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.

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.

I’m not going to go too much into depth about last night’s Lawrence Arms show at the North Star Bar in Philly, but it was awesome. As with the other four or five times I’ve seen them, they tore through an awesome set that only left something to be desired because the band has too many great songs to fit into a single night.

As usual, Brendan was solidly drunk and had plenty of banter to go around, but about a third of it was slurred and completely unintelligible. Chris was quiet, kind of looked like he could barely stay awake, and his voice sounded a bit off. I couldn’t see much of Neil, but as a whole, the band was on.

I brought my camera, but the North Star Bar is pretty dark inside and I didn’t really have a good spot to take shots from so I kept the camera in my bag until the last few songs. I fired off a bunch of shots towards the end, but I wasn’t really in the position to get anything too spectacular. That and I was too busy enjoying the show to really worry about it, so here are a few photos that all look the same.

As I’ve mentioned, I’m moving at the end of this month so we’ve been spending a lot of time packing stuff up. I wanted to get an early start so that I can sort through the massive amount of crap I own and get rid of a lot of it. I’ve been selling things and doing a pretty good job, actually. We’ve made enough money selling old crap so far to buy a bunch of new furniture, decorations, and other things for the new place.

Anyway, during this process of really sorting through everything, I found an old accordion folder from back when I used to run shows at the ZEN House. In this folder was a bunch of stuff, but the most interesting was the stack of old flyers. I guess at the time I thought it would be a good idea to save a copy or two of each flyer. I don’t think they’re ALL there, but it seems like most of them are and I’m glad to have them. I ended up getting sidetracked from sorting and packing and spent some time looking at them and remembering each of the shows. It was a lot of fun, there are a ton of great memories from these shows.

I decided to take a few minutes and photograph all the flyers so I could post them here for you. I wish I had a decent scanner to make the process easier, but our scanner would have taken forever and, apparently, doesn’t have Mac drivers so it would have been a serious pain in the ass. I didn’t have a lot of time either so these are just some very quick photos, as you’ll be able to tell.

Most of the flyers, I created, but there are a handful that were made by other people. There are a few shows that have multiple flyers and one show that has two very slightly different versions of the same flyer. Anyway, enjoy!

First of all, getting into the city last night was way too easy. The drive from the office up to Hoboken during rush hour took an unfathomable 50 minutes, which is even less than Google says it should take with no traffic–their with-traffic estimate was 82 minutes, but I wasn’t expecting anything less than 90. I guess a lot of people took off of work for a four-day weekend. No complaints. Then, in Hoboken, there was available parking all over the place, my only mistake was taking the first spot I saw. Finally, there was a PATH train sitting there waiting for us and my MetroCard already had money on it. Wins all around.

Now, She & Him…were alright. Not great, not bad, just alright. I think I would say that the first time I saw them was better. To be fair, it wasn’t entirely their fault. The sound was rather inconsistent, sometimes too much on the high-end,  sometimes way too much on the low-end. Of all the shows I’ve ever attended at Terminal 5, this had the worst sound by far. On top of that, Zooey’s keyboard wasn’t in tune and this seriously frazzled her. On no less than three occasions, the band started to play a song only to stop a few seconds in for Zooey to try to figure out a way to play it with her keyboard.

The set was long, an hour and a half including the encore. Normally, that would be quite a bit more than I would like to see from a band, but it didn’t feel long at all. When M Ward and Zooey left the stage after the regular set, I looked down at my phone expecting it to only be 9:45ish (they went on promptly at 9), but I was surprised to see that it was already ten after ten. Those 90 minutes a pretty solid collection of almost everything the band has to offer across both volumes. 24 songs, to be exact. They included a few covers, as should probably be expected, and even played an M Ward song which was pretty sweet. In the end, there was nothing left that I wanted and didn’t get. (The setlist is at the bottom of this post).

Oddly, Zooey seemed a little out of her element on stage. Maybe it was just that she was thrown off by the keyboard problems, but she seemed to have to keep reminding herself to smile and look like she was having fun. At one point, she seemed somewhat annoyed with the crowd taking pictures and asked everyone to turn their flashes off. Apparently, there was a strict no pictures policy for the night even though when I had called the venue earlier in the afternoon, I was told that point and shoots were okay. Zooey seemed to not care that pictures were being taken and claimed that the flashes ruined the vibe, but also tried to frame it as a helpful advice that the pictures would come out better without a flash (which is true). I don’t know, it did feel a little bitchy which is very disappointing to someone with a crush on her as large as mine (you already know all about that, I’m sure). All around, it just seemed like she was having an off night, though her voice sounded right on throughout the show.

Sorry for the crappy picture above, it was the best I could get with my iPhone 4 from where I was. Even with the improved camera, there’s only so much you can do from halfway back at a venue the size of Terminal 5 with dim lighting throughout the entire set.

1. Change Is Hard
2. I Thought I Saw Your Face Today
3. I Was Made For You
4. Black Hole
5. Thieves
6. Lingering Still
7. Me and You
8. Take It Back
9. Home
10. Riding In My Car
11. Over It Over Again
12. You Really Got a Hold on Me
13. Brand New Shoes
14. You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio (Joni Mitchell cover)
15. Sentimental Heart
16. Rave On! (Buddy Holly cover)
17. Gonna Get Along Without You Now
18. In the Sun
19. Don’t Look Back
20. This Is Not a Test
21. Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?

Encore:

22. Magic Trick (M. Ward cover)
23. Fools Rush In (Ricky Nelson cover)
24. I Put a Spell on You (Nina Simone cover)