Posted on July 1, 2009 - by Editor

Fun & Games: Me First & the Gimme Gimmes

Me First and the Gimme Gimme's Spike © Imelda Michalczyk

Me First and the Gimme Gimme’s, ridiculous name (based on a children book) and cover band concept, and how it has proved a popular success. The punk “super group” fronted by Spike Slawson on stage (he is the appointed interviewee) and  now with Fat Mike back on band duty after a absence filled by NOFX band mate Erik Melvin the line-up also includes Joey Cape and Dave Raun of Lagwagon and Chris Shiflett. They are a circus act of fun, with their drunken escapades and humour a pivotal part of the bands live success. However I’m hoping to try and find out a bit more about Spike and his personal interests as well as the motivation with the Gimmes- surely it’s not all shits and giggles.

Waiting outside the bands tour bus near Koko in Camden, North London, we catch Joey Cape, wearing a heavy hangover from the night before, Kent (tour manager for NoFX and MFATGG) comes out and tells us Spike on his way, but currently hanging with Spider from The Pogues. After half an hour Spike joins us and we make our way through a few backstage rooms, as Spike is really hungry and hunting for food. He finds the band room with sandwiches and crisps and settles down, mouth half full; we start.

So thanks for taking the time to talk to us and I hope this won’t be too boring as I imagine you get asked a lot of the same things.

No problem and not only that it’s difficult to come up with new and exciting answers.

Because it’s the same answers?

Well yeah and cos its covers ya know what I mean. I’m not Cat Stevens or whatever.

OK well it’s the first time we have talked to you, so let’s talk a bit about you and the band. The Gimmes, you have been around for about 15 years now?

15? (Sounding surprised and contemplating.)

Well yeah that’s according to the Google.

Well not quite, probably 13-14 maybe (as he continues to eat his sandwich).

Still pretty good going for something that started out as a fun project. And you all know each other from San Fran is that right? Through bands on Fat (Wreck Chords) or?

No, I worked for a distributer that distributed a bunch of Mike’s shit from his label and that distro went belly up owing Mike a bunch of money and for some reason Mike decided to give me a job in the shipping and receive department at Fat. So yeah we all kind of knew each other from here and there. Mike who did Gearhead magazine I think was the guy who introduced us.

And your relationship with Mike is pretty good and the band?

Yeah with Mike sure. But um, with some of them, Dave I didn’t know him that well till we started playing together. Joey I knew, and Chris I knew from around the warehouse, cos he came down and worked sometimes too to help with mail-order and stuff. So yeah the basis was in booze and excessive behaviour. I think there is only one of us left (thinking it through). Well Joey holds up his end a bit but Mike is the only guy that’s still gung ho- pushing it to the limit. We thought about making a t-shirt called “pushing the limits”.

Joey said he was a bit hung-over outside, so last night was a party?

Yeah Bristol, ya know, who knew? I can tell that that bar; The Old Hatchet, like nothing happened last night; our bus was parked right next to it at closing time but I got the sense that yeah that’s where it all went down. In fact on the way out of the club; I thought I’m going to go down to The Old Hatchet and bite somebody’s ear off ya know, but I don’t think the security guards thought that was funny. I think they thought it was anti British which it kind of was.

But if you bit someone who wasn’t British than that would be fine.

Ok, yeah, I can do that (grinning).

(earlier whilst waiting for Spike we had overheard Kent and Joey say that’s its Dave’s birthday so I mentioned that to Spike)

…fucking hell you are right. Its Dave birthday, what are we going to do?

You can get a crowd sing along going.

Yeah and I know how to play happy birthday on the ukulele.

(We get interrupted by Spider and partner and a few others from the tour and Spike catches up with old friends. Sometime later we continue.)
Obviously the Gimmes are a cover band, so is there anything you won’t touch?

Stuff that I like.

The stuff you won’t touch s the stuff that you like?

Yeah. Or if something is glam, Slade, some punk music. But Stones, Alice cooper, are some stuff like that I don’t like.

That’s stuff that’s disliked?

By me, yeah. But you should look at some of Mike and Joey’s record collection or their IPods

A eclectic taste?

(grinning broadly) You know what I mean? You are being really charitable there.

Spike © Imelda Michalczyk

Do those guys pretty much decide what the albums will be covering or do you have any input or influence on it?

