Andy Gapin

Having seen Against Me! something like a dozen times over the last ten years, I’ve grown accustomed to what to expect from their live shows. Little, if any, downtime between songs. Not a lot of talking. Impressive segues from one song into another. Energetic crowd. And a setlist that didn’t ignore the old stuff together, but focused on the newer songs.

Last night, Against Me! brought all of that, but it wasn’t those things that made it a great show this time around. This time, they were intense. Against Me! brought a level of intensity few bands could ever even hope to bring for just a single song. They kept it up for around 45 minutes.

A large part of this new intensity comes from new(ish) drummer Jay Weinberg—yes, son of Max. Jay isn’t just a guy behind a set of drums on the back of the stage, he is a driving piece of the band. He is loud and hard-hitting. I was always a fan of Warren, I even doubted that they could find a solid replacement for him when he left, but Jay brings something entirely new to the band. It’s hard to exactly describe it, it’s a level of intensity, but it goes beyond that. He’s a drummer who isn’t just playing music he loves, he’s playing with his favorite band. He screams along to all of the lyrics. He can’t even stay seated half the time. It’s as if the excitement of the music is too much for him to handle. Against Me! never lacked energy before, but the additional energy that Jay brings is simply unreal.

As much as Jay adds to Against Me!’s live show, the biggest change is Laura Jane Grace. This is Against Me!’s first tour with Laura living and playing as a woman. No one would fault her for appearing uncomfortable on stage or not performing to the standards and expectations she had set for herself when she was still living as a man. Any reasonable and open-minded fan would be more than understanding of what she’s going through, even though they themselves are not truly be able to comprehend what the life of a transgender person is like. But if that was Laura last night, this review probably wouldn’t need to exist. Maybe a simple supportive tweet would have sufficed.

The reality is that Laura walked out on stage proud of who she was and free from having to hold anything back. She owned it. And she looked great.

The crowd at the show was a weird mix being that Against Me! is providing tour support for The Cult, a band with a mostly older fan base that has little overlap with Against Me!’s. As such, this was the first time a lot of the people in the crowd had ever seen Laura and I would be surprised if any of them really even knew that she lived as Tom Gabel up until just recently. I could imagine many of them looking at the stage and thinking “what IS that? Is that a man or a woman?”

That didn’t seem to matter though. If Laura cared, you couldn’t tell. She was a force to be reckoned with. Any fan who has seen Against Me! before should have been able to pick up on the fact that her mannerisms and stage presence weren’t much different than they used to be before she started her transition. She still moved similarly on stage…but more. Looking back, her mannerisms on stage feel like hints of the woman she really is trying to come out, but being held back. There’s no holding back anymore. She’s free and it’s very obvious. To simplify something very complex, she looked comfortable in her own skin. A brand new skin that she loves and is just starting to explore. She looked happy.

It’s difficult to put the effect that Laura’s new comfort had into words because you have to see it to truly understand. This comfort brings Against Me! to an entirely new level that very few artists could ever achieve. The emotion is real. The words are real. The sincerity is unlike anything else.

Against Me!’s setlist stayed true to what they’ve always done, it focused on the newer stuff and didn’t get bogged down trying to play more than a handful of old songs. They opened with two brand new songs, which is something few bands can pull off. Both were great. Through the course of the rest of the set, they squeezed in a couple other new songs as well. Again, both great. Each new song was a reminder that this band has never and will never stop trying to move forward. And when Laura Jane Grace wants to deal with something, she’ll say it. She won’t mince words or hold back.

While some fans may have been disappointed in the band’s last release, White Crosses, Against Me!’s performance last night should serve, not just as a statement, but an exclamation that this band one of the absolute best bands making music today. Their sincerity, energy, and raw emotion may not be equaled by any other artist out there.

I went to see Night Birds last night in Philly. It was a good time. I took some photos.

These are a week and a half old, but I’m finally getting around to posting these photos from Shellac’s show at Union Transfer in Philly. The show was awesome, the venue is brand new and pretty cool.

Alright, so it’s been a little while since I’ve blogged. Oops. It’s probably going to be slow for the next month as well while final wedding stuff is coming together. Sorry about that, but I haven’t abandoned this thing, I promise!

Last weekend, I took a trip down to Baltimore for Insubordination Fest. This was my third time at the fest and it was probably the most fun year I’ve attended. There were no venue issues like last year. In fact, the venue, The Ottobar, couldn’t have been better for the weekend. I couldn’t come up with a complaint if I tried.

One of the highlights of the weekend was actually a joke band that was put together solely for the sake of the fest. And amazingly, the songs that were recorded a few days before the fest are actually better than most real bands’ stuff. Their set was a ton of fun.

But, that being said, the hands down best set of the weekend was from The Copyrights. So damn good. If you’re not already listening to this band, you should be.

I got myself into a little trouble with continuous mode on my camera though. I came home with almost 1400 photos from less 36 hours. Insane. I narrowed down to about 200 to edit and I narrowed down further to about 70 to post.

Enjoy.

Alright, so 90s indie-rock band Archers of Loaf is currently in the middle of a reunion tour. These things can really be hit or miss, but I figured that I’d give it a try since I’ve never seen them before. I’m not going to do a full review of the show, but for a bunch of guys in their 40s (?), they had an insane amount of energy. They really brought the show. They played everything I wanted to hear and played it well. They were tight and awesome. I was genuinely surprised and impressed. The only thing I could have done without would have been the two encores. Seriously, society as a whole needs to come together to abolish the concept of planned encores.

