Literature and music reviewers alike have front row seats reserved for the apocalypse. The world would be a much better place sans these self-important, pretentious media whores dancing like grinder monkeys to whatever tune the band of the moment grinds away at on their carnival organs.

It is grinder monkeys such as these who have spent the last thirty years propagating the biggest lie in the history of modern music. Contrary to what you kids may have been led to believe, English "punk rock" did not naturally evolve as a direct response to the economic depression that existed in post-industrial age England. Nor was English "punk rock" a cultural backlash against the Led Zepplin's or Pink Floyd's of the world.

Any political slant or theory that made it into punk rock lyrics were after thoughts injected into the bands by managers or the liberal elite of the day.

In Johnny "Rotten" Lydon's sanctioned film, �The Filth and the Fury� ...and then later in the Ramone's bio-film, �End of the Century�..interviews with Johnny Rotten (Sex Pistols) and Joe Strummer (The Clash) revealed that the true catalyst for English punk rock was the blast of frenzied energy produced by the 3 chord guitar assault of the Ramones. That sonic blast shook the foundations of many neighbourhood pubs where the Ramones played blistering live sets, and often left dart boards banging to the floor. It was that three chord blast alone, and not any geopolitical angst that compelled drunken English youth to bang into each other in a dance fashion that would later be termed "pogo". It was that frenzied release of primal energy that sent snot nosed kids rummaging through secondhand stores for cheap guitars to form their own bands...bands that would be later termed "punk rock".

English "punk rock" has never been, nor will ever will be the scrappy bastard child born from the economic and political angst of the British working class as written in the fairy tales and bedtime stories sold to kids by corporate media whores. Sure... the Sex Pistols flirted with anarchy and attacked the monarchy, but all this posing was a mere creation of Malcolm McLaren and a few of his academic political science mates who bantered about failed political theories and debated college economics over tall frosty pints years earlier in University.

The Clash on the other hand -- a "punk" band most known for their political stances and poses, systematically ignored the political and economic angst of the English working class youth, and instead chose to jump on the liberal elitist quasi-revolutionary, non-state sponsored Marixist bandwagon spreading through tiny villages across the globe. The "only band that mattered" elected to ignore the real wars and class struggles exploding on a daily basis in their own backyard -- Ireland. Album after album, The Clash championed the proletariat causes across the world from Central America, to Chile and even wore badges of The Italian Red Army on stage. Quite obviously, it was much safer to sing war chants to people fighting small scale guerrilla actions thousands of miles away than it was to get your nose dirty and stand-up against a religious civil war around the corner where you sipped your milkshakes and listened to New York Dolls albums. For that dirty nose may have been shotten off by rebels who had no interest in your oversimplified and patronizing songs of revolution.

However kids, there was a quite local and quite real war going on at the time. In fact, it was but a stones toss from the UK. While the Sex Pistols were busy singing about the English monarchy, and the Clash sang odes to Sandinista freedom fighters in Central America, the band Stiff Little Fingers were engaged in a real war -- a war that the musical and cultural press chose to ignore.

From a tiny cold water flat in Belfast, the members of Stiff Little Fingers built chords and melodies around the nightly and daily car bombings which served as the backdrop to their musical version of political revolution.

SLF's �Inflammable Material� is not only the best album to come from this era, but it is perhaps one of the greatest albums of all time. Of all the great bands and albums that surfaced during the last half of the 1970s decade, Stiff Little Fingers's provided a message and a truth that no other medium was focused on. The truth about a city torn in half by revolution.

I could give you a track by track break down, but I respect music listeners, and I am quite confident that if they give the album a listen, my review or critique would be meaningless. So pick up a copy of this album and dare to see what true "political punk rock" was all about.

Pay special attention to the track �Johnny Was�. Listen to that song a few times. Then pull out, dust off, and listen to all six album sides of �Sandinista� by the Clash. SLF were able to capture in this single song, and with more poignancy, the reality of human experience living amidst the crisis and chaos of a war that took place on the very streets they grew up.

This isn't to say that �Sandinista� is a bad record. Far from it. It still remains one of my favourite albums of all time. It gave us dirty American middle-class snot nosed kids a much needed peek at diverging musical styles around the world. �Sandinista� did not serve up the bitter taste of revolutionary words spit out from youth in war torn streets, as much as it introduced American suburban "punks" to an appetising platter of world music.

When I want to play an album that captures the truth of war and class struggle from a band that was sitting on the front line at the time, I grab my SLF album �Inflammable Material�.

I honestly think the music media of the time where scared to deal with a band like SLF, because to deal with the band and their songs, they would have to deal with war torn streets and the piles of dead bodies that was Belfast. War and revelation is only romantic if it is occurring thousands of miles away and is brought to us in a comfortable suburban home on a nightly TV show we can turn off when we want to make it stop. Record companies can promote and sell romance and fairly tales. Record companies can rarely effectively promote and sell truth.

RC Edrington has been a scourge on the small press for years. His first full length poetry collection, �Use Once & Destroy�, was published in 2004 by the UK publisher BlueChrome. In 2005, RC once again found himself victim of his heroin demon after fighting it off and staying clean for over a decade. Clean since November 2005, RC is currently putting the finishing touches on �Demon Raped Morning�, a chapbook of poetry about his most current relapse. RC publishes the unliterary literature journal, Spent Meat, with Linda Wandt as poetry editor. To read a selection of Edrington�s poetry on the showcase section of this site, click here.