LESS THAN JAKE – TV/EP

Anyone who takes a look at Less Than Jake’s discography would see that they clearly have a soft spot for doing cover songs. From Slayer’s “Evil Has No Boundaries” to Cheap Trick’s “Surrender,” Less Than Jake have dabbled more than a few times throughout their 18-year career in covering a unique range of tunes.

TV/EP is an 11-minute and 30-second collection of television theme songs and commercial jingles. This would not be the first time LTJ has covered TV theme songs, as they released a vinyl seven-inch back in 1996 covering the theme songs to “The Dukes of Hazzard,” “Three’s Company,” “The Jeffersons,” and “Happy Days.” TV/EP doesn’t list the themes/jingles covered, but instead lists them as “Channel One,” “Channel Two,” and so forth. Some of the covered theme songs include “Laverne & Shirley” (a cover they released on Losers, Kings and Things We Don’t Understand back in 1996), “Diff’rent Strokes,” “Animaniacs,” “Married With Children” (which is essentially a quasi-cover of Frank Sinatra’s “Love and Marriage”), and “Spongebob Squarepants.” The jingles covered range from the commercial for Hungry Hungry Hippos to the jingle for Kit-Kat candy bars.

While hardcore LTJ fans will dig this as another one of those odd releases to add to their collection of Pez-influenced LTJ paraphernalia (ever look at their vinyl discography?), others will see the release as a one-shot novelty act worthy of only one listen. I think this release might have done better if it was done on DVD or video rather than an audio format – interestingly, a visual aid version of this can be found on the front page of LTJ’s website (www.lessthanjake.com). The covers themselves are nicely done and quite witty, but I don’t see fair-weather fans of Less Than Jake going apeshit over this release. This is definitely one for the LTJ collector.

(Sleep It Off Records, C/O Paper + Plastick Records, PO Box 12081, Gainesville, FL 32604)

STIMULATORS – Loud Fast Rules!

By the early 1980s, the New York punk scene started to take on a new and more aggressive sound than heard before. The ‘70s brought a mix of New Wave and punk rock (Blondie, Television, The Ramones) through the doors of venues like CBGB’s, but by the 1980s that sound started to evolve. Bands started to up the beats per minute and added more distortion and speed to their guitars, while vocals got more and more aggressive — and so, the New York hardcore/thrash sound came to be.

On the crest of this crossover, the Stimulators were one of the first bands to start to incorporate this new aggressive sound. Loud Fast Rules features the band performing live back in 1980, featuring a 12-year-old Harley Flanagan on drums (Flanagan would go on to play drums and bass for the infamous New York City hardcore outfit Cro-Mags). The original release of Loud Fast Rules was released on cassette, so the audio on this re-release is about as good as you can expect from drawing the masters off of a mono-analog recording. The music itself is raw and driving, especially on the more fast tempo tunes like “M.A.C.H.I.N.E” and “Crazy House Rock.” There are also some more catchy pop-hooked songs featured here like “Dah Dah Dah” and “Blind Ambition,” and a cover of Kiss’s “Rock and Roll All Night.” There’s a lot of Ramones and Clash influence in these songs as well (and as expected).

Going back to Harley Flanagan, the fact he was only 12 years old when this was recorded blows me away. His drumming is clearly the highlight of this album, extremely tight. Re-releasing Loud Fast Rules will give the masses a chance to pick up a pivotal piece of New York music history, an album that influenced a generation of underground musicians not just in New York, but the world over.

(ROIR, PO Box 150-460, Van Brunt Station, Brooklyn, NY 11215)