I’ve never been to the Music Hall of Williamsburg before, but it was very nice. We got there early and snagged a couple seats in the balcony and stayed there all night. It was a great spot to watch from, but combined with the ultra-low lighting, it was not a great spot to take photos from.

Here’s what I got.

Besides making terrible music, Jon Bon Jovi is also into saying just blatantly stupid things. Apparently, he blames Steve Jobs for the downfall of the music industry. His words:

Kids today have missed the whole experience of putting the headphones on, turning it up to 10, holding the jacket, closing their eyes and getting lost in an album; and the beauty of taking your allowance money and making a decision based on the jacket, not knowing what the record sounded like, and looking at a couple of still pictures and imagining it..

God, it was a magical, magical time…I hate to sound like an old man now, but I am, and you mark my words, in a generation from now people are going to say: ‘What happened?’ Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business.

Really, Jon? Really? I’m not here to glorify Steve Jobs, but let’s take a moment here and look at this. Steve Jobs did not invent digital music. Steve Jobs did not invent illegal file sharing and the pirating of music. Steve Jobs did not make shitty music.

What Steve did do was help put together a device for listening to music and a music store that gave the music industry a fighting chance against illegal downloading of music. The iTunes Store was the first online music store that caught on and part of the reason that it did catch on was because of the success of the iPod. Without iTunes making it, other online music stores would have almost definitely failed when competing against FREE.

When given the choice between paying for something or getting it free, most kids are going to go with free. Steve never gave the music away.

The problems with the music industry are many, but I think one of the biggest is the fact that their products suck. The mainstream music industry doesn’t put out records worth buying. They haven’t in a long time. Independent artists still get the concept of putting together albums, but the mainstream industry that complains to no end that they can’t sell records fails to understand that, with few exceptions, they aren’t producing anything worth buying.

Then, you have the fact that the music industry which very clearly is just pissed off about the fact that they lost their chance to profit from digital music by fighting against it for years. Instead of trying to embrace their fans, they treat(ed) like criminals. Had they not sued the pants off of their own customers and instead tried to get onboard with digital music right away, you’d be looking at a different story.

Pirating music and illegal downloading is definitely not good for the big name record labels, but it, nor Mr. Jobs, iPods, or iTunes, are the reason for the music industry being a mess. Shitty music and a big ol’ finger-to-the-fans is.

And let’s be real, the music business will never die, Jon, just YOUR music business. Music will always exist and people will always love it and enjoy it. Things may never be the same, but while music as a whole is still transforming a bit because of the internet and things haven’t really solidified yet, it will not go away. There will always be people that love making music and make great music purely for that reason.

If Jon Bon Jovi was really the idealist that he claims to be, he wouldn’t still be selling his music via the iTunes Store while making comments against its visionary.

Besides, when was the last time Bon Jovi was even a relevant artist anyway?

Some Epcot photos!

Last Friday, I took a ride up to Brooklyn for the first night of the Don Giovanni Records showcase at Death By Audio. The lineup was The Steinways, The Measure [SA], Black Wine, Full of Fancy, and Big Eyes and except for the disaster that was The Steinways’ set, the show was awesome.

I was able to photograph three of the bands, but of course the lighting was awful and I didn’t bring my flash. I had to bump the ISO all the way up to 3200 to get non-blurry shots, but they turned out to be pretty damn noisy. But since I knew this would be the case going in, I didn’t worry about it too much and just had fun with it.

I ended up having to convert most of the photos to black and white to deal with the different colored lights, but I did decide to keep the color for a few to see what I could salvage.

Honestly, I kind of enjoyed some of the results.

It’s a Christmas miracle! I got my top 10 albums of the year list done! I kept forgetting about this and putting it off so much that I didn’t think I’d have it done by Christmas, but I buckled down and made it happen.

In years past, I’ve done bigger lists and/or had honorable mentions and all that jazz. Mostly this was fueled by hosting The Playlist, but without having a radio show to host a top albums of the year countdown on now, I had less drive to make a list that I could fill an hour (or two) with.

This was an odd year for me, I barely spent any time listening to music. Even though I still hosted the radio show up until September, I felt less connected to the music than I used to. I think this is a temporary thing, but I really found myself never listening to music at home and listening much, much less at work. I’m putting the blame on trying to do too much and having too much going on. It used to be that the biggest thing in my life was the radio station. Most of what I did was connected to that so I was surrounded by music. Before that, I ran a venue. Before that, I did little besides going to shows. So up until recently, most of my time and hobbies were music  related. That’s changed a lot this year, I spend more time doing non-music related things now. It’s changed a lot for me, but I think things will even out sooner or later. I hope at least.

Because of all that, I think I missed out on a lot of music this year and even stuff that I did check out, didn’t get the time that it deserved. Making a list this year was hard, but I’m pretty happy with it.

So here it is, the albums I was most into for 2010…

Blake Schwartzenbach’s new band, forgetters, has a new song posted and it’s pretty solid. This is a lot better than the forgettable forgetters EP from a few months ago, it sounds much more like Jawbreaker too. Nice.