SKULLS, THE / TEXAS THIEVES:
Split: 7"
...i’m really not sure if this is THE Skulls (he said, accentuating the phrase one way) or The SKULLS (he said, accentuating it another), or even some completely different The Skulls (accentuating it yet another way, yet barely accentuating it at all), but whatever kind of Skulls it is i want, i will say that it’s refreshing to put on a punk rock record and actually have it sound like punk rock for once. That said, if this The Skulls (accentuated the third, most noncommittal way) is, in fact, THE Skulls (accentuated the first way), then the fact that “Can Punk Rock Pay The Bills?” comes off as little more than an American version of the Gonads or something (which, i guess, is about right) and the cover of the Randoms “Let’s Get Rid of New York” (hey, didn’t someone already try that?) comes off as pandering unimaginativism might lead me to muse aloud how maybe, apart from the meteoroid hit and what-not, the dinosaurs actually maybe mighta died out because they were kind of stupid and outdated. On the obverse, the Texas Thieves give me “Abandoned Cars,” which i think i liked better when it was called “The Prisoner” and performed by DOA, and “Dying of Stress,” which strikes me as something similar to what my friends might have been listening to in 1984. If this is some manner of competition, i guess i vote for the Skulls. If this is supposed to be some manner of life-affirming necessity, i think i’d rather have my life affirmed by receiving an additional Twinkie™ instead. BEST SONG: The Skulls, “Can Punk Rock Pay the Bills?” BEST SONG TITLE: “Let’s Get Rid of New York” FANTASTIC AMAZING TRIVIA FACT: Just two nights ago i was talking with someone about the time The SKULLS (accentuated the second way) stayed over at our house, and Charley Pip was wearing my full-face motorcycle helmet and smoking pot, and he’d lift up the face shield, take a huge hit of weed, put down the shield, then exhale the pot vapors back into the helmet, and we were all just rolling around on the floor watching this guy stand there grinning thru the huge clouds of pot smoke that hung trapped between his face and the plexiglass face shield. Maybe you hadda be there. P.S. Yo, Doc Strange! Some Barricaded Suspects CD’s s’il vous the fuck plait! Merci! 
–Rev. Norb (Dr. Strange)