Garbage Days Revisited #47: Junkyard - "Junkyard" (1989)

 

"Sometimes when I feel so boxed in, I wanna go take a ride/Grab my keys and my cigarettes and disappear off into the night..." - Junkyard - Simple Man

There seems to be a bit of a running theme through the last few Garbage Days Revisited entries, namely that they all seem to hail from the more rough and mean end of sleaze rock (biker sleaze maybe? I dunno). And trust me, we've got a few more lined up in the coming weeks. The thing is, I'll always stick up for the scuzzier end of this sort of music. Yes yes, I've heard the arguments as to why grunge had to happen and I fully understand them - I mean for feck's sake, when '80s rock has basically been reduced to the likes of Winger, Firehouse, Nelson, Danger Danger etc, I think we can agree that a hard rain kind of has to fall. But the thing is that when Nirvana essentially torched the joint and salted it some time in late '91/early '92, there were several groups who really didn't deserve to go down with the ship and were cut from a much more lean and mean cloth than yer Poisons and Bon Jovis. Similar to the Four Horsemen last week, Junkyard were one such band.

Which is a bit ironic because by all accounts they certainly copped a fair bit of flack in their early days for their chosen direction. Several members of the band had cut their teeth in the hardcore punk circuit (guitarist Brian Baker was notoriously in the none-more-straight-edge Minor Threat and would go on to join Bad Religion) so when they suddenly started up a new band, grew their hair and started wearing denim, headbands and Harley boots, there were a fair few who, let's just say, weren't too pleased with them. Arguably they were fighting from underneath right from day one.

Ultimately it didn't matter though - the fact is that with their self-titled debut, Junkyard came up with one of the great late-in-the-day albums of the Sunset Strip era. Right from the moment it kicks in with the barfly anthem Blooze and the rollicking Hot Rod, this one is an absolute riot. While the likes of Shot In The Dark show that these guys can do fist-in-the-air anthems to sink a pint to with the best of them, the Skynyrd-esque Simple Man and the lurching bluesy closer of Hands Off show a more considered side to their material as well. In short, it's a great album and really deserves a listen if you're unlucky enough to be unaware of it already. Hollywood and Simple Man gave the group a brace of minor hits and for a moment, it was all looking good for them.

So what went wrong then? In two words - bad timing. They released their second album Sixes, Sevens And Nines (not quite up to the standard of their debut but still a good effort) right into the teeth of the grunge backlash in late '91. Suffice to say their major deal with Geffen would soon be dust and the group would start succumbing to line-up instability and fall apart. As we've mentioned, Brian Baker would go on to Bad Religion while the others would continue playing on and off for the next two decades, mostly keeping their heads down while the grunge nuclear winter raged above.

However, the last decade has seen Junkyard start to properly pick things up again. The gigs have become more frequent and there's even been an album out (2017's High Water - not a bad effort either) on scuzz-rock specialists Acetate Records (home of fellow dirtbag long-timers the Hangmen, Rhino Bucket, Nine Pound Hammer and the Supersuckers and arguably a much more suitable home for them than some hair metal revival label). They've even made it over to the UK for a couple of tours and I was lucky enough to catch them at the Croydon Rocks festival (along with fellow survivors Love/Hate) in 2018. It was a freezing cold November day outside in the Cronx but inside we got heroically drunk while Junkyard well and truly kicked arse. It was a great evening...even if I didn't stagger out of my hotel room until about 2pm the next day! Hopefully once things start getting back to something approaching normal with gigs, we'll see Junkyard back over here again for another tour and they'll stop off at Bradford. If so, I'll see yas down the front.