Have a Ball, Me First & the Gimme Gimmes, 1997, :28
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆Fast punk-pop versions of classic songs. That's what this group does, to the exclusion of all else. So they're sort of a one-note joke band. Now, I love punk covers, and I love fast songs. But a little bit of this goes a long way. And listening to this, I rarely got the sense that the band felt they were making the song their own, just doing a punk version. When Lars Fredericksen covers Billy Bragg's "To Have And To Have Not," it's because they're coming from the same working-class hunger and resentment. This album is not that. So it leaves me unmoved for the most part. And to top it all off, while I'm no expert, I thought audio-wise it had a very muddy mix. Favorite tracks: "Leaving On a Jet Plane," "Mandy," "One Tin Soldier."