I have input but ya know, sometimes I don’t think they are the best suggestions for our particular idiom, so like I want to do “it’s raining men” by The Weathergirls. I mean we normally write a list of about 50 songs and wind it down to about 15 if we are lucky and hopefully a record.

And your last release “Have Another Ball” was a bunch of B-sides right? From your first record. So what happens to the other tracks that’s aren’t used, are they sitting on some drive somewhere?

Well some of them went to tape. But that album was leftovers from all sorts of records and recording sessions. So just about everything we have done is out.

Is there a plan for a new record?

Not from me, I’m fine doing some 7 inches and having some new songs to travel overseas with. That’s for me the best thing about the band, having the plane tickets paid for.

And a tour like this, is that down to purely everyone having time off?

Exactly, like rent was not my idea but I got to pay it. And San Fran I’m not sure how that compares to this city with cost of living but it’s up there.  Yeah they say San Fran flip flops with Boston for number two in the States.

(we talk about Dropkick Murphys and Boston, and he mentioned sarcastically that Ken Casey will run for mayor one day, or he should. Spike then mentions the working class ethics Boston is renowned for and how he grew up in Pittsburgh and says those ethics are never true, it’s all about making some asshole rich. So I asked him when he moved to California.)

I moved with my parents in 1986.  A little town, a college town near Sacramento, Awful, awful! Not that town itself but it’s between the more progressive coast and the deeply entrenched red of the central valley. Cos California is a purple state as progressive as people on the outside think it is.

Like with Proposition 8 Getting shot down.

Yeah but only by 4%, when it came around the last time it was bigger. I mean it’s the dying throws really. Almost the exact same initiative was passed in 2000 by a 22% margin. And there is this little anecdotal thing I read in the New Yorker, cos it was obviously a big thing across the whole United States and I guess the whole world. A football quarterback from the San Fransico 49’ers named Steve Young and he is Brigham Young (one of the early presidents of the church) great great grandson or something like that- he had a “NO 8” placard in his front yard. So people are literally dying with those ideas, and I hate to say that as a good thing. But as long as their attitudes go with it, that great. I think if it had been a vote for anyone under 35 it would never have passed. And they use all these weird tactics like misinformation ya know. But if it hadn’t been for the people in the central valley it would never have passed. They got tractored off their land in the 30’s, that’s who they are, the red state Californians, the ones who got foreclosed on in the 30’s primarily in Oklahoma, that’s why they call them Oakies.

(Spike gets passed some tea, on asking what type he is told it’s the Nasty Mcnastier type)

Ya know I got some reactionaries in my family I see once in a while. I have family in Mississippi and North Carolina, I may never encounter them.

(We talk a bit about generations dying out carrying these views with them and Spike adds…)

Well institutional racism is no better. In the States it turned to absolute abandonment and then another weird wave of displacement. The riots in the 60’s in the States that changed everything. Depressing.

You enjoy your politics and history, what else do you really enjoy?

Yeah well, movies.

Ok did you enjoy Milk (something embracing all his interests and close to his geographic area)

Oh yeah I watched that at the Castro. Like it’s such an icon and beacon of light in the movie. Like where the guy gets beaten to death and they blow the whistle, right after that. Like I was in that theatre; that was fucking cool. I was walking up to the movie theatre and got to 17th and Castro, I passed this bar called the Twin Peaks, it’s got these big plane glassed windows, and the these old Queens were flipping something off outside the window, and I was like what are they doing? And it was a double Decker tour bus –they take people to the Castro now on these tours, to gawk ya know what I mean? And they take pictures of people walking up and down the Castro and they were flipping them off, and I thought what a fucking different place, night and day, black and white, that was powerful.

(We talk about James Franco impressing on both of us and Gus van Sants direction and recent films but with time ticking turn the attention back to the band)
To finish off, you talked about recording and doing some 7 inches, is that to tick things over?

No, it’s more to move the onus from this big recording thing from this size (hands wide apart) and this length to the songs because they are fun and if a record emerges then all the better. But like more than the work, and patience and timing, half the discipline is to wait and sit. The debate about whether to have frequent releases or wait a couple years between albums is too much on the business side and not the creation side. Its means you are thinking about the business side too much.

If you are ready to record it, do it?

Exactly and if its fun release it, if it’s not; you got no business doing it.

Last question, do you ever do all ages shows, cos I mean what you do appeals to a wide age range?

No we don’t, I guess the drinking is such an integral part of the whole vibe. We can’t block it out.

More information about the Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, can be found here: www.gimmegimmes.com