Me First and the Gimme Gimmes

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.”