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Tickets available locally at Smith Rock Records & Higher Elevation Smokers GalleryBio:ME FIRST AND THE GIMME GIMMES BLOW ITAT MADISONSQUINCEAERA! Twenty years after Me First and the GimmeGimmes ruined Johnnys Bar Mitzvah, punk rocks premier cover band is back towreak havoc on another important coming-of-age ceremony. This time, as thealbum title reveals, it was a Quinceaera. Nobody attending had ever heardof Me First and the Gimme Gimmes before, and nobody knew what to expect.It was really tense for me going out to no applauseand to people actuallywalking away when we were playing, says frontman Spike Slawson. AQuinceaera is a very celebrated and important event, not just in a young girlslife, but in the whole families. Mom and Dad were great, but it took the uncles alittle while to warm up to me and our off-color jokes, though I think eventuallythey got it. Our process is to cast the line out and bring people to the point ofand beyondoutward expressions of displeasure like booing, and thenhopefully reel them back in by the end of the set.Does that kind of make Me First and the Gimme Gimmesespecially on thisrecordthe Andy Kaufman of punk rock? Possibly. But you dont have to be inon the joke to enjoy this album. Nor do you have to be a sadist (but it wouldnthurt) to enjoy the one person politely clapping after Slawson introducesChanges at the beginning of the first of the bands two sets. This is a BlackSabbath song, he says. If you know it, feel free to sing along. Nobody does.But he interpolates birthday girl, Madisons, name into the song, and as theband speeds things up a little later, you can feel that heavy, early tensiondissipate a very tiny bit. When he speaks to her at the start of Dancing Queen,things loosen up a little bit morethough you could still cut the air with acumpleaos cake-sized knifeand there are even a few cheers after the bandsings Happy Birthday. The turning point, however, has to be the wonderfullySNAFUd cover of Olivia Rodrigos Good 4 U, which is a work of art in and ofitself, regardless of context. And while it might not have gotten the exact samereception the popstar herself gets in arenas; its still followed by enthusiasticscreams. Whats more, as its wont to do, the band even manages to include anod to a punk classic at the start, in the shape of Ever Fallen In Love.We just thought it was too perfect, remembers Slawson. Nobody in the placeknew who the Buzzcocks were or cared what the intro was or anything, so itwas kind of lost on them, but that moment in the set I think was when thecrowd was finally fully on our side. We had them eating out of the palm of ourhands at that point, which was a good feeling because it was touch and go untilthen. But with that song we finally played something from this millennium.
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