Broken Star

Broken Star
Studio album by The Broadways
Released	1998
Recorded	September 1997 at Atlas Studios, Chicago, Illinois
Genre	Punk rock
Length	43:12
Label	Asian Man Records
Producer	Matt Allison
The Broadways chronology
Big City Life Broken Star (1998) Broken Van (2000)

Broken Star is the debut album by The Broadways.

Reissue

In 2007 and 2008, Asian Man Records announced plans to reissue both of the band's albums on vinyl and CD. Broken Star had long since sold out on vinyl, while its successor Broken Van had been CD-only; both had for some time been out of stock on CD.

Track listing

Brackets denote the main vocalist/lyricist.

1. "15 Minutes" (Hanaway) – 3:12
2. "Everything I Ever Wanted to Know About Genocide I Learned in the Third Grade" (Kelly) – 1:58
3. "The Kitchen Floor" (McCaughan) – 1:25
4. "Police Song" (Hanaway, McCaughan) – 2:48
5. "Upton" (Kelly, spoken word by McCaughan) – 3:03
6. "Restless" (McCaughan) – 3:42
7. "Jonathan Kozol Was Right..." (Kelly, some lines by Hanaway and McCaugahn) – 2:43
8. "We'll Have a Party" (Hanaway) – 4:33
9. "Red Line" (Kelly) – 2:07
10. "I Hear Things Are Just as Bad Down in Lake Erie" (Hanaway, McCaughan, Kelly) – 4:34
11. "Fuck You Larry Koesche, I Hope You Starve and Die Someday" (Hanaway) – 3:27
12. "25 Degrees North" (Kelly) – 2:01
13. "Ben Moves to California" (Hanaway, Kelly) – 2:10
14. "The Pope of Chili-Town" (Kelly) – 1:54
15. "The Nautical Mile" (McCaughan; lyrics co-written with Sean Nader) – 3:38

Personnel

• Brendan Kelly – bass, vocals
• Dan Hanaway – guitar, vocals
• Chris McCaughan – guitar, vocals
• Rob DePaola – drums

Trivia

• The passage spoken by Chris at the close of "Upton" is an excerpt from Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children.
• Brendan Kelly has stated: "Larry Koesche is the manager of a grocery store who prevented some of us from getting food out of the dumpsters behind the store." This ties in with the song's theme of homelessness.
• During a live show Brendan revealed that the "my friend" from "25 Degrees North" is the same one from the Big City Life / Broken Van song "I Think I Shall Never See..."
• The album's cover is a portrait called "New York Child," a photograph of 2 year-old Juliet Auchincloss, taken by Irving Penn in 1949.^[1]

References