Thursday night’s audience at the Majestic was alive. Fists in the air, they matched Against Me! singer Laura Jane Grace word-for-word as the band blasted their way through a set list that dug deep into the story of the Gainesville, Fla.’s punk rock titans. The audience caved in on itself in a crowd-wide mosh pit. Fans’ hearts set ablaze by hearing their favorite songs through the amplifiers.
Against Me! can claim responsibility for more than just an empowered and spirited rock ‘n’ roll performance after Thursday night: They deserve credit for firing up an audience more excited and joyful than any other crowd I’ve ever been a part of before. Never had I seen a happier game of push-and-pull come out of a mosh pit. People upstairs looked down with grins and nodding heads, while even people on the fringes couldn’t help but be sucked into the fist-pumping collective.
As the crowd moshed, Grace looked on and laughed at its antics, even stepping aside and giving the vocals to the lucky few who floated toward the stage. Even as the encore came to a close, a grinning Against Me! looked out over an animated Majestic that couldn’t help but cry for more.
The concert, delayed an extra 30 minutes due to technical difficulties, started with the Michigan pop punk band Cheap Girls. Their set, though small, was a delightful first dish, whetting our appetites for the hook-based punk to come.
They were followed by Laura Stevenson, who led the crowd through campfire-light folk songs and stories, including one about being turned away from a band started by the guys behind the Kool-Aid Man because of how she looked; the crowd immediately responded with a collective “Fuck Kool-Aid!” that widened Stevenson and her band’s already bubbly grins.
Against Me! took the