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)