Sounds From The Junkshop #109 - Less Than Jake

 

"Tomorrow's gone up in smoke/And I wonder when I'm alone/Where'd my convictions go?" - Less Than Jake - Screws Fall Out

Quite honestly, I should've put Less Than Jake in the Sounds From The Junkshop column a bit sooner because it was some way before 2003 that I first got into 'em. Although this was the year when LTJ put out their most commercially successful album Anthem in this country (which ironically enough was the start of the wheels kind of falling off for them but more of that later), they'd been on my radar for a good three or four years already by this point.

As I think with a lot of UK rock fans, it was 1999's All My Best Friends Are Metalheads, a regular staple at rock club discos throughout my Uni days which was my first exposure to Less Than Jake - a supremely headbangable ditty which ironically enough was a rant against how conformity inducing the then-popular nu-metal scene was at the time ("They keep us from saying anything, yet separate from everything"). It had a brilliantly funny video as well (even if LTJ's frequent sideman/dancer Skullman pretty much stole the show in it) and marked them out as ones to watch.

Truth is of course that LTJ had actually been active for a few years at this point after forming in their native Florida at the start of the '90s. Soon after hearing Metalheads for the first time, I ended up picking up their then-current album Hello Rockview in a 2-for-1 package with its predecessor Losing Streak. I have to admit, listening back to them for the first time in well over a decade as I write this, they've held up surprisingly well. Lyrically, yes it's goofball but similar to Bowling For Soup, it treads just enough of a fine line to avoid falling into the obnoxiousness that was one of the big turn-offs of frat-punk. Songs like Johnny Quest Thinks We're Sellouts, Jen Doesn't Like Me Anymore and How's My Driving Doug Hastings? ran that fine line between dumb humour and punk anger nicely while the likes of Last One Out Of Liberty City, Help Save The Youth Of America From Exploding and History of a Boring Town showed that by the time of Rockview the group were starting to grow and expand their horizons.

Unfortunately, Hello Rockview didn't sell the necessary copies to keep the band on their major deal with Capitol and they'd end up returning to the minors and Fat Wreck records (run by fellow ska-punk mainstay Fat Mike from NOFX) for 2000's Borders And Boundaries. Again, led off by a strong single (Gainesville Rock City), this was another good effort from the band with Magnetic North, Hell Looks A Lot Like L.A. and Malt Liquor Tastes Better When You've Got Problems all being strong efforts. It picked up plenty of plaudits in the press and was enough to see another major, Sire this time, see it fit to take a chance on 'em. I would end up seeing the band at the Leeds Festival this year where they put on a good show (sadly without Skullman who'd left the group by this point), even organising a circle pit around the sound desk halfway back across the arena.

Sadly though, the group's first album for Sire, Anthem, was a bit of a disappointment - it wasn't bad but it just didn't quite pack the tunes that the two or three before it had and their decision to lead off with a below-par single in She's Gonna Break Soon (even though it gave them their one Top 40 hit over here in the UK) probably didn't help matters much either. It's got its moments - The Ghosts Of Me And You was a great soaring effort about the remorse of looking back at your teenage years from a decade removed (something I was starting to find spookily prescient by this point) and would've made a much better lead-off single and the closing one-two of the gentle arm around the shoulder of The Brightest Bulb Has Burned Out leading into the full on assault of Screws Fall Out was a killer tune to end the album with but elsewhere the spark seemed to be missing a bit with a lot of the tunes sinking into anonymity.

...and to be honest, that's kind of where I parted ways with Less Than Jake. By the time of their next album, 2006's In With The Out Crowd, my music tastes had kind of moved on to bands closer to home and, similar to the Ataris post-So Long Astoria, I ended up missing it altogether. They would be gone from Sire soon afterwards although arguably a return to the indies put them into their more natural territory and they remain a going concern to this day.

I think most of my best memories of Less Than Jake probably stem from the Hello Rockview/Borders And Boundaries days when they really did seem to represent something exciting and fun breaking on the scene and before they started to kind of repeat themselves a bit. But still, they were a lot more likeable than some of the bozos you got muddying the ska-punk waters in this era (Spunge et al) and, similar to King Prawn, at their best they had just that right mix of humour and seriousness to draw you right in. Good memories.