“If you didn’t get tickets by now, you’re obviously not going to see Against Me (AKA The Fab Four).” — said to me by a fan in a condescending manner. She did not say the stuff in parenthesis, I just inferred it. In other words, put the words in her mouth.
This manic energy everywhere. Although the band plays their souls out, it is more entertaining to watch the energy pour forth from the audience. I think the band would deflate like blow-up dolls if it was not for the audience. They hardly stand up on their own, their mouths open in large O’s behind the microphones.
Against Me attracts a loyalty I cannot fully understand; like this scaled down version of Beatlemania complete with manic girls screaming to the point where you cannot even hear the music. Well, you can hear the music. With today’s technology and the fact that the band is fucking loud (it comes with the responsibilities of being a punk band), Against Me can be heard no matter how loud the audience belts along to the chorus.
The band is and always has been this awkward hodge-podge of punk, country (the cool kids call it folk-punk), rock and cheesy ballads. Not so much a melding of these genres, but a roughly mixed mess under the banner of punk. Their music is full of cliches that they fully embrace.
When they do happen to break boundaries, fans are alienated. They now face the same problem every other major band in the history of rock has come across: selling out. Did Nirvana sell out with “Never Mind”? How about that damn Green Day album “Dookie”? Bands like Staind selling out before they even technically sold out; putting integrity as musicians on the back burner in hunt of the mighty dollar.
I like the Wayne’s World throwback answer they give in a video response available on YouTube.
At least Against Me resisted “selling out” and had fun in the process, wining and dining with big-whig record executives that would foot the bill for their alcoholic tendencies (this has been recorded on one of their documentaries and is quite entertaining).
To know a band, you must know their roots.
Against Me never shied away from singing over-the-top corny ballads, but it has always been “okay” since the songs were in the name of folk punk: growls and an occasional f-bomb showed up every once in a while to tinge the sweetness of the song.
Tom Gabel’s vocals are interesting in how they weave in and out with the otherwise basic music. The phrasing of his lyrics I find much more powerful than anything else in his songs, including the words. It is the one constant in Against Me’s evolving music.
The band has long interested and intrigued me. I went to their sold out show at Common Grounds last year on a whim. Some acquaintance who had bought tickets could not make it and I snagged them.
The memories: I remember a roommate pulling me and pushing me in the mob as he throated along to his favorite songs. I awkwardly, bewildering and clumsily stepped along and mumbled along to the chorus which I had yet to figure out in the course of its repetition.
I talked to multiple people who complained before the show about the band selling out and then rushed inside to the sold out show. Maybe the fans have sold out. Again, what is selling out?
It brings me to another point: that everyone is a fan and always has been a fan of Against Me. Even Tom Gabel recognizes this pattern.
“No one liked us at first, and now there’s all these people saying “I’ve loved you since (Vivida Vis).” “No, you didn’t. No one liked us when (Vivida Vis) was around. I was there at the shows. There were ten people there, what are you talking about? I know you weren’t there” (Interview from Racket Magazine).
Early songs by the band, although authentic, sound cheesy and half-inspired. Tracks like “Baby I’m an Anarchist” are among the overwrought in the bunch. Gabel is trying so hard to sound on the edge and political. Buzz words like Nixon, Bush and Stalin all make it into the first verse of the song, strung together by overused phrases that are meant to sound badass. Am I missing the irony? Maybe he is not taking himself seriously, but too many fans are doing that for him; crying the words out like holy bible verses stitched on their arms. Something about the song still compels me too. And that is the problem.
Later songs like “Miami” are fun, but looked at too deeply, have the same weakness. It is like a surprisingly growly teenager trying to gain punk rock credentials by boosting his hard-coreness. I am a sucker for call and response though, “Just like Miami…”
“Miami!”
I think the Against Me of today has a unique sound overall in comparison to their folk-punk roots. Gabel’s voice is carrying less of the music. However, with this new sound they seem to have lost some of their soul; that spark of passion that polished over any rough patches and inconsistencies that an expensive studio could never mimic.
Even the drummer Warren Oakes, spread his repertoire to one or two more drum beats.
“Thrash Unreal” humorously mixes the corny “ba, ba bas” to the line “no mother ever dreamed that her daughter would grow up to be a junkie.” An odd mixture that sometimes works, depending on what day I listen to it.
What never works is the band trying to make the line “protest songs, in response to military aggression” into a catchy sing-a-long hook. The dead-pan, exaggerated corniness in “White People for Peace” has been pushed too far.
Much of what I have written here could be considered blasphemy in Gainesville, the Mecca of Against Me. This is the place where they started, recorded and gained a cult following. This is their town. This is their soil.
A side note: I recorded with Goldentone Studios (where Against Me first recorded their demos and EPs) and I still think Rob McGregor cannot record drums worth crap. There I said it. If you do not believe me, listen to anything done by him (including early Against Me).
And before I get in trouble, I still think he is a fine man, an outstanding citizen and pretty damn good at recording everything else.
Mostly, Against Me gives me hope. Hope that someday, I will find my way and make it big in the music business. It is such wishful thinking, but the band gives me that thread to hold onto. They are so damn close to home.
It is crazy to imagine that Gabel was playing on these same streets, seeing the same sounds and treading on the same ground. After watching documentary footage of early Against Me concerts — There is definitely hope for me and my small ideas to get somewhere.
The band has a legacy here that everyone wants to follow. People feel like a part of the band because they watched Against Me grow with their own eyes (or think they watched Against Me grow with their own eyes — the band has this strut about them that makes you think you knew them back when they were teenage, snot-nosed punks even though you grew up in Michigan or something). Combine that with catchy hooks in songs like “Don’t Lose Touch” and the band has got itself a relentlessly loyal fanbase that will hold on for dear life even if Against Me ditched their instruments and started a barber shop quartet.
“We were carried by the wheels of the Armageddon.”
I do not know what Gabel quite means by this, I hear it was the name of their touring van, but it sounds badass and a nice way to to end this blog post, right? The Armageddon is the end. And appropriately, it is getting time for this to be
the end.
Posted by shawandmusic 
Posted by shawandmusic 