Here's one last piece of unfinished business for the year 2025! I do remember hearing that Jimmy Vapid had covered the first Donnas album. I can't quite explain how or why I didn't getting around to reviewing it. But I'll say this: When it comes to the exercise of one band or artist covering one of another band's albums in its entirety, this is one of the most successful efforts I've ever heard.
The first Donnas album has a special place in my heart (and certainly Jimmy Vapid's as well). I can still remember buying it when it first came out and being absolutely floored by it. I played it constantly. I dubbed it onto cassette tape and sent it to countless friends. It easily topped my list of favorite albums of 1997. I still think it's a punk rock masterpiece. In writing this collection of songs for The Donnas, Darin Raffaelli affirmed his genius. It was as if the Ramones had been re-born as a gang of delinquent teenage girls playing budget rock in the San Francisco Bay Area. There were certainly bands at the time (like The Riverdales and The Vapids) that were heavily influenced by the Ramones, but I don't recall the term "Ramonescore" existing yet. In retrospect, this first Donnas album certainly belongs on the Mt. Rushmore of Ramonescore album. So that makes Jimmy Vapid the perfect person to cover it.
Here's what I like about The Donnas as recorded by Jimmy Vapid: He didn't just copy the original. So many of those Ramones covers albums were snoozers because the bands simply re-made them instead of re-inventing them. The Donnas by Jimmy Vapid reimagines these songs as if they'd been written by Jimmy Vapid. If the original was a garage punk record for Ramones fans, this new version is textbook Ramonescore. The arrangements, production, and vocal delivery are completely different, and that makes me hear these songs in a new light. I'm pleased that these tunes hold up so well. There was a certain novelty appeal to the original record in the sense that one wasn't used to girls singing songs about hitting on boys, beating up other girls, and indulging in illicit substances. But even with that shock value fully removed, these songs still kick ass.
Jimmy Vapid took an album that he loved and made it his own, and that's not an easy thing to do. Even if you had never heard the original, you could listen to this record and call it Ramonescore at its finest. I can see why it made Johnny Problem's top ten for 2025!
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