The Ataris
The Boys Of Summer

Let’s see… ‘punk’ bands have been playing subversive comedy cover versions ever since, if not before, the The Dickies brutalised ‘The Banana Splits’ and the Toy Dolls famously spat ‘Nellie The Elephant’ out of their arse, so the novelty value has long since worn off (although I did spend many a drunken evening ‘dancing’ to China Drum’s reworking of ‘Wuthering Heights’). So now we have cult American punkas doing their version of Don Henley’s MOR classic, with no sign of a tongue-in-cheek at all, aside from changing the line about a “Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac” to “a Black Flag sticker…” Hell, it’s fun. The guitar solo is spot on. It was, sadly, the most inevitable single off their ‘So Long, Astoria’ album.