PickLarge

Deck the Halls with Me First & the Gimme Gimmes: The punk rock supergroup, featuring members of NOFX, Swinging’ Utters, Lagwagon and more, will perform a relatively intimate show at the El Rey on Sunday.

Their last proper release was 2017’s Rake It In: The Greatestest Hits, so one would have to assume that this is going to be a career-spanner, jam-packed with hilarious parody-covers and between-song banter.

“Our running theme is where we’ve taken our live set, which is sort of a weird kind of American schlager direction,” singer Spike Slawson told this writer in 2017. (Schlager music is a type of schmaltzy German pop.) “An American take on German schlager music. Because we do trash too. I dare say we do trash better than the Germans, although schlager is definitely a strong entry in the trash field. Everybody loves schlager. Even people who go to punk shows, they love schlager. And not nearly as ironically as you might hope or expect.”

“Some things have evolved,” he added. “It’s tough to say what’s changed, or to even look at things like that without getting this weird, nostalgic, nauseous vertigo. It’s like looking at your own life. I sometimes think the themes took us away from our mission statement. I’ll put it this way: I hate A.M. rock, but I love our versions of A.M. rock songs. That (bandwidth) was where you went when rock-and-roll was too scary or heavy for you. Where you could be assured that you’d hear Neil Diamond, or Tom Jones was the heaviest thing you’d hear. I’ve learned over the years that, when we try to do songs that I like, that’s generally when we misfire.”

The Dwarves and Milo Spigolon also play.

Deck the Halls with Me First & the Gimme Gimmes: The event takes places at 8 p.m. on Sunday, December 5 at the El Rey.

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