the sleeve is the RT logo on the back)
Released on 17th March 1979. Around 10,000 copies were sold by Rough Trade
ROUGH TRADE labels.
Equally amazing 2nd EP
The 1st pressing of the single came with Alternative Ulster as the B-side. This was because Jake and Gordon argued about which track should be the A-side, (‘Alt Uls’ or ’78 RPM’). For later pressings the the Alt Uls was on the A-side and 78 RPM on the B-side. Check out the scans below for comparison.
1st press with 78 RPM on the A-side
Later pressing with Alternative Ulster as the A-side
Label comparison. 1st press on the left ~
This is when the things started to get a little sour. The music is still fairly decent but the sleeve designs from now on become unacceptable
Owning the rest of their singles seems like a waste of space on my shelf.
LPs
This is definitely in top 10 and possibly even in top 5 of my favourite records released in the 70s
Back cover of the 2nd LP. Check out the 1st EP
Japanese white label promo, very rare.
Promo label:
Live stuff ~ HANX! This came out in 1980 just before the Go For It LP. Amazing record.
The 3rd LP = Go For It
I like some of the reggae parts but in all its a pile of rubbish, I listen to it less than once every 5 years, cover is kinda cool..
The 4th one ~ Now Then.. ~ I like how this record looks like design wise. All black and matrix green with huge poster and a booklet. All really punk except that the music belongs to the rubbish bin. That’s when they already went 100% gobshite. I wouldn’t recommend this to people I hate..
The 5th album ~ All The Best = All the singles in one handy package
This record is responsible for hundreds if not thousands of record collectors going out of their way (for over 20 years in some cases!!!) to find that elusive green label 1st 7″.. Thanks Gordon!
Peel Sessions : Released in 1986
The actual recording took place on 12th of September 1978
I also have this semi boot double LP from Link Records that came out in 1988. The early ones came with black and blue gatefold sleeves.
This is a later version on green vinyl with green and red cover. I like how when the vinyl is down it looks just flat and plain green
but when you put it to the window you can see that it is actually a cool swirl of green and green and green
In 1989 Virgin records released the Live at Brixton Academy that SLF played on St. Patricks Day at the end of their 1st reunion tour in 1988
This came as a double LP housed in a gatefold sleeve and titled See You Up There
Talking live records I also found this weird Italian picture disk entitled Broken Fingers in Aberdeen
Just out of curiousity: which are the songs that you think are not bad??
Because as I listened to this pile of rubbish yesterday I could not work that out :)
I think the difference between us is probably just that I don’t require every SLF song to sound like Tin Soldiers (although that would be nice), I like their mellower stuff as well. Perhaps it’s because one of the first CDs I ever owned was the Stiff Little Fingers compilation “All the Best,” which had tracks from all of their records up through “Now Then …” and I listened to it all the time, so from the start I was used to their progression. I dunno, I definitely prefer the earlier stuff, but I don’t find the later stuff nearly as offensive as you do.
I see your point. I can understand how this could have happened.
I knew only the 1st two LPs for many years before I heard any of the later stuff. If I had heard all of it mixed together I may have been more lenient.
When I listened to that SLF record yesterday I actually tried (to the best of my abilities) to get rid of my deeply rooted dislike for it and look at it objectively. No matter how hard I tried to find something likeable about it I just couldn’t. To me it’s just a bad bad and very bad 80s rock LP and I have since gotten rid of it (along with Go For It). They would look great on your shelf next to them Billy Idol solo and Sigue Sigue Sputnik records.
Just to counter this a bit: there are many bands that I can hang with their progression, like ExC for example :) but some I just could not take.
I was always like that. Ever since I was a kid I was always really opinionated haha. Here’s a short story for you, if you care to read, about another case, very similar to the SLF one:
When I was in the 3rd grade of primary school the three tapes that were in constant rotation on my mono KASPRZAK RM222 tape player were with The Clash 1st LP, the Pistols Never Mind LP and a tape with our local punk band called K.S.U. that my parents were friends with.
Where I lived, the only way to get new music was to tape it from your mates and someone at school said they heard there was this other Pistols record called Rock and Roll Swindle. I had a new purpose in life. It’s a new Pistols album. I must have it!! I had to find someone who had it and tape it off of them. The problem was I asked everyone and no one I knew had it. Most people never even heard of it. I could not find it for several months and with time I started treating that record as a sort of a myth. Then one day my mate who lived in the same block of flats told me he got it off someone who taped it from someone who taped it from someone. I get all excited and tell him to run home, grab his tape player and the 5 pin cable so that I can tape the damn thing. So we sit down in my room and listen to the tape as it’s being recorded. The first track kicks in, the symphony, and I’m like “Are you fucking with me?” and he goes “No way! This is THE record” and I’m like “No fucking way” so then the record goes and at times I get the usual Rotten whining and at times I get some poppy melodic shite that was coming from Cook/Jones that I now know but didn’t at the time. For months (that’s correct: MONTHS) I thought that my friend was fucking with me. That he took some random Pistols tracks and mixed them up with some shite rock songs just to fuck with me haha. I never liked that album. From the start. To this day I do not own a Pistols record that was released after 1977. I still think all of that stuff they did without Lydon post the US tour is a load of gobshite.
As a fun fact: the only record I truly hate but still keep (for unknown reasons) is the Sandinista 3ple LP.
It’s just the record I keep but don’t go anywhere near it. I’d gotten rid of everything else.
In fact, I’m pretty sure the first punk song I ever heard was SLF … Tin Soldiers I believe.
Also, keep in mind that I came to punk from 80′s rock and hair metal—although I never really heard Sigue Sigue Sputnik, I definitely liked Billy Idol (and still do). So although I was getting into punk because I liked the harder, rawer sound, “bad 80′s rock” was not a turnoff for me because it was actually the mid 80′s at the time.
On a side note, when I first discovered punk, all I had for a stereo was a radio much like yours WITHOUT the tape player. So when I discovered the local college radio station’s punk rock/hardcore show in ’86, the only way I could tape it was to sit there in front of my radio from 10-11 pm and hold my dedicated tape recorder up in front of the radio speaker haha
Punk.
HAHA
We did that. Before I had the cable we used to record via the in built mic.
We would turn the volume about a half way up and put the other one laying flat with mic facing the speaker.
Then I got the cable.
On a side note: I used that tape player to play the guitar. It worked real well as an amp haha
Bits Of Kids and Two Guitars Clash are my favorite songs on that record, by the way.
Bits of Kids is the baked beans song. My rip of Now Then doesn’t have the Two Guitars song but I have it on all the best album and I am listening to it now. It’s god aweful haha :)
[...] cool if he scribbled something on the records he played on so I mailed him over the inserts for the Nobody’s Heroes (the Undertones piss take ones) and just got them back in the post today! Cheers [...]