It was during Hawaiian support act Pepper - who could alternatively be described as a poor man’s Sublime or a punk man’s Jack Johnson depending on your point of view - that I began speaking to a friend who is laden with Rancid and Dead Kennedys tattoos about the last time he saw Less Than Jake.

Apparently they offended his punk sensibilities so much that he walked out. I was well into my defence of their punk credentials (carefully omitting mention of their last two albums) when they arrived on stage to a salute of glitter canons.

LTJ have had such accusations thrown their way for a long time, so much so that one of their old singles and third song of the night ‘Johnny Quest Thinks We’re Sell Outs’ deals with them quite comprehensively and is one of the tracks that gets equal approval from upstairs at the Astoria (the over 25s) and the hug happy mosh-pit downstairs (under 19s) who gave an equal welcome to the newer material on offer as well.

Though the split in audience was stark, both sides of the divide took as much enjoyment from the gig as a whole which mixed up all of LTJ’s eras of fun, ska-punk fusion - all horns and simple skanking riffs with shout-a-long teen-angst choruses. Groundbreaking it wasn’t, but given the uninhibited pleasure on display all over the Astoria it definitely didn’t matter.

David Ellis
photo: Akemi Mori