Author: janusstark2019

Message from Gizz

Thank you to all the bands and the lovely people that came to our Charity “Punks Against Cancer” gig last night at The Ostrich.

What a great night! Thank you Zener Diodes, MFI, Matty G & Lil Winter, Destructors ’82, The Dole, Kiosk 2 and of course JANUS STARK!

Thank you to Chris York, Sue Minto, Graham Finding and Sally Mills. A special thank you to Dave Allen for helping me by sorting the Just Giving page for Joe Maccoll. Thank you James Garrod for the poster design, Chris for doing the sound. The biggest thanks goes out to everyone that donated.
In the words of my mate Chris “It’s all about working together”.

Live at The Pitz, Milton Keynes – 9th July 1999 (T & M 060)

75 MINUTES OF JANUS STARK LIVE MAGIC FOR JUST A TENNER – BARGAIN!!

This is the final live recording of the original line up of Janus Stark!

Phenomenal 14 track live album from 1999 includes a full colour PDF booklet of Gizz Butt’s extensive liner notes, including press cuttings and photos from the time…

BUY IT HERE

Original Janus bass player SHOP will be back on bass for the Hope and Anchor, London September 22nd gig, filling in for our very own Sasquatch, Si Martin. It’s gonna be a Great Adventure hearing the original bassist playing his stuff again. There’s a lot of love for this gig! Come along and hear the album played in its full.

Get yourself a ticket here:

https://www.wegottickets.com/event/579877…

EXPLODING ON STAGE!

Live at The Pitz, Milton Keynes, 9th July 1999…

Time & Matter Recordings

T&M 060

75 MINUTES OF JANUS STARK LIVE MAGIC FOR JUST A TENNER!

This is the final live recording of the original line up of Janus Stark!

Phenomenal 14 track live album from 1999 – the download includes a full colour 12 page PDF booklet of Gizz Butt’s extensive liner notes, including press cuttings and photos from the time…

Plus hi-res front and back cover artwork…

Will be available at:

https://janusstark.bandcamp.com

Janus Stark Archive Vol 4 (T & M 059)

‘Whatever Happened To The Harold Smith Demos?’

Download 6 Tracks on Bandcamp for only 4 quid !!

“On 8th March 1999 I received a fax from Janus Stark’s manager and producer Terry Thomas which had originally been sent to him from BMG Publishing. It was the synopsis for a new film called ‘Whatever Happened To Harold Smith?’, an historical comedy drama starring James Corden, Tom Courtenay, Stephen Fry, David Thewlis, and Lulu!

In just 6 weeks, there followed a whirlwind of activity, with 4 songs being written and recorded in demo form for the movie…”

Each download includes Gizz Butt’s full liner notes booklet.

1. Personality Breakdown

2. Raw Power

3. Changes (demo version)

4. Think Vice (demo version)

5. Personality Breakdown (demo version)

6. Raw Power (demo version)

DOWNLOAD INCLUDES FULL COLOUR FRONT AND BACK COVER ARTWORK PLUS A PDF OF GIZZ BUTT’S LINER NOTES.

BUY IT HERE

The Janus Stark Digital Archive – Volume 3

HEADHUNTER Mini-Album

(T&M 056)

OUT NOW, is the third in our series of ongoing brilliant Janus Stark digital download archive releases, featuring 7 superb, previously unreleased tracks.

The download includes full colour front and back cover artwork as well as a PDF of Gizz Butt’s fascinating, extensive liner notes, which include an analysis, plus various facts surrounding all seven songs.

Covering the final two years of the last millennium, you get to hear about an incredibly busy and confusing time for Gizz, as he juggles his roles and reason within both The Prodigy and Janus Stark.

Lawyers, love, film soundtracks, albums, U.S. and U.K. touring, meetings, contracts, the need for Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bono, scoring a U.S. Top 40 hit single, abduction, Lebanon, Zoe Ball, licensing, Killing Joke’s Geordie, Green Day, untrustworthy journalists, Beatles B-sides, Madonna, Keith Flint, Puff Daddy, Japan, Shop, Boy George, Pinch, Bruce Lee, masseurs, video budgets, Reading Festival and home recording!

It’s all there!

Grab yours now!! BUY HERE

Today the Janus Stark album “Face Your Biggest Fear” has finally landed on Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music and all the other platforms. I waited this long so that anyone interested would be encouraged to hear it on vinyl or CD. It’s been on Bandcamp since it was released because they actually pay their artists a reasonable cut. Eventually though, I did what you have to do to get heard : virtually give it away. Spotify is useful for accessing and discovering new , old or obscure music.

