Stiff Little Fingers at Crocks at NV in Thunder Bay, 19 November 2018

Stiff Little Fingers played Crocks on Monday 19 November 2018, in the NV Nightclub building on Red River Road, which had carried the Crocks name for a little over six weeks. The band was on a Canadian tour, and Thunder Bay was one of the smaller cities on it. Ottawa came three days before, Winnipeg two days after.

The band formed in Belfast in 1977, during the Troubles, and grew out of a cover band called Highway Star. Jake Burns, the singer and guitarist, is the one member who has been there throughout. Its first single, “Suspect Device”, came out on the band’s own Rigid Digits label, and after radio play it sold more than 30,000 copies.

The album that made the name

Inflammable Material was released on 2 February 1979 by Rough Trade and reached number 14 in the UK, the first album from an independent label to enter the Top Twenty. It was recorded in about two weeks in November 1978 at Spaceward Studios in Cambridge. Burns later said the sessions felt like playing a live gig.

NME’s Paul Morley called it “the classic punk rock record” and compared it to landmark records by the Ramones.

The songs came from the band’s members and its manager Gordon Ogilvie, with one exception: “Johnny Was” was written by Bob Marley. “Alternative Ulster” and “Suspect Device” were the singles. Nobody’s Heroes followed in 1980 and Go For It in 1981. The group split in 1983 and reformed in 1987.

A tour that went beyond the big cities

By 2018 the most recent studio record was No Going Back, from 2014. The tour was not selling a new album. It was selling a name that had lasted forty-one years, which is a different kind of pitch. The run started in southern Ontario in early November, at London and at Toronto’s Horseshoe Tavern, and finished at the Rickshaw Theatre in Vancouver on 29 November.

In between came Montreal, Quebec City, Halifax, Moncton, Ottawa, Thunder Bay, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, Banff and Nelson. The Ottawa show was at the 27 Club on 16 November and the Winnipeg show at the Pyramid on the 21st, with Thunder Bay between them.

Tickets went on sale on 7 September, and the band said the dates would be its last of 2018, with perhaps a couple of extra ones.

Burns said in an interview that the band had previously played only the biggest Canadian cities, such as Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. This time it planned to cover Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba and Alberta properly. A room in northwestern Ontario is the kind of stop that plan describes.

Sharing the bill

The Mahones, a Canadian Celtic punk band, were announced as special guests on every date. The pairing suits a bill headed by a Belfast band.

Burns said he did not think of them as a support act, but as a band sharing the bill, which he expected to make for a good show. Whether they played before or after the headliner in Thunder Bay is not stated, and no set times were published.

What $35 bought

Tickets were $35. Across twelve 2018 shows with a price in this record, admission ran from $13 to $40, so this was near the top. It cost more than Ten Foot Pole at $22.50 twenty-four days earlier, and less than the $40 charged for Sebastian Bach in June.

Both comparisons point the same way. Stiff Little Fingers cost about $12.50 more than a working touring punk act and $5 less than a singer from a chart-era band, which places a 1979 catalogue somewhere between the two. That is a reading of three prices, nothing more.

The room itself was new. Its first night under the Crocks name had been on 5 October with Merkules, and the old Cumberland Street address had closed on 29 September. Reports of the move said it was slightly bigger than the old one and could be set up for large shows or smaller ones. The rest of the year’s nights are on the shows page.