Gainesville, Florida, circa 1997. Tom Gabel, along with an acoustic guitar and a backup band had a message to get out. A lot has changed since those days of playing in basements, garages and small clubs. Against Me!’s current line up, comprised of Tom Gabel and James Bowman sharing responsibility of guitar and vocals, Andrew Seward on bass and Warren Oakes on drums, looks like it’ll be staying this way for a long while. Against Me! headlined the Fat Wreck Chords tour starting out in Fall ’05 with label mates Smoke or Fire, The Soviettes and The Epoxies, promoting their current album, Searching for a Former Clarity.
The four guys have been playing together for four years now, with three full-length albums, gracing the front covers of punk magazines, featured on compilations and headlining worldwide tours. “It’s just the way it worked out,” Tom began. “Some people wanted to continue and go on tour, and [for some people] not being able to do that… it’s not just something we just realized like ‘okay, this is it.’ But at this point it’s something very definite.” Oakes laughs, adding, “There was a rigorous audition process” as well.
By the end of the seventh grade, Gabel, now 25, along with his best friend Dustin were tired of being picked on at school. “We wanted to find a music that more identified with that feeling as opposed to the Beatles or the Doors. I remember we were really looking for an outlet, something that spoke to us on that level. We bought a Sex Pistols record, Give ‘Em Enough Rope by the Clash, and from there we discovered Operation Ivy, which lead into a bunch of different bands,” Gabel remembers. “We would check the liner notes and see who the band thanked and go buy [their] records.”
Nowadays it seems like a completely different world filled with websites, forums, iPods and Hot Topics abound. “It was really weird for me to realize there’s a whole generation of kids out there who don’t remember when Green Day was punk. Because my mental image was ‘Oh shit! We’re playing with Green Day! Kerplunk!’ ” Gabel said as the band laughed. “That was probably the first punk show I went to, but now there’s [younger kids] whose only image of Green Day is American Idiot.”
We’re all aware that music has negative and positive effects on youth, and nothing proved that more when a Canadian MP tried to ban 50 Cent from having concerts north of the border. “When you outlaw something from coming in, you’re shooting yourself in the foot,” Gabel explained. “It’s making kids listen to it more and influences them more. It’s very backward to do that. I think people make indulgence or debauchery look a lot more fun than people make, like, the righteous path [look.] I know it’s really easy for kids to get influenced by negative stuff because it seems like the cool thing to do.” Gabel asked the question that many bands ask, “Why not us?” The majority of the music that is played on the radio today doesn’t say anything, and bands such as Against Me! who have something to say are being ignored by mainstream media.
So if you were at the show back on December 6, good for you. If not, you missed an awesome show, even with the sudden line-up change. Against Me! pulled out old and new songs left, right and center with the crowd singing it back just the same. Green Day once played shows like Against Me! are doing now, so hey, you never know.
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