Me First and the Gimme Gimmes are a punk cover band who take classic hits and go into overdrive with them. The songs are fast (some may say too fast), but the singing is up to a reasonable standard despite this.
The band itself is a sort of side project for artists from bands such as NOFX and Lagwagon.
With this offering, the band travel back to the 60s and 70s and revitalise some very well known tracks. A daring mission to say the least.
Taking songs and changing them to punk has a side-effect in that they become shorter, infact these 12 songs only manage to fill 29 minutes of the CD so the value for money may be questionable for some. I, however, think that this CD is still worth every penny.
The track list:
1. Danny's Song (K. Leggins) 2. Leaving On A Jet Plane (John Denver) 3. Me & Julio Down By The Schoolyard (Simon and Garfunkel) 4. One Tin Soldier (D. Lambert/B. Potter) 5. Uptown Girl (Billy Joel) 6. I Am A Rock (Simon and Garfunkel) 7. Sweet Caroline (Neil Diamond) 8. Seasons In The Sun (J. Brel/R.Mckuen) 9. Fire And Rain (J. Taylor) 10. Nobody Does It Better (C. Sager) 11. Mandy (S. English/R. Kerr) 12. Rocket Man (Elton John)
The brackets after each song indicate the original artist/songwriter.
I will not go into detail on each track as i am sure you will know most, if not all, of them anyway. I will however tell you that the highlights are Leaving On A Jet Plane, I Am A Rock and Seasons In The Sun (all worth 5 stars).
The slightly weaker songs are Sweet Caroline and Fire and Rain (i would only give them 3 stars if on their own).
I think that even those of you who are not fans of punk music will like this CD, all my friends do and some of them hate most punk music. This is beacuse all of my friends are able to sing along to the songs. Also, this is punk music but it is more towards the commercial end of the scale, so this may further explain the wide appeal it has.
This is the Gimmes first full length album and i have to say that they have done better, their most recent offering Take A Break being the best they have done.
When you see the ratings for Originality and Lyrics i think you would be better off ignoring any low scores here as they are, after all, someone else's songs and someone else's lyrics.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Where's the individual track reviews! Just a good review, not great =)
snaga3000 30.08.2004 20:50
good review although i have never heard of this cd
bazmansealey 30.08.2004 20:39
Good review. I loved this CD, a mate of mine got me into the Gimme Gimmes. It's kinda tricky to know what to write for the review (at least I thought so when I done mine) as apart from, like you said, the songs are punked (sped) up. Gonna read more of your reviews now
Aug 30th, 2004
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