Janus Stark fall in to all 3 of those categories.

Give it a listen; Love it or hate it, a lot of time , passion and love went into creating that album. You’ll notice it when you hear it. A lot of fine brush strokes. Thank you to Andy Hawkins for producing the album, Andy Sneap off mastering the album and of course Time and Matter records for releasing the album, all without whom …….

Cheers Gizz

CLICK HERE

Unity Fest 2023 is on 19th August at The The Clubhouse Music Venue in Corby Northants.

Line up includes XSLF, Roddy Radiation & The Skabilly Rebels, Janus Stark , Hi-Fi Spitfires, Tom Spencer (The Professionals), The Zips, Desperate Measures NZ, THE DUEL, DESTRUCTORS 82,
Cherry B Punk Poet will be compering the event and keeping you entertained between sets!!

Entry will once again be free but we will be asking you to make a donation towards our chosen charities this year, Cancer Research UK, British Heart Foundation & Northampton based homeless charity Project 16:15.

We are also well chuffed that Eugene Butcher & the UK’s best music mag Vive Le Rock are once again supporting this event which will be sponsored by Unite the Union….cheers Chris

Get yer tickets CLICK HERE …but hurry as they’re goin fast!

Today, the Janus Stark live album is released and available to download from Bandcamp. It was a gig where our greatest stage invasion in our history thus far occurred!

JANUS STARK LIVE AT UNITY FEST AUG 20th 2022

I’ve recorded many of our gigs or had others record them. I’ve also often gone to the length of recording each individual track through the mixing desk (that includes each individual piece of the drum kit, snare, kick drum, rack tom, floor tom, hi-hats, overheads) and then having them remixed, but this time I wanted to take the task on board myself because I’ve mostly not been satisfied with previous end results.
This gig was special in many ways: We were supporting The Ruts, one of our lifelong favourite bands. Segs had previously invited me to his house for dinner and we’d had a jam playing ‘West One Shine On Me’ and ‘Dope For Guns’. We’d gotten friendly and I really wanted Janus Stark to support this incredible band.
Also, we were sharing a stage with many bands that were our best friends: Desperate Measures, Spring Park, Healthy Junkies, A Great Notion, Transit Plan, The Blue Carpet Band and The Duel plus I was doing a bit of moonlighting playing with my old Placebo mate, Steve Hewitt in the band Love Amongst Ruin. Very importantly, we were playing for a good cause and the Janus Stark manager, Chris York, was organising this festival and this had been his brainchild and ambition.
When the raw files were e-mailed over, there was a massive amount of fixing to be done. Levels were going up and down all over the place and in the case of lead vocals, if I wanted to use a compressor to even out all the vocals then the volume of the background noise would increase as well. I had to painstakingly go through all the tracks, cleaning them up. The drums are treated with compression, EQ, gates and reverb but apart from that they are regular. I had to play around with the vocals so I could be happy but I wanted them to be real. What you hear is straight, it’s live and from the gig.
There was an electricity in the air in Corby Clubhouse that night and you can really hear it, especially during ‘Clique’, ‘Floyd’, ‘Every Little Thing Counts’, ‘Enemy Lines’ and ‘Barriers’, as well as on the enormous stage invasion during ‘Ever Fallen In Love’ when we made our best efforts with the help of the audience, to put the stage through.
Enjoy this live recording of Janus Stark, we’ve had a couple of good ones over the years but none with this amount of love, attention to detail and that amount of fine brush strokes!

Gizz Butt
28 April 28 2023 

BUY IT HERE

We’ve been laying low for a little while, but not for much longer. The Unity Festival show last August was recorded, and we’ve been cleaning that up and mixing it . It sounds incredible and will soon see a release on Bandcamp …ALONG WITH A VAST NUMBER OF NEW CHOONS! Around 18 DAT tapes/ mini discs / cassettes, have been recovered and turned into WAV’s and MP3’s and will be, one by one, drip fed to the Janus Stark bandcamp page.

They include demo sessions, song prototypes, excellent live recordings and among them are some recordings that have never seen the light of day until now.

If you sign up to Bandcamp and Follow Janus Stark, you will keep up to date with all the new releases that come along.

They will include the long fabled “FORCE FED SESSIONS”, a trilogy of demo recordings that we are constantly asked if we’d make them available.

Follow the link to our Bandcamp page here and see you soon!

The next shows begin in April!