Me First And The Gimme Gimmes have been around
for 14 years now and tonight was the first time
I was going to see them play live and the reason
for that is that Me First And The Gimme Gimmes
are a super band featuring members of NOFX, Foo
Fighters, Lagwagon, No Use For A Name and Swingin’
Utters so they are technically a big superstar
side project who can only tour when their main
full time bands are taking a break etc, so when
Me First And The Gimme Gimmes do play they are
play an handful of shows in each country and this
time around they decided to play 4 shows in the
UK which included a show at the Academy in Bristol
which is only 30minutes down the road from me
so I had to go along and watch a band I had been
wanting to watch for many years.
When we got to the venue, I had major problems
getting in, my guest list place was on the list
at the door fine but what was missing was my photo
pass, the security people were looking after my
camera until I proved I had a photo pass, so luckily
for me I printed the e-mail out before hand stating
what had been confirmed, who the tour manager
was and who to contact if I had problems getting
in, now I thought it would be a simple case of
showing the e-mail to prove I’m not attempting
to blag a pass and I would be in, but no it wasn’t
that simple, the girl behind the desk read the
e-mail but then decided she needed to contact
the tour manager and find out from him before
letting me in, did she think I magically made
up the tour managers name and wrote the e-mail
myself or something? Anyway it was annoying I
was stood at the front door for what felt like
forever whilst they kept trying to track the tour
manager down, in the end it came so close to Me
First And The Gimme Gimmes coming on they gave
up tracking the tour manager down and let me in
with the photo pass, now this is the first time
I have ever had trouble getting into a show and
hopefully it will be the last.
 So by the time I got in I had missed all the
support bands which was a shame, and I had about
ten minutes to kill before Me First And The Gimme
Gimmes were on so I made my way down to the front
ready for the show. Minutes later the band took
to the stage everyone was dressed in their finest
blue Hawaiian shirt apart from front man Spike
Slawson who was sporting a nice white suit but
you could see that he had his Hawaiian shirt on
hiding under the suit.
The first song the band played was ‘Summertime’
it got everyone in the Academy singing along and
moving to the fast paced punk rock sound of The
Gimmes, now ‘Summertime’ was the perfect
song to start with as it is now the start of the
summer even though the weather is not really showing
many signs of summer at the moment but at least
when The Gimmes are on stage playing their fast
country music turned punk covers it gives the
true feeling of what the summer is all about,
having a party with your favourite band whilst
drinking cold beer, the only thing missing is
the sun, but no matter how good The Gimmes are
they can’t work miracles, well not just
yet anyway.
The good thing about The Gimmes is that they
are a band who don’t take things to seriously
and they come out to have a party and get the
crowd to enjoy themselves for an hour and a half,
they cover the most random variety of songs and
its guaranteed that everyone has heard the original
version of most of the songs at some point in
their life so can clearly see how The Gimmes brighten
things up with their re-workings of classic songs
from all over the music industry.
 The Gimmes played a good 24 songs tonight, they
played classics such as ‘Rocket Man’,
‘Rainbow’ ‘Green Green Grass’
etc but the best moments of the show was when
they did a cover of Dolly Parton’s ‘Jolene’
which left Fat Mike shouting out “Who put
the cunt in country music” which gathered
a great response from the crowd with many screams
and claps coming in fast, another highlight of
the show was hearing them cover the Stevie Wonder
classic ‘Isn’t She Lovely’ as
I totally love the music of Stevie Wonder and
‘Isn’t She Lovely’ is one of
my favourite songs from the man and it was so
good to see The Gimme’s play a speeded up
punk version of the track.
As the show went on front man Spike Slawson took
his suit jacket off to reveal that he was kitted
up in the same Hawaiian shirt as everyone else,
whilst Fat Mike was getting hot on stage and started
unbuttoning his shirt to reveal his well loved
chest whilst at the same time sharing some banter
between himself and the crowd.
For someone who has never seen Me First And The
Gimme Gimmes live before I was loving every minute
of their set, they are a band that you don’t
need to know anything about to enjoy because the
chances are you will have already heard the original
versions of the songs they play and will instantly
fall in love with The Gimmes take on each and
every song whilst loving the bands upbeat nature
and humour at the same time.
The summer is here, the weather may be shit but
Me First And The Gimme Gimmes are here to brighten
up everyone who checks them out’s summer.
4/5
Review By Trigger |
