Me First and the Gimme Gimmes

Related Content

• Willie Nelson, Comerica Theatre, 3/12/12
  March 13, 2012
• Incoming: Willie Nelson, Jenny Owen Youngs, Tommy Trash
  January 4, 2012
• Blind Boys of Alabama Founding Member Jimmy Carter: "We're Testing the Water, and I Hope We Don't Drown."
  December 2, 2011
• Chipotle Releases The Cutest Commercial Since Kia's Dancing Hamsters
  February 14, 2012
• I Wish It Would Rain -- 10 'Rain' Songs We Hope Inspire More Rain
  July 11, 2011

More About

• Garth Brooks
• Chris Gaines
• Willie Nelson
• Punk Rock
• Celebrity News

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Music Newsletter: Keep your thumb on the local music scene with music features, additional online music listings and show picks. We'll also send special ticket offers and music promotions available only to our Music Newsletter subscribers.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Never base your music on an identity crisis — just ask Chris Gaines. Don't remember Gaines? In one of the greatest missteps in recent music history, Garth Brooks attempted to transfigure himself from paunchy Fortune 500 cowboy to pouty goth-rock singer Chris Gaines, proving that Brooks belongs in Nashville, not the nightclub circuit. Brooks' music, in contrast, is a different story, at least when consummate punk supergroup Me First and the Gimme Gimmes has its way with it. From the Brooks opener "Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old)" to "Desperado" and "Annie's Song," the Gimme Gimmes punkify 12 of your favorite (and most dreaded) country songs on Love Their Country. Fans of the Gimme Gimmes know that the band's punk karaoke/cover song crossbreeding of genres is no identity crisis, and they no doubt know the Gimme Gimme drill: Pick a genre (they've done everything from show tunes to bar mitzvah ditties), cook up blast beat and high gain arrangements à la NOFX, and finish off with plenty of "Yeah!" and "Woo!" A bevy of great songs are skewered on Love Their Country — our fave is Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again," which — surprisingly — opens with the intro to The Misfits' "Astro Zombies."