ME FIRST AND THE GIMME GIMMES
ALBUM "BLOW IT...AT MADISON'S QUINCEAÑERA!" IN JUNE VIA FAT WRECK
SINGLE, "DANCING QUEEN", NOW ONLINE AT:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00Pz7c5gdWs
Me First and the Gimme Gimmes are back and this time storming Madison's Quinceañera.
It gives a taste of their upcoming live album "Me First and the Gimme Gimmes Blow it...at Madison's Quinceañera", which will be released on June 14 via Fat Wreck.
In collaboration with 91X in San Diego, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes searched for a family willing to present the ultimate punk rock cover band at a celebration, and Madison's family won!
Did the invited guests recognize the Gimmes? Were they thrilled by the unexpected performance of their favorite hits at Madison's Quinceañera?
ME FIRST AND THE GIMME GIMMES - "BLOW IT...AT MADISON'S QUINCEAÑERA!
Twenty years after Me First and the Gimme Gimmes ruined Johnny's Bar Mitzvah, the world's best punk rock cover band returns to ruin another important coming-of-age ceremony.
This time, as the album title reveals, it was a Quinceañera. None of the attendees had ever heard of Me First and the Gimme Gimmes before, and no one knew what to expect. "It was really a tense situation for me to perform without warm applause - and the fact that people actually left while we were playing didn’t make it any better," says frontman Spike Slawson.
"A Quinceañera is a very celebrated and important event, not just in the life of a young girl, but for all family members. Mom and Dad were great, but the uncles took a while to warm up to me and our risqué jokes, although I think they eventually got it. Our approach is to get people to a point where they express their displeasure, like booing, and then hopefully reel them back in by the end of the show."
Does all of this make Me First and the Gimme Gimmes - especially on this record - a kind of Andy Kaufman of punk rock? Pretty much. The good thing: You don’t have to understand the joke to enjoy this album. You also don’t have to be a sadist to enjoy the one-person applause after Slawson introduces "Changes" at the beginning of the first of the band's two sets: "This is a Black Sabbath song," he says. "If you know it, feel free to sing along." No one does.
But he adds the name of the birthday girl Madison into the song, and as the band picks up the pace later, you can feel the initial tension ease just a little bit. When he addresses her at the beginning of "Dancing Queen," everything becomes a bit more relaxed - although you could still cut the air with a birthday cake-sized knife - and then there are even a few cheers after the band sings "Happy Birthday."
However, the turning point is the wonderful SNAFU cover of Olivia Rodrigo's "Good 4 U", which is a work of art in its own right, regardless of the context. And even if the song may not go over as well as the pop star's original in the big arenas, the performance is accompanied by quite enthusiastic screams. Furthermore, the band manages, as usual, to incorporate a nod to a punk classic with "Ever Fallen In Love" at the beginning.
"We just found it too perfect," recalls Slawson. "No one in the room knew who the Buzzcocks were or cared about the intro or anything else, so it kind of fell flat. But I think that moment in the set was when the crowd was finally fully on our side. At that point, they were eating out of our hands, which felt good because it had been a slow climb until then. But with the Olivia Rodrigo song, we finally played something from this millennium."
Recorded on July 15, 2023, at the Soap Factory in San Diego, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes were joined for this live performance by Joey Cape on guitar, CJ Ramone on bass, Swami John Reis on guitar, and Andrew "Pinch" Pinching on drums - a true punk rock supergroup, as always.
But not that anyone at the Quinceañera knew or cared. However, they also had a brass section for the first time, supported by Keith Douglas and Jason Crane. Swami John Reis's father, John Reis Sr., even played accordion on the penultimate song "Before the Next Teardrop Falls," a piece made famous by Freddy Fender in 1975. All together, it makes for a performance that rises to the occasion (even if it sinks).
It would have been so easy for the band to play in front of an audience that already knows and loves them, but that’s not the Gimme Gimmes' style. Moreover, you get more of a sense of what the band is like live by listening than you ever could at a smooth-running performance in front of an adoring crowd. For Slawson, this redemptive arc is precisely the point:
"I want this to be seen as an indicator of what a live show by the Gimme Gimmes looks like," he says. "The only difference is that there are people who specifically wanted to hear us and came to see us. What happened at this show is better for me than the unrestricted, unconditional applause of many people. Golf claps from about five people - that’s how I want to hear a live record. It’s funny, and it doesn’t stop being funny. External expressions of displeasure don’t just not deter me, but I might even crave them a little. I don’t want people to boo us off stage, but I want to get them to that point so I can then bring them back. The girl had fun, her parents had fun, her grandpa had fun. And when the DJ finally played, her friends had fun too.”
ME FIRST AND THE GIMME GIMMES LIVE 2024
21.06. Scheeßel - Hurricane Festival
22.06. Neuhausen O. Eck - Southside Festival
23.06. CH-Zürich - Dynamo
26.06. Wiesbaden - Schlachthof
27.07. Leipzig - Conne Island
29.06. Geiselwind - Mission Ready
30.06. NL-Ysselsteyn - Jera On Air
04.07. Berlin - Astra Kulturhaus
06.07. Hünxe - Ruhrpott Rodeo
