TEACHER’S PET - Maybe they’ll stay together for a while.

When the Rubber City Rebels decided to leave Akron for the sunnier climes of California in search of a major-label record contract in 1977, they did so without keyboard player Ron "Pete Sake" Mullens. The official story is that it was because they wanted to move in a harder, all-guitar direction. Mullens, however, remembers it differently.

"I went to see Sha Na Na at Blossom and they were like, "I hate Blossom, how could you go to that place?'" he recalls. "The Sex Pistols kicked Glen Matlock out because he liked the Beatles, so I guess I got kicked out of the Rebels because I liked Sha Na Na."

About the time Mullens was booted from the Rebels, his brother Kal (aka Rex Lax) was starting a new group. It became Teacher's Pet and started playing in Akron in 1977 with Mullens on keyboards and vocals and his brother on guitar and vocals. Influenced by the Stooges, New York Dolls, Status Quo and Slade, the band had a sound Kal describes as "like Chuck Berry tunes played 10 times faster, or maybe kind of like the Knack on steroids." An early version of the group released the single "Hooked on You"/"To Kill You" through Akron's Clone records. Rolling Stone's History of Rock And Roll says it never got the hit it deserved with that single.

Teacher's Pet went through several drummers and bass players before Bill "Billy Whipp" Tomazic and Gary "Jack Hammer" Elliot took over on drums and bass, respectively. This final version recorded an album's worth of material, unreleased until this year.

"When we got done recording, it was kind of a bad time for the scene in the Akron area," Kal says. "[The venue] The Bank had closed, and the excitement around the punk scene had kind of petered out."

Under the circumstances, it's hardly surprising that the band petered out as well.

"We never got pissed at each other and broke up, people just went their own ways," Mullens says. "I guess what finally ended it was when Kal moved to California."

Mullens stayed in Akron, playing in bands like the Inspectors and King Dapper Combo, running a record store, publishing the music fanzine Tab and co-hosting punk-rock music show DIY Radio on Akron's WAPS.

Now, almost 30 years after it was recorded, Teacher's Pet's debut album has finally been released through Smogveil Records.

"I was ill for about six months so I redid my Web site and threw up all the Teacher's Pet videos that are on the CD," Kal explains. "Frank from Smogveil saw the Web site and then got in touch with Ron."

The album is full of hard-driving, catchy originals, many with a streak of black humor.

"We would read the paper and say, "That's sick; that's stupid' and then write a song about it," Mullens says. "Things like the Who concert in Cincinnati, Arthur Noski, the kid that was killed in Cleveland. We just wrote about what we saw."

The album holds its own against the output of better known Akron bands like the Bizarros and the Rubber City Rebels, and should be weclomed by fans of '70s punk.

Kal moved back to Akron, and for the last four years he and Mullens have been playing together (with Teacher's Pet drummer Billy Tomazick) in the punk-rock cover band the Tormentors. But now that their debut album is finally seeing the light of day, they've decided to go back to playing originals with Dave Stevenson (aka Tate) taking over on bass. But the future of Teacher's Pet is still to be determined.

"Right now it's just a wait-and-see situation," Mullens says. "We're not planning on doing just a few shows and then breaking up. Hopefully, if everybody likes it we'll stay together for a while."

Teacher's Pet, The Pickled Beats, Trial of Lucy: 10 p.m. Saturday, May 3 at Chuck's Steakhouse, 456 E. South St., Akron, 330.384.1792. Tickets: $5.

Three Miles Out
Nobody (Big Dog Head)
threemilesout.com

You can't accuse this hard-rocking local quartet of not working hard for the money. The guys keep a tireless schedule and boast they've played every major venue in the city (from the sports stadiums to the outdoor sheds) in some capacity or another. And yet the band's latest album, Nobody, just doesn't do the live show justice. Album opener "All the Same" is a ham-fisted rocker (with some pretty shoddy backing vocals, I might add) that could conceivably find its way onto mainstream alt-rock radio playlists. That is, if rock radio still played run-of-the-mill bands such as Local H and Stone Temple Pilots. While the band's certainly evolved over the years (ballads such as "Only One" and "In the Light" are amongst the group's best songs), it just can't help sounding behind the times. - Jeff Niesel

Brittany Reilly
Good Old Country Sound (self-released)
brittanyreilly.com

There's little chance of ever confusing this Brittany with that other one - you know, the one who's constantly on the covers of tabloids for mistreating her kids and hooking up with any number of slimeballs while she tries to resuscitate her career as a pop singer. Reilly, a wholesome country crooner who was born and raised in Bay Village, keeps things simple on this album, which she recorded at South Florida's Dream Factory Studios. While Reilly only writes a handful of the songs here, her voice suits the bluegrass and country material perfectly. Her fine backing band has no trouble evoking an authentic bluegrass vibe on tunes such as "Banks of the Old Suwannee," either. While she could work on her range and experiment with material that's a bit more edgy, Reilly, who turns 24 next month, still has plenty of time for that. - JN