719. Stiff Little Fingers / All the Best. 1983. 3.5/5

The dangers of putting out an album that contains your single releases including B-side songs is that, while many of the songs will be considered as your very best - classics, in fact - a selection of songs may be seen as a waste of space, average, or just plain awful. And let's face it, the B-side (in the good old days of vinyl singles) was always either an extra song left over from the recording studio, or a cover version of one of the band's favourite artists. they weren't meant to be their best work, or else they would have been on the album in the first place!

So here we have a collection entitled All the Best, but can you really call it that? I mean, this came out after just three albums had been released, so it's tough to have a greatest hits album after just three albums. Isn't it? I would have thought so.
The album does indeed include some of SLF's finest work, songs such as "Suspect Device", "Alternative Ulster", "Nobody's Hero" and "Tin Soldiers" are still brilliant today. I have always loved "Go For It" for a performance of it at a school camp a thousand years ago. I enjoy "78 RPM" and "You Can't Say Crap on the Radio", because these are my ideas of the best kind of B-side tracks. However, there is a lot of filler, and though it is good to hear anything from these guys, if you really want to hear their best stuff you go to the shelves and grab Nobody's Heroes or Inflammable Material and put them on. This is still fun, but not quite the best.