The Workin’ Stiffs
Dog Tired… And Then Some
TKO
This overview CD collects eleven tracks from the 1997 release Dog Tired, plus some seven-inch stuff spanning 1996-98 (thus the And Then Some of the title). This is proto-street punk music, with slightly more hardcore influence (check out the slow bass run intros to a few songs, for example) than the current crop of more rock and roll-oriented streetpunks usually include. Two of the songs appear in two different versions (great for completists and rapid fans, but frankly they aren’t different enough to warrant including them for the vast majority of listeners). Includes three covers by earlier punks GBH and Oi-sters Cockney Rejects and Sham 69.
Generally solid stuff without some of the lunkhead glorification of violence sometimes present in street punk, and the f-word quotient (general indication of not being the sharpest crayon in the box) isn’t too high. But it still seems odd to this very old punk to hear a band yearning for “1974” (one of the song titles) when none of the band members could possibly have even been born back in the day. Oh well, their hearts are in the right place.
TKO Records, 4104 24th St. #103, San Francisco, CA 94114; http://www.tkorecords.com
