Sounds From The Junkshop #106 - The Star Spangles

 

"Everyone's pointin' fingers at me/Shouldn't they look somewhere else?" - The Star Spangles - I Don't Wanna Be Crazy Anymore

I've spoken in a few past SFTJ's about the garage rock explosion of the early noughties but by 2003-04, I think it's safe to say that the movement was starting to lose fire a bit with the rise of the Libertines, Franz Ferdinand et al meaning the music press were starting to pay more attention to goings on closer to home. With that in mind, it's a real shame that the Star Spangles essentially hitched a ride on the bandwagon just as the wheels were falling off as they certainly deserved a lot better.

Essentially, the Star Spangles were the band that you were hoping the Strokes would be when you first heard about them - a group of Noo Yoik street rats raised on the good stuff from the punk explosion there a couple of decades earlier (the New York Dolls, the Heartbreakers, the Dead Boys, the Dictators and the punkier end of Blondie's early output essentially) with a swaggering "do we look like we give a f**k?" stage presence and a nice line in riffed-up snotty aggression rather than smart-alec art school wussing out. They were treading just enough of a thin line to get attention from both the NME due to their Big Apple origins and having enough attitude and charisma to be of interest to Kerrang! as well. For a bit it was looking pretty good for 'em.

The group's debut album Bazooka! landed in the dying days of 2003 and this was where I first heard 'em after I got sent a copy to review for one of the 'zines I worked for at the time. I'll admit that my first thoughts on seeing the cover were "oh great, another identikit New York garage band" only for the contents to well and truly blast me into next week once I hit play on the CD player. The group were well rehearsed and well drilled, sounding tight as you like with the choppy riffs having a brutal primal power that you just wouldn't have got from a lot of their counterparts and singer Ian Wilson having the requisite Jagger/Johansen smoulder to provide the personality up front with the likes of Angela, Science Fiction/Science Fact and a well chosen cover of Johnny Thunders and Wayne Kramer's Crime Of The Century showing that these guys most definitely did have the chops to back up their image. Their singles were starting to creep into the Top 75 here in the UK at this point (both Stay Away From Me and I Live For Speed stopped just short of the Top 40) and the signs were looking good.

Unfortunately, as I said at the start of the article, it's the old SFTJ favourite of bad timing - had the Star Spangles put this album out in 2001 or 2002 then there's every chance that their major label paymasters at Capitol would've probably taken those chart placings as an encouraging sign and got behind the band to make a follow-up to take them overground properly. By the time Bazooka! came out though, the tide was turning against garage rock and, combined with the increasing panic at major labels as the rise of digital music saw a lot of the most bloated ones realise that they were going to have to brutally cut the majority of their rosters and staff as corporate takeovers started to kick in (read Dan Kennedy's excellent book Rock On! (How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Corporate Rock) for a snapshot of how surreal this time was in terms of working at a major record company), the pressure was on for them to deliver the goods straight away and they'd missed the mark. Even an appearance on Letterman to do Which One Of The Two Of Us Is Gonna Burn This House Down? didn't help them. The group would leave Capitol in 2006 with their sophomore effort Dirty Bomb arriving as a minor label release in 2007. 

To be fair, Dirty Bomb wasn't a bad album (Take Care Of Us, Tear It To Pieces and Gangland were all highlights) but the truth is that by this point, the Star Spangles could've made an album that was the equal of the Dolls' seminal debut and it still wouldn't have saved 'em. True to its name, it bombed and the band would split the following year.

Similar to the Von Bondies though, the Star Spangles would reform about seven years ago and are still out there playing clubs in their native New York today although no new material's been forthcoming. Overall, the Star Spangles reminded me a bit of an American version of the D4 - a group who put out an absolutely killer debut, couldn't quite follow it up and then split before it got too embarrassing a la the Vines. Even so, Bazooka! and to a lesser extent Dirty Bomb are well worth a listen if you're into the scuzzier side of garage rock. I certainly think these guys would've been a perfect fit for some of the power pop nights like Some Weird Sin that used to be the in thing when I lived in London a few years ago so if that sort of music's your bag and you missed 'em first time out then give 'em a listen, they'll probably be right up your (switchblade) alley.