Against Me! - New Wave

"You're getting messed up with the wrong guys/You're getting messed up on the wrong drugs/Sometimes your body takes you places/That you didn't really plan on goin" has always struck me as a very Craig Finn-y line. The whole song in its way has that classic rock feel to it, but that line sounds like it coulda come right off Separation Sunday.

also the high note on "they don't know nothin about redemption" always makes me lose my shit

hoos did you ever get into early AM!

I like Eternal Cowboy a lot but Axl Rose still hasn't really grabbed me yet

also i think i want to send the lyrics to "piss and vinegar" to everyone on the occupydc discussion list

man hoos I feel like I don't know you anymore

this is actually my favorite against me! record

maybe i am wrong to interpret "borne on the fm waves of the heart" as a song about social anxiety disorder but it is sincerely the best song about that, if it is

man hoos I feel like I don't know you anymore

― ASPIE Rocky (dayo), Monday, November 7, 2011 5:36 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

lol how u mean

maybe i am wrong to interpret "borne on the fm waves of the heart" as a song about social anxiety disorder but it is sincerely the best song about that, if it is

― mutant slow drum (BradNelson), Monday, November 7, 2011 5:37 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

yah i've always heard it as kinda "summer lovin" + s.a.d.

hah as an early AM! fan I always felt that the band peaked with axl rose - when eternal cowboy first came out man you would not believe the backlash

it's only with white crosses that they've been winning me back

so to hear you rep for everything except the classic!

*moshes by myself*

yah nah i mean

i kinda came up on nasally anarcho-folk like david rovics and the people who turned into riot folk so i kinda got my fill of the folk-beat kinda thing, even if it was plugged in? idk

all that said, thinking about david rovics has made me wanna hear him again and goddamn as sorta annoying he can be with his bathos (how many songs about dead palestinian kids do you need?) and his weird al-esque voice, hearing stuff like "berkshire hills" and "we are everywhere" is really fucking me up with the way the sentiments about struggle are landing close to home.

hey hoos do u fuck w/ folks like Robert Hoyt and Jim Page too?

I recently went on a big early Against Me kick, I love that Crimethinc EP w/ "Les Paul cursed my dirty callused fingers"

crimes as forgiven by?

the early acoustic EPs are maybe my favorite AM! product

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPAgL3J_dvc

^ used to listen to this in college a lot and it just got me all choked up at my desk

really I'm just surprised that tom can sing after so many years of touring. he must have vocal chords made out of six pack plastic rings.

oh yah dayo you're right about the name, don't know why I thought it was on Crimethinc label.

wow didn't really expect AM to get ILX love. This has made me happy.

Acoustic EPs are great btw

hey hoos do u fuck w/ folks like Robert Hoyt and Jim Page too?

i have never heard of these dudes! but will have to check them out fo sho

I never heard of this band until New Wave. The earlier stuff sounds like an entirely different band. I like the slick radio-friendly version of the band infinitely better than the acoustic songs about anarchists.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/tom-gabel-of-against-me-comes-out-as-transgender-20120508

Very, very happy with the positive response to this. Good on her, good on Against Me! fans.

From the Against Me! forum, i.e.:

I am so so so proud of her. As soon as I read the article I ran downstairs and told my transgender sibling to google the article, and then we hugged and yelled (because this is so fantastic and yaaay). It's so important that everybody, I mean everybody here who cares about her to be unwavering in our support and not let anyone get away with any bullshit.
I am literally the happiest person. I love her so goddamn much.

+1

very cool, I saw a headline at some mainstream news site before I realized what this revive was about.

Bold, brave move and I applaud it. And I'm glad initial fan reaction is warm.

Still, Against Me! is absolutely not my bag.

the status update via queer bashback that i caught this on was "good for you. you're still a fucking sellout." puro smh

guilty lol @ that

this made my day! awesome all around

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxNRia5f7yY

maybe my fav AM! song ever? maybe their most intimate, and that's no easy feat

Wow. That is truly surprising.

I tried getting into their early music, can't do it. But I love the last 2 records, the slick radio-friendly ones. I wish more bands would sell out that well.

I guess the lyrics to "The Ocean" stuck with me, because my first thought after hearing this was

If I could have chosen, I would have been born a woman
My mother once told me she would have named me Laura

So finding out she's naming herself Laura is neat.

good on her!

the status update via queer bashback that i caught this on was "good for you. you're still a fucking sellout." puro smh

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Wednesday, May 9, 2012 5:39 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark

this is fucking hilarious, i love it.

I guess the lyrics to "The Ocean" stuck with me, because my first thought after hearing this was

/If I could have chosen, I would have been born a woman
My mother once told me she would have named me Laura /

So finding out she's naming herself Laura is neat.
--C-L

I'd never caught those lines before, wow. Was also thinking that in the context of a struggle for gender identity "against me!" has much richer (sadder?) meaning.

loved the last two records also (white crosses more or less to death); this is rad.

My buddy used to be their drummer. I've hung out with TG/LJG a number of times and never had any idea. Courage and love to her.

I love New Wave and White Crosses (my roommate loves the first three LPs) - this is the best news I've read today.

especially glad to see that most AM! fans are responding with support. The Rolling Stone comment thread was iffy at points but generally good, too.

What's hitting me really hard today is the bridge of 'I Was a Teenage Anarchist'. They got so much flack for selling out without anyone really talking about why the scene/movement can be actively alienating.

'the scene got too rigid' 'narrow visions of autonomy / you want me to surrender my identity / I was a teenage anarchist / the revolution was a lie' often got read as alienation from politics but it speaks really strongly to ways in which radical/anarchist/etc. spaces aren't necessarily queer or trans friendly (or safe spaces for people who aren't white) - not that they never are, and Against Me! Have always been part of the progressive/lefty wing of punk but still... The spaces and music of not explicitly queer punk code white and male and straight.

a lot of their songs read as queer so these developments make sense

xp hadn't thought about that either, really enlightening point.

just having another discussion today about how lgtbq folks have felt alienated from certain ostensibly radical spaces locally, that connection seems to make it really clear tho

still baffled that this scene still trucks with notions of purity.

well from where i'm sitting its less a question of the generalized punk 'you sold out when you signed to a major' than the specifically politically-driven 'you became a part of the entertainment-industrial complex, which means you have shitty politics,' and for people who thought their relatively marginal politics had found a voice in their early music, i imagine that betrayal might have cut a little deeper.

coming as i have from their latter stuff into their earliest stuff i tend to love it all sort of irrespective of politics.

i want to smash them all!

like MRR's injunction that people slash the tires of their tour van while they gigged always struck me as an especially personal form of attack--you're really gonna make the people in this touring band buy four new tires?--but the viciousness of it makes a little more sense if its understood as a reciprocal counterattack to the emotional gutpunch of their shift away from "the scene." not excusing it, obv, just trying to understand it.

it's weird how little I care about this

is it? go on

all you people who love the last two albums but dont have any love for what came before bum me out