Success: That’s the difficult part of the equation for all involved with the love/hate relationships involved with Against Me! The band came to town riding the momentum of their major label debut, which many would attribute to gaining success. But those who believed in the dreamer’s lyrics that filled songs like Reinventing Axl Rose, it’s a feeling of failure and a realization that money can take away most of your heroes.

Here and Now: That’s what it is all about when you walk into an Against Me! show. On their DVD, We’re Never Going Home, Gabel wrote a short essay on how the DVD represented that period in their lives and nothing more.  And perhaps that’s how all these works should be viewed. Besides, if the lyrical content of Searching for a Former Clarity wasn’t enough to clue you in on the major label move, you need a visit from Captain Obvious.

At the moment the band took the stage, personal grudges with the band, the worries of the day and the entire outside world disappeared. Gabel jumped up and down repeatedly while strumming the opening chord to New Wave and within moment, the rest of the band kicked right in. From there, it was like nothing had changed since the release of Reinventing Axl Rose.

The band left nothing behind in their hour-long performance. Every single full-length was covered and every song was sung back to the band by the audience. As long as the magic of the live show continues for Against Me!, it will be hard to find a fault with the band. My personal disappointment with their choice of signing to Sire disappeared for the duration of the show and I screamed along like I did years ago. I still believed this band wanted to make a difference. Songs like Pints of Guinness Make You Strong, Cliché Guevera, Unprotected Sex With Multiple Partners and Baby I’m An Anarchist still brought those feelings of sticking it to the commercial music world, but it wasn’t as enriching

As the audience flooded the stage for the closing number, We Laugh At Danger and Break All The Rules, the second guessing disappeared, the worries, the sting, for an evening, we were all believers completely in love with the messengers. And perhaps the band believes it can change the industry too, I mean, New Wave carries that message. But, as Mike Cosgrove of Alien Ant Farm told me years ago, when dealing with the commercial music world, you can’t fight the tides.

I’m sure that when the wave comes crashing into the ocean floor, the boys will wish they’d stayed in the bay, but in the end, it’s their right to take a turn to fight the beast. Who knows, they may change something.