This is a digitally remixed and remastered version of the previously unreleased, once lost, second full length album by Jake & the Stiffs, an original punk rock band from the state of Delaware. some of these tracks were never finished and were left that way, because rock n' roll. Originally recorded at Target Studio, Newark, Delaware, 1993-1994, by Keith Moss Mixed and mastered by Randy America at Norad Studio, Pike Creek, Delaware, 8/01/14 Cover by George Murphy of Planet 10 Multimedia, Bear, Delaware Emilys Nine Records ENR-05 Special thanks to Rich Fuester, Marc Moss, Keith Moss, Sean rule, Kevin Litka, Josh Rutledge, Girls, 3 local rehab clinics, and the usual cast of characters. Also check out: Jake and the Stiffs' "Randy America, F*CK VISION" on Cd Baby, and our other Jake and the Stiffs releases on Cd Baby. JATS on this record: Randy America - Guitar, Bass, and Vox Steve Funk - Bass Algy Siouxicide - Bass on Love Bomb and Gotta Get A Gun Bill Bohn - Bass Zach Hansen - Drums The Stiffettes! are Maria Caruso and Heather Morrisey Friday, May 4, 2012 The F & L Hall of Fame: Jake and the Stiffs If you asked longtime Now Wave Magazine contributor Johnny Problem to name one band from our time that should have been huge, he’d tell you Jake and the Stiffs. And I would concur. If you ever saw them live, you’d be on board as well. To this day, I hear songs like “Holly”, “All I Said”, “High School Blues”, and “Jennifer” and can’t quite believe they’re not remembered as punk classics of their time! Oh well. If there’s any lesson we’ve all learned in underground music over the years, it’s that sometimes making good music is the worst thing you can do if your band wants to “make” it. There have been a few exceptions, but for the most part, quality music hasn’t been saleable on a mass level for 25 years. So why fret? Let’s just be thankful for bands who care more about making great music than they do about “succeeding”. Let’s be thankful for bands like Jake and the Stiffs! Out of all the criminally overlooked songwriters of my time, Randy America may have been the most criminally overlooked. Even within the punk world, Jake and the Stiffs were always a little under the radar. And I think it’s because they were ahead of their time. In the mid-’90s, “pop-punk” usually meant a second-rate Screeching Weasel or a third-rate Ramones. But the Jake and the Stiffs version of pop/punk was more akin to The Dickies or The Boys, steeped in the style of old school punk and informed by power pop. If they had come up in today’s punk scene, in the heyday of Dirtnap and Douchemaster Records, they probably would have hit it big! In spite of the fact that they were a popular regional act (based out of Wilmington, Delaware and tangentially part of the West Chester, PA scene), I never knew much about them until I saw them play at the Blue Star in Lancaster circa 1998. I was blown away. They came out and plowed through song after song of super-catchy punk rock with balls and personality. They covered “Zodiac” by The Rip Offs. The bass player bled. They were everything I liked about punk music combined into one band. And they had songs. I couldn’t believe they didn’t have an album out on a big label! I tracked down their Spike 7” (which I still possess in spite of recently unloading the rest of my vinyl collection). I saw them a couple more times - again at the Blue Star and once at a pizza joint in Wilmington with The Pits. They killed it every time. A few years later, I finally got to review one of their recordings when Mutant Pop Records put out their If It Ain’t Stiff…It Ain’t Worth A F**k CD. I fucking loved it. The Mutant Pop fan base was not enthralled. After all, they didn’t sound like Screeching Weasel. Eventually, both Randy America and Algy Siouxcide from Jake and the Stiffs became writers for Now Wave. Man, those were the good old days! One of my great memories of that time period was when Algy made me a homemade Jake and the Stiffs comp CD. I loved that thing! That disc somehow got lost in the chaos of me moving a few years back, but luckily I was able to download the posthumous best-of Laurie’s Other Life off of iTunes. Released in 2008, it includes the above-mentioned gems as well as other should-have-been hits like “Scrappy” and the classic title track. So it’s not like this band’s music has been lost to the world forever. -Lord Rutledge, Faster and Louder The world according to Lord Rutledge