Gig Review

Me First And The Gimme Gimmes
Bristol, Academy
6th June 2009
    
          
Me First And The Gimme Gimmes 
                        
Photo Of Me First And The Gimme Gimmes © Copyright Trigger 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.

Photo Of Me First And The Gimme Gimmes © Copyright TriggerSo 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.

Photo Of Me First And The Gimme Gimmes © Copyright TriggerThe 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

 Me First And The Gimme  Gimmes


Spike (Vocals)
Jake (Guitar)
Fat Mike (Bass)
Joey (Guitar)
Dave (Drums)

 Band Related Links
Me First And The Gimme Gimmes Myspace
 Review Score Code
- Top Cheese
- Brilliant
- Pretty damn good
- Ok I guess
- What Was That?