TAMAGOTCHIS, FAKE BRITISH ACCENTS, AND THE BREEDING OF FINE ENGLISH DOGS

The US Music Vault speaks with Brit-punk rockers, JANUS STARK.

-Chris Kelly

On the heels of their first American tour ever with the Flys, Janus Stark talks about life as a punk band, acceptance, and today's music scene.

THE US MUSIC VAULT ONLINE: So when did Janus Stark form?

SHOP (bassist/singer for Janus Stark) : We've been going for about eighteen months as Janus Stark, before that we all played in bands together for years. English Dogs was started by the drummer, Pinch, in 1981, and Gizz joined English Dogs about three years later, while I joined in 1995, which brings us up to the present day.

USMV: What inspired the change of names from English Dogs to Janus Stark?

SHOP: We changed the style of the music, or rather, the music style changed itself. There were a lot of reasons why we didn't want to keep the name English Dogs, one being that in order to register the name "English Dogs" as a company, you have to get permission from the queen, and the queen said that the only way we could use it was if we became breeders of finest quality English Dogs. So we wanted to start a company when we first signed our record deal, just in case the future was successful.

USMV : Breeding dogs?

SHOP: No, playing music! We'd be the three directors of the company. We decided to change the name, and the music was getting different and slower, much more melodic, so we ended English Dogs.

USMV: Janus Stark is often regarded as a pseudo-Sex Pistols band. Do you feel they served as an influence?

SHOP: It depends on what you call punk, because when I listen to old stuff like the Who, or the Cars, or the Jam, I consider that punk music. Sex Pistols? They are, lyrically, its the best white rap you've ever heard! We're more influenced by the older punk bands, rather than stuff like GBH and Discharge.

USMV: How do you feel about the modern punk scene? Do you think you fit in?

SHOP: I'd love to do a tour with Offspring, I really like them. I think they've kept the balance between commercial and roots quite well. They seem to like doing smaller shows, so they keep it small, it's much better than stadium rock.

USMV: You say you listened to lots of old punk, so how did you get your album title, "Great Adventure Cigar," from a Wu-Tang Clan lyric?

SHOP: Well, the first music I ever listened to was hip hop, because I was a dancer. Before I ever picked up a guitar or bass guitar, I listened to US hip-hop in the eighties. Later on, I got into heavy music like AC/DC, and in the last few years, we as the band have been in a hip hop phase, because there's a lot to listen to now. Hip hop is like the black man's punk rock. When we were recording the album, we didn't have a title, so we would listen to people like Wu-Tang, Grave Diggaz and Mobb Deep. Mine and Gizz's favorite track was called "The Project," from Wu-Tang Forever, and Great Adventure Cigar is a rappers term for dick. For us, its got nothing to do with a dick. It symbolizes how when we started recording the album, you could imagine this amazing adventure beginning, and what we decided to do was to buy a huge Havana cigar, light it, take a few puffs, and put it away. When we got the first big tour, we took the cigar out again, took a few puffs, and put it away. The cigar would be an ongoing thing throughout our career, and there's still a lot of cigar left.

USMV: Can you explain the Tamogatchi on the cover of Great Adventure Cigar? Have you ever owned a Tamogatchi?

SHOP: No, the cover idea was developed when we saw a photo of Gizz's wife holding a Tamogatchi. We saw the photograph and it looked great, and wouldn't it be a great idea if Janus Stark got their own one, there would be beer, food, music, and sex. You have to feed them, don't you?

USMV: Of course. Or else they die.

SHOP: Apparently, its very expensive to put your own Tamogatchi into production, which was the original plan. We're talking about it with Trauma Records, so we'll see.

USMV: There are so many artists these days that are on MTV that belong to this surge of hip hop, rap, and R&B. What do you feel about this as rock musician?

SHOP: There's too much in the so-called dance scene. If you put in hip hop, swing, soul, and R&B, there's too much of it, and a lot of it is crap. It's big money stuff. They spend millions of dollars on videos with guns, girls and cars. The music is usually terrible, and is generally just ripped off of someone else. Because of all this dance music, there's not a lot of room left in the mainstream charts for rock music. As we've been finding across this country, there's lots of rock fans that want to be the music, but there's a big lack of it.

USMV: How do you feel it's going to be getting heard in this scene?

SHOP: As far as sound goes, we didn't manufacture it for it to go into any market. If it does get big, it's because people like it and we have a good record company doing advertising. We can't do anything more except go out on tour and play when we can. The ball is in somebody else's court, it's out of our hands. With the right promotion, I think we stand as good a chance as anyone with success. I have to be careful, because I don't want it to sound like I'm only into money. Some people are getting very rich from the pop music industry and the music is terrible. We've all got quite simple tastes, and commercial success would be pleasing to us because it means people like our music. You have to make a living, which is difficult at the moment, but you have to live. I want to be number one, but that isn't a financially oriented goal, it's about popularity.

USMV: What do you feel about bands that revamp old music?

SHOP: I don't want to dis anyone, but there are lots of dance producers that have one lick that they sample and write a shitty rap over, and I think that is terrible. For instance, we do cover version of songs, but we cover them like the original. It's almost out of respect for the band and the song. I can't dis anyone for playing old music, because we do it as well, but we try to keep the original sound as close as possible, like what Placebo did with "20th Century Boy".

USMV: Are there any American bands that you really admire, or would like to see?

SHOP: When we were in L.A., I couldn't stop listening to Days of the New or Everclear. In England, Dave Matthews doesn't exist, so there is a lot of music here that I've never even heard of. I like The Flys, I think they're a good band, but our sounds do vary a great deal, but it's excellent. I'm just discovering some of the new American bands. I've always liked American music, I liked Dead Kennedys, Husker Du, some of Bob Mould's later work, and I think I've been influenced vocally by American singers more than I have English singers, which is weird. Everyone says 'Why do you sing in an American accent?"

USMV: Everyone does.

SHOP: I think it's because it sounds better. A lot of English bands sound terrible spoken, so I can't imagine them singing.

USMV: It's considered elegant here to have a British accent.

SHOP: People love our English accent here. I went through a stage a few days ago when I was starting to get a little bit Americanized, but I pulled myself back a little bit when I realized that everyone likes the British gentleman. I recently saw a friend, who has been living here for a couple years, and he keeps it, but he drops into faux American for a few sentences which is really funny to hear. I hope it never happens to me.

USMV:There are some British intruders in the states that go to England for the summer and come back with an accent and some British CDs.

SHOP: It's for the girls, even they do it though.

USMV: How did you all get your individual names?

SHOP: Pinch's second name is Pinching, which originates from France. My first name is Swapan, which is a Hindu name. It's pronounced like shop-on though,and Shop is obviously just a shortened version of that. There was a comedy TV show called Kenny Everett, and on that show there was a punk rocker called Gizzad Puke, and at the time Gizz was around 14, and looked like the character.

USMV: So it has nothing to do with the Americanization of the word, which is used as slang for semen?

SHOP: People can't stop calling him Jizz here! His second name, Butt, was given to him at birth, and there's nothing he can do about that one.

Janus Stark is currently on tour promoting "Great Adventure Cigar" with the Flys.