When a genre of music boils its all-too-formulaic style down to covers of once-popular karaoke barnburners, you know it has popped its clogs and joined the pop culture limbo of VH1 summer programming. Take as an example punk rock, and the albums of Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, who take on such shitheel songwriters as John Denver, Neil Diamond, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Bernie Taupin and whoever wrote songs for Styx, with the fast/loud modus operandi of punk music
Wait, damn it! Punk’s not dead! Don’t listen to the naysayers, for Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, Fat Wreck Chords’ all-star cover band, represent the very lifeblood of punk music, in all of its epicurean glory. Including members of NOFX (Fat Mike), Lagwagon (Joey Cape, Dave Raun), No Use For A Name (Chris Shiflett) and Swingin’ Utters (Spike Slawson), the Gimmes inject the pure power-chord attack of new-school punk into well-established, well-loved-by-the-masses singles collected from singer-songwriter types, Broadway musicals, R&B hit-makers and classic-rock radio.
The Gimmes began in 1996 as members of the separate bands came together to record covers for various Punk-O-Rama-style compilations, but through a series of singles, they soon became an entity separate from their respective “serious” bands. In 1997, they released their first full-length album, Have a Ball, a collection of songs from the likes of Paul Simon (“Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard”), James Taylor (“Fire and Rain”) and John Denver (“Leaving on a Jet Plane”). The crew blasts through the A.M. hits in such a fun-loving, energetic fashion that many of the songs sound even better to the ears of Generation Y punk revivalists than the limp but famous originals. Their next album, 1999’s Are a Drag, showcased songs culled from Broadway musicals that are recognizable to even the most ardent show-tune opponents. Twentieth-century standards such as “My Favorite Things,” “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina,” “Summertime” and “Over the Rainbow” were given the power-chord treatment for an album as consistently enjoyable as any of the Gimmes’ A.M.-radio hit covers.
Blow in the Wind followed in 2001, featuring some of the best interpretations of their career. With a take on music of the ’60s, including Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” Del Shannon’s “Runaway” and some girl-group oldies, the group reached new heights of ridiculousness and hilarity, mastering such time-honored traditions as the ridiculous guitar solo, the four-part vocal harmony, the spoken word interlude (“To the library!”) and the always classic “no-longer-than-three-minutes” attack. For any listener of Fat Wreck Chords punk revival, this is the classic Gimmes album, containing bonus intro segments taken from such seminal punk songs as the Clash’s “London Calling” and the Ramones’ “Teenage Lobotomy” to reward those in the know with even more hilarity. By 2003’s Take a Break, which collected R&B classics from Michael Jackson, Lionel Ritchie, Prince and others, and 2004’s Ruin Jonny’s Bar Mitzvah, a live show at a Malibu bar mitzvah, the Gimmes fully developed the expertly fun-loving style of Blow in the Wind into an oeuvre as respectable — or entertaining — as any of their contemporaries in the late ’90s punk scene.
Called (by themselves, most likely) the “best cover band in the world,” Me First and the Gimme Gimmes consistently deliver a silk-purse-from-the-sow’s-ear idea of “punk covers,” with the help of a quarter keg of fun, some ridiculous guitar solos and, of course, the incomparable Fat Mike.
If only John Denver had heard the Gimmes as his doomed plane plummeted to its terminal elevation, he would be content to know that his legacy was secure in the hands of Generation Y’s silliest house band.
