Me First and the Gimme Gimmes

About

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 , punk rock's premier cover band is back to wreak havoc on another important coming-of-age ceremony. This time, as the album title reveals, it was a Quinceañera. Nobody attending had ever heard of Me First and the Gimme Gimmes before, and nobody knew what to expect. "It was really tense for me going out to no applause—and to people actually walking away when we were playing," says frontman Spike Slawson. "A Quinceañera is a very celebrated and important event, not just in a young girl's life, but in the whole families. Mom and Dad were great, but it took the uncles a little while to warm up to me and our off-color jokes, though I think eventually they got it. Our process is to cast the line out and bring people to the point of—and beyond—outward expressions of displeasure like booing, and then hopefully reel them back in by the end of the set." Does that kind of make Me First and the Gimme Gimmes —especially on this record—the Andy Kaufman of punk rock? Possibly. But you don't have to be in on the joke to enjoy this album. Nor do you have to be a sadist (but it wouldn't hurt) to enjoy the one person politely clapping 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." Nobody does. But he interpolates birthday girl, Madison's, name into the song, and as the band speeds things up a little later, you can feel that heavy, early tension dissipate a very tiny bit. When he speaks to her at the start of "Dancing Queen," things loosen up a little bit more—though you could still cut the air with a cumpleaños cake-sized knife—and there are even a few cheers after the band sings "Happy Birthday." The turning point, however, has to be the wonderfully SNAFU'd cover of Olivia Rodrigo's "Good 4 U", which is a work of art