My wife and I had a continual argument. An ardent fan of Neil Diamond, Barry Manilow, and other easy listening balladeers, she couldn’t understand why I loved punk and thrash. “It’s just a car crash of guitar chords” she used to say, “and if you listen to it long enough it’ll make your ears bleed.”
It’s been ten years since the argument faded into history and my ears have yet to shed one drop of blood listening to thrash. However, a listen to the latest effort from thrash supergroup Me First and the Gimme Gimme’s probably came close to liquefying whatever’s left of my ear drums.
For those clueless to the band, the Gimme Gimmes are a shameless cover band which features NOFX lead smartass Fat Mike on bass, Swingin’ Utters bassist Spike Slawson on vocals, former Rich Kids on LSD and Ladwagon drummer Dave Raun, Foo Fighters’ Chris Shiflett (“Jackson”) on guitars, and Ladwagon’s Joey Cape on more guitars. They’ve released a bunch of singles and four previous albums since forming in 1995, becoming thrash’s premier cover band. Love Their Country is, you guessed it, an album chock full of country covers including old favorites that run the gamut from Vaughan Monroe to Kenny Rogers and The Eagles, including “(Ghost) Riders in the Sky”, “Desperado”, “On the Road Again”, “Annie’s Song”.
Love Their Country is a lot of fun, but unfortunately, the concept of thrashy versions of country standards doesn’t hold up for more than a couple of listens of this disc. Part of the problem is that a number of artists have approached covers with much more creative zeal in the past, including the X side project The Knitters, which made a terrific album of cow-punk treasures back in the ‘80’s called Poor Little Critter In The Road.
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