The Vendettas are a new band formed by Spider Stacy. Stacy, who fronted the Pogues during their final five years and for their last two albums (following the earlier departure of Shane MacGowan and his stand in Joe Strummer), put The Vendettas together in London in late 1999 and their live set revolves around new songs which Stacy wrote over a twelve month period and a handful of Pogues tunes. As you might expect from a man who once fronted a band called the Millwall Chainsaws and whose early Pogues performances saw him repeatedly bashing himself about the head with a beer tray, Stacy's original intention was to form a back-to-basics garage band. "I haven't heard anyone who is rough and exciting in quite a while," he says, "and I guess part of the motivation for forming the band was that if no one else is doing it then you have to go out and do it yourself."
In order to get the sound that he could hear in his head, Stacy expanded the line-up to include Andy Nolan (accordian), Bob Wilson (drums), Dave Brolan (bass) and Kavus Torabi (guitar). "I wanted to do something with the accordian and banjo because I like the way they sound and the fact that you can get this really mad energy out of them," says Stacy. "It's like starting up with a whole new impetus and momentum."
The new momentum was obvious when the band made their live debut last March. Lining up across the stage like a cross between The Clash and a mafia wedding party, The Vendettas' first shows have generated the kind of excitement that surrounded early Pogues shows. "The instrumentation isn't wildly dissimilar to the Pogues - we're just branching out from the main road," says Stacy. "And what kind of road are we heading down? Well, it might be a dirt track, but then again it could be a superhighway."
If anything is going to determine The Vendettas' future direction, it is the quality of songs. As a Pogue, Stacy's songwriting output was minimal but extremely classy. He wrote only a handful - including the pre-all day drinking instrumental "Repeal Of The Licensing Laws" and the beautiful pop-ballad "Tuesday Morning," which gave the Pogues one of their biggest hits ever and even saw a solo Stacy performing it on the Letterman Show. As a Vendetta, there is every reason to believe he might be a prolific songwriter yet.
In addition to writing a series of raucous love songs - most notably "Better Than Anything," "We're In Love," and "Louise" - Stacy has carried on the ballad tradition with the redemptive "Breathe A Different Air," the heartfelt "Road To Castle Cary" and the poignant "Turf Moor" (an unlikely tribute to the lost glory of Burnley FC). The Vendettas' set also features various eulogies to North London, including the life-affirming "Essex Road" and reflective "Northern Line". "I write about the London that's inside my head," explains Stacy. "But I don’t know how much of it is imaginary and how much of it resembles the real London. 'Northern Line' is actually metaphorical - it’s about the Northern Line that’s in all of us!"
In the end though, it all comes back to energy, and the way the songs are put across. "We just wanted to strip everything down and recapture the excitement of why you pick up an instrument in the first place," says Stacy. "Everything is so unbelievably bland at the moment that I can’t help thinking the time is right."
