Against Me! - New Wave

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

sell outs

just inasmuch as it made me realize that being transgendered ceased being interesting/controversial/worth commenting on, for me, like over a decade ago.

xp

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

― dayo, Wednesday, May 9, 2012 6:04 PM (48 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

btw i feel the need to confess to you that the acoustic ep is basically all i listen to now

can't wait for shakey to go in every single thread on new answers and update us on whether he cares about the topic or not

thought process

* open thread
* think "this is not interesting enough to be worth commenting on"
* comment on it anyways

:) xxp

yr welcome

christ shakey

for me 'baby, I'm an anarchist' and 'I was a teenage anarchist' are really bookends for AM!'s career arc imo. so much compressed maturation and wisdom between those two songs.

can't begrudge them for signing with a major or even for signing with fat wreck back in the day - puro's are so weird to me imo

The spaces and music of not explicitly queer punk code white and male and straight.

― twinkin' and drinkin' and ready to fly (Alex in Montreal), Wednesday, May 9, 2012 1:42 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark

this it otm btw, so much of the scene reads like "I was rejected by the dominant culture so now I'm going to carve out my own space where I get to impose my own rules and culture on"

go into the gay thread less than 24 hours after the NC marriage amendment and be all "well gays and marriage ceased being interesting after The Birdcage"

LBGTQ movement can stop dead in its tracks - shakey finds it all normal and ho-hum, no further progress needs to be made

well, that isn't really what I meant. I meant this made me realize what a weird bubble I live in. ie, a bubble filled with transgendered people.

but whatever carry on

should i watch the birdcage btw

that makes it more of a big deal that it occurred in a bubble as tight as this woman's.

yes, hoos!

Shakey, I don't think anyone here is commenting on the article because they find the notion of being transgendered strange, I think people are commenting because they recognise the social and institutional discrimination that transgendered people face, and are heartened by the fact that someone prominent in music has been able to go through this and find support from their fans.

I get all that. would be strange to me if she DIDN'T get support from her fans tbh.

trying to recall the last time someone's music career was damaged by coming out of the closet, much less transgender (admittedly the instances of the latter that I'm familiar with involved local acts and OutpunK/Oly-scene folks)

by the way, fuck tom breihan:

http://stereogum.com/1026761/against-me-frontman-to-change-genders/news/

Well, here’s something I don’t think anyone saw coming. Tom Gabel is the frontman and founder of Against Me!, one of the best punk bands currently in existence. But he isn’t going to be Tom Gabel much longer. He’s currently planning to begin living as a woman, and he’s changing his name to Laura Jane Grace. This is apparently a real thing. More below.

Rolling Stone reports that Gabel is planning to start taking hormones and undergoing electrolysis soon. He says he’s been living with gender dysphoria for years and that he (she, I guess?) feels the need to talk openly about it, since no major rock figures have done this before. Gabel’s wife is apparently entirely cool with this: “For me, the most terrifying thing about this was how she would accept the news. But she’s been super-amazing and understanding.”

So: Good for her? I guess? My main takeaway from this, beyond the obvious surprise, is that I’m hoping Gabel’s hormone treatments won’t change her inimitable bleat of a voice.

well that is quite the reaction isn't it

doing a lot of guessing there lol

jesus fn christ

Not sure how much his follow-up comment makes a difference:

After 20 minutes of reflection, I feel sort of bad that my tone in this post is more “WHUT?” than “YAY,” especially considering how much I like this person. But then again, “WHUT” is, I think, a perfectly understandable instant reaction.

IF ONLY THE ENTIRE WORLD WAS AS ENLIGHTENED AND LITERATE AS ILM

So: Good for her? I guess?

this comes off as pretty shitty, regardless of if your first reaction is being surprised

"WHUT" is a perfectly understandable instant reaction for straight white dudes with little tg experience who barely dug to the Against Me albums they loved so much (hell, I'm basically one). Posting your instant reaction on a semi-professional news website is less so.

Yeah, I think that's my main problem with that post - even if your reaction is "WHUT" it isn't an appropriate way of writing about it.

yeah i mean i shared the link with just a "!" because i was surprised by the news but didn't want to try expressing that surprise in words bcz i knew there was no way to do it well

i guess breihan didn't have that compunction

bcz i knew there was no way

do it well

How nice that selling out enables her to afford such an elaborate operation.

My excuse for missing the heads-up in "The Ocean" is that, the way New Wave is paced, I'm done by "Americans Abroad."

if you save up long enough, maybe you can get an operation that allows you to go fuck yourself

xp

Also "Born On The FM Waves" is one of the awesomest songs of the 2000's.