ALBUM REVIEW: Dirt Box Disco – Live At the Star (STP Records)
Manchester-based S.T.P. Records was the brainchild of Stu Taylor, punk fan, label boss, gig promoter, merch seller and all-round good guy, as anyone who ever met him will attest.
It had been releasing music since 2007, and most people thought when he passed away suddenly in November 2023 that it would be laid to rest too. Happily, his widow Sam had other ideas.
A familiar sight with Stu at merch stalls at gigs all over the country, she decided to keep S.T.P. going, and release this long-awaited album in her partner’s memory.
Recorded back in 2017 at The Star & Garter in Manchester, where Stu put on punk gigs for many years, it’s a wonderful tribute to the man and his legacy.
He played a big part in getting Dirt Box Disco to where they are, as one of the most in-demand bands on the DIY punk circuit, going from playing back rooms in pubs to filling the Empress Ballroom at Rebellion Festival in Blackpool every year.
DBD released a debut EP and six albums on S.T.P. before going their own way, and it’s fitting that this album, which captures them at the peak of their powers, has been given a release at last.
On the off-chance you’ve never heard them, Dirt Box make infectious glam punk, full of singalong choruses which stick in your head for days.
The chants of “Hooray, hooray, it’s Dirt Box Day,” start after the first song, Other Side Of The Street, and the boisterous crowd sing every song back at the band, needing little encouragement from frontman Weab.I.Am to “dance like you’re watching Status Quo“.
Their hour-long set is perfectly-paced and includes tracks from every release so far, plus two new songs, Teenage Lovestruck Blues and Stop Shouting, which would end up on 2018’s seventh album Immortals.
That would be Weab’s last as Dirt Box’s outsize, clown-faced, onesie-wearing vocalist, as he left to concentrate on his other band Kid Klumsy, and it’s odd to hear him again all these years later, but a lovely reminder of why so many fell for this bunch of crazy misfits in the first place.
Guitarists Spunk Volcano and Danny Fingerz (guitar), Maff Fazzo (drums) and Deadbeatz Chris (bass) show they can play a bit, as well as getting “everybody singing, everybody fucking smiling” as Spunk demands before My Girlfriend’s Best Friend’s Sister. That’s certainly my experience of every Dirt Box show I’ve seen.
The 18-song set includes two tracks – Slapdash And Haphazard and Imaginary Friend – from then-recent album Poppycock, otherwise it’s Dirt Box classics all the way – Burning, Tragic Roundabout, My Life Is Shit (“Beautiful. I’m going to wank to that when the record comes out” says Weab), and I Just Want To Be A Girl being just a few of the highlights.
It’s loud, it’s rude, and in places crude, but it’s hard to take offence – even when the crowd boos as Weab announces that it’s almost the end of the set and he responds with “what’s this, fucking pantomime?“
Live At the Star captures all the mayhem, blood, sweat and beers of the Dirt Box live experience; pure unadulterated fun, ending with the stunning one-two of Let’s Get Wasted and Dirt Box Days.
Weab tells the crowd during the closer: “Thank you from the bottom of our hearts. You’ve made this little band’s dream come true.” That could just as easily be a message to the man who helped make the all this possible. R.I.P. Uncle Stu. 9/10.
- Live At The Star by Dirt Box Disco is available on CD direct from S.T.P. Records HERE. It costs £15, including postage.
