How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Against Me! (Again)

The first time I heard Against Me! was someone reading me their lyrics over the phone. I was 19, the band’s first full-length, Reinventing Axl Rose, had just come out, and my then girlfriend got a copy before I did. These are the words she read to me:

We want a band that plays loud and hard every night
That doesn't care how many people are counted at the door
That would travel one million miles and ask for nothing more than a plate of food and a place to rest
…
Just gimme a scene where the music is free
And the beer is not the life of the party
There's no need to shit-talk or impress
'Cause honesty and emotion are not looked down upon

My two immediate reactions to this: “FUCK” and “YES.” Keep in mind, this was in 2002, a time when bigger labels were making a mad rush to sign any punk, hardcore, and emo bands with any sort of marketable appeal (i.e. cool haircuts) that they could get their hands on. To have a band stand on a soapbox and stick a giant middle finger to it all was a fucking rare and beautiful thing.

The entire album is a catchy, iron-fisted low-fi anthem for people who didn’t want to pay $20+ to see punk shows or deal with giant metal barriers between them and the music they love or get hassled by a bunch of asshole security guards. It became the soundtrack to my ideals, an ethos, reminding me why I got into music like this in the first place. And unlike Minor Threat or other idealistic bands of yesteryear, Against Me! didn’t need to be read about in a book. Against Me! was happening right now. And I wasn't alone. It opened the eyes of a whole new generation of kids who realized they didn’t need record contracts or big venues or fancy gear (in its earliest formation as a two-person operation, Against Me! were known to bang on makeshift drums made of buckets and pans and shit). Making music didn’t require any of these. Even the album’s title was a call to arms: The rock star bullshit of the past is dead and we’re re-writing the rules. Get on board or get out of the way, mother fuckers. In only 11 short songs, Reinventing Axl Rose probably inspired a thousand new bands. In short, I believe that’s called punk rock.

Against Me! in some shitty basement in 2002.

But over the next few years, Against Me! gradually started to lose me. They followed up Reinventing with a fairly solid, albeit more polished sophomore album, As the Eternal Cowboy. What really riled the diehard DIY punks up was that the album was not released by their usual labels of Plan-It-X or No Idea Records, but by Fat Wreck Chords, a seemingly minor jump in hindsight, but not at the time. No, back then, this turned off a bunch of the militant backpatch kids. From what I’ve heard, a few former fans “celebrated” this jump by slashing the band’s tires. Personally, I didn’t mind the transition too much. It wasn’t the same lightning in a bottle as Reinventing but it was still a pretty great album.

After Eternal Cowboy, Against Me! put out a DVD leading up to their next album, Searching for a Former Clarity. It largely documented their experiences of being a young, precocious (and incredibly loveable, by the way) band, being approached by various industry types (a.k.a. “The Man”) about leaving the basements and signing big record contracts. “We’ve had someone say, ‘I’ll give you a million dollars to make a record.’ And it’s fucking crazy, it’s insane. It’s so far from anything we ever wanted to be as a band or anything we wanted to stand for,” Laura Jane Grace (then known as Tom Gabel) says at one point. This statement, and the entire documentary, would become extremely ironic in just two years when the band would sign to Sire Records, a division of Warner Music Group.

Around this time, in 2005, Against Me! supported Green Day on a few stadium tour dates, playing grossly named places like Gillette Stadium and the Meadowlands Arena. Not only could I not afford this tour or have any desire to see Green Day age ungracefully into the punk rock Golden Girls they are today, but I also didn’t want to be bummed out by the intense irony of hearing songs about anarchism played in giant, corporately-owned stadiums. Sorry, but you can’t write the lyric “Our arenas are just basements and bookstores across an underground America” and then sing it in an actual arena. (I don’t think you can count the Meadowlands as a bookstore just because they sell those $30 program booklets during Giants games.)

By the time Searching came out, I was done with the band. Just fucking done. Sometimes when bands “sell out,” people will justify it by saying, “No, maaaan. Infiltrating the system and controlling it from the inside, that’s punk rock, maaan.” If that’s what you need to tell yourself to sleep at night, fine. But on a micro, personal level, I’m suddenly paying more money for albums and Ticketmaster fees, so that punk rock Trojan horse ain’t trickling down on me any. And just to be clear: I don’t begrudge bands for signing with big labels. If someone offered me enough money to quit my job and play music as a full-time gig, I’d take it too. But in Against Me!’s case, it came as a giant slap in the face to fans who bought into their idea of a punk rock utopia where anything was possible and where we dance like no one is watching, with one fist in the air.

Against Me! playing a song I don't recognize in a venue I would never step foot in.

My friends who had stuck with the band would occasionally try to push latter-day Against Me! albums like New Wave and White Crosses on me, pointing out decent songs here and there—particularly ones like “I Was A Teenage Anarchist” which explained the band’s relationship with their DIY past, and I would just roll my eyes because I am what you would call a “dick.” My main aversion to Against Me! was that they, as a band, just weren’t about anything anymore. They didn’t represent anything. Or if they did, I didn’t care enough to pay attention. I just couldn’t get past the sense that I was being duped by a group of hypocrites. But then something interesting happened.

Even the most casual music follower knows this part of the story: A Rolling Stone article ran in 2012, entitled “The Secret Life of Transgender Rocker Tom Gabel” announcing that Against Me!’s founder Tom Gabel would be living as a woman and would go by the name Laura Jane Grace. Suddenly, everything else in Against Me!’s history—the selling out, the stray from anarchism, the questionable Sire Records releases—none of it mattered anymore. This would forever be the defining moment in the band’s history.

Fan or not, I didn’t need to appreciate Laura’s music to acknowledge that coming out as transgender in an often close-minded music scene is the most badass thing anyone’s done in the world of punk in the last decade. Since this is the internet, where a cursory glance at an article is enough for most people to take to their blogs and Twitter accounts and start ranting like ill-informed lunatics, I will repeat that last part five more times:

I 150% support Laura in her life choices and acknowledge that she is about nine million times more punk rock than I’ll ever be.

I 150% support Laura in her life choices and acknowledge that she is about nine million times more punk rock than I’ll ever be.

I 150% support Laura in her life choices and acknowledge that she is about nine million times more punk rock than I’ll ever be.

I 150% support Laura in her life choices and acknowledge that she is about nine million times more punk rock than I’ll ever be.

I 150% support Laura in her life choices and acknowledge that she is about nine million times more punk rock than I’ll ever be.

And once more in all caps:

I 150% SUPPORT LAURA IN HER LIFE CHOICES AND ACKNOWLEDGE THAT SHE IS ABOUT NINE MILLION TIMES MORE PUNK ROCK THAN I’LL EVER BE.

However, just because I find her to be badass and I admire the shit out of her, doesn’t mean my mind changed about her music. I fully expected to keep on ignoring Against Me!’s records. Then, last year, I got roped into seeing Laura’s solo show in New York. Not having seen her perform in a decade, I wasn’t sure what to expect from the audience and man, having a career that spans so many vast changes, the crowd was diverse as hell. There was a small handful of older, bearded jerkoffs like me standing in the back with their arms folded, a lot of very enthusiastic young women, and, to my surprise, a few pockets of frat douches who shouted “Freeeeebird!” (I have no idea at what point these dudes jumped on the AM! bandwagon but there they were, in all their Abercrombie glory). But the most notable addition to her audience was a whole slew of very proud, very aggro trans people, which was fucking awesome. In between songs, they’d yell things out at Laura like, “You’re beautiful!” and “You go, girl!” which sounds totally cliché and corny but in the moment, it was organic and sincere and really inspiring.

Laura played a lot of songs from her then-forthcoming Against Me! album, Transgender Dysphoria Blues, an album I fully expected to be as bored with as their last two albums. But I wasn’t. Musically, the album is a huge step up from what the band has been doing over the last decade. Lyrically, most of the songs deal with Laura’s gender dysphoria and her new life as a woman. As a straight white male in America, I’m not required to have opinions on things like transgender dysphoria and only need to stay up-to-date on useless sports statistics and whatever guy beat the shit out of some other guy the hardest on the latest MMA thing. So I don’t relate to much of the album personally, as I did with Reinventing Axl Rose, but I can still appreciate it as one person’s soul-bearingly honest and passionate expression of a deeply intimate experience.

Seeing all of Laura’s newfound transgender fans walking around her show, I saw something in them. It was the same thing I saw in myself when I was 19. Against Me! means something to them. And while I don’t necessarily identify with the band today as I once did, ultimately, I’m just glad that they mean something to someone again. I’m glad they give people the courage to feel comfortable in their own skin. I’m glad they inspire people to create. I’m glad Against Me! still lights a fire under people’s asses. In short, I'm glad they're still reinventing Axl Rose.

When it came time to throw bricks through that Starbucks window, Against Me! left Dan Ozzi all alone. Follow him on Twitter - @danozzi

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