The first thing is that I made my facebook status "white crosses is a fucking rad album. haters gonna hate." This is in reference to Against Me!'s album White Crosses that was released last year.
Probably more so than any other band in recent memory, Against Me! has had a very polarized fan base. The bands earlier albums have more of a folk-punk tendency and the lyrics are heavily critical of the American government, even leaning towards anarchist views. For their fourth album the band signed to Sire Records, a division of Warner Brothers, and released an album that moved more towards pop/rock than their old stuff. People began to shit all over the band instantly, accusing them of selling out and abandoning their values and panned on their album New Wave when it came out.
So when I posted this status my friends commented with contrasting opinions. It seems like half (probably less than that) of Against Me! fans stand with the band, like the direction that the band has taken and think White Crosses is a good album. The other faction thinks that Against Me! have never been worse and are hypocrites for making songs that apparently contrast with their earlier material. Personally it doesn't bother me very much because I've never been a giant fan of the band the way some people are, but do really enjoy their records. I'm that way with many other bands, but not this one.
The other thing was the thread of comments on this story. Namely how everyone was giving the band hell for wanting to "make it big" and play Warped Tour.
And I think this is all pretty bullshit.
In the case of Against Me!, their first EP was released in 1997, when Tom was 17. Their first album was released when he was 22 and in those five years they released 4 EPs. That is a shitload of music written, recorded and released while he was at a young and very impressionable age. Given that he's 30 now, he's obviously a very different person. As a response, Against Me! included the song "I Was A Teenage Anarchist" on their new album as a sort of retort to all the people that criticize them and people still don't give it a rest.
When I was 17 I listened to Anti-Flag and actually thought they made good political songs. Even just a year later I realized how over the top and dumb their songs can be. Opinions can always change. It's not like Tom wrote Vivada Vis and turned around and recorded White Crosses at the same time. Their change in sound has been a long and pretty gradual process. You call me a bigot saying the word "faggot" when I was 15, but wouldn't use it now.
In regards to The Braces, I think calling them posers for wanting to make their band bigger is fucking ridiculous. It's not like they're striving to sign with Universal and put out a Kid Rock record, they just want to get bigger and play a prominent punk festival (albeit a pretty shitty one at that).
I can say without any shred of doubt that probably every kid in every band wants their band to get bigger. Most probably imagine themselves on stage at a decently sized venue with kids singing along, but I mean growing their band. Kids want to write songs and record those songs. An have lots of people hear and hopefully like those songs. This seems like it is the general pattern for creating music.
It's one thing for a band to change their sound and values in the name of mainstream success, but people chastising a band just because they're getting bigger gets under my skin.
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