Me First and the Gimme Gimmes are a cabaret punk band. The band, Bassist Fat Mike (NOFX), singer Spike Slawson (of the Swingin' Utters) singer/guitarist Joey Cape and drummer Dave Raun (both of Lagwagon) as well as guitarist Chris Shiflett (Foo Fighters) have mastered the Dickies finest shtick, which can be described as, clown-punks on speed butchering the classics.
Like the Dickies, and unlike the Ramones who chose cool classics to rev up, Me First and the Gimme Gimme's succeed by creating reverential piss-takes of easy listening oldies (a.k.a. mom-core). Those oldies (o Sole Mio!) are always well-written but usually embarrassingly anchored to an awkward place in time. However, at some primal level these songs have infected their consciousness and, whether they believe that these songs almost brought humankind to the brink of of a very mellow meltdown, they love them, as many Russians still love Stalin. So in their performances they always cling to the core of the song, even as they add parts of old punk songs (i.e. "London Calling", "Blitzkrieg Bop") amp up the guitars, treble the tempo and ruthlessly mock the schmaltzy elements. Life is a cabaret, mothefuckers.
This particular single, Paul, was from their first run of thematic singles (all named for a seventies singer-songwriter) . The A-sides all went to their first album, 1997's Have a Ball while the B-sides only showed up over a decade later on the sequel, Have Another Ball. First they attack Mr. Simon's "Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard" giving it a stuttering ska-punk riff and some background hey's, Finally "Mother and Child Reunion" gets drained of all the sweet sentimentality and then injected with a playful belligerence and of course a round of those tough-guy shouted yeah's they add to the end of almost every song.
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