Against Me!, Matt & Kim & David Dondero

Sept. 25th, 2007--Against Me! is one of my favorite bands, so last Tuesday was a real event for me. The festivities began when my friend Rob and I delivered a six-pack of Chico’s finest to Against Me!’s tour bus at about 1:30 in the afternoon, welcoming them to our wonderful oasis. After the sun went down, The Senator started rockin’...sort of.

    Opening the show was David Dondero, a North Carolinian folk singer accompanied by a slide guitar. Those who know Against Me! understand why this band was opening, being from Gainesville and having a country/folk touch on their earlier recordings. Despite his sincere songwriting, the crowd came to see something energetic and after the first five minutes, “this guy sucks” was repeated by someone every five seconds.

    Next were Matt & Kim, a keyboard/drum duo from Brooklyn. They have an indie dance punk style that all the kids enjoyed and found refreshing after the first act. With a little zany banter and disturbingly large smiles on both of their faces, they gave us a delightful set, but I couldn’t get over how much the keyboardist’s voice sounded like the guy from Atom and His Package. Good fun.

    Without delay or greeting or any verbal recognition of the crowd, Against Me! started playing, opening with “Up the Cuts” from the new record New Wave, following right up with “Cliché Guevara,” and continuing to play nonstop through their entire 17 song set. This is one of the greatest sing-along bands, and the crowd’s vocal contribution seemed to match what was blasting from the speakers. Against Me! tours 10 months a year and they never phone in a performance. When they played “Reinventing Axl Rose,” the first lyric being, “We want a band that plays loud and hard every night and doesn’t care how many tickets are sold at the door,” the screams were real, the vocal chords were stretched as far as they could be, and the tremendously undersold Senator crowd absolutely went off. Against Me! played their single, “Thrash Unreal” – you know, the song that starts off with “If she wants to dance and drink all night, well there’s no one there to stop her...” that you probably didn’t know the name of until you read this; they also played the song they recently performed on Letterman, “Stop,” both from the new record.

    After the last song of the set (“Ocean” the last track on New Wave), singer Tom Gabel briefly thanked the crowd and off they went. The encore included my favorite song “Walking is Still Honest” and ended with the confrontational “Baby, I’m an Anarchist!” Tom grabbed the mic off the stand for the first time all night, dropped his guitar and came down to sing directly with the audience. Though I’m biased, the end was a special moment for my friends and I, and it was by far the best show I have ever seen in Chico.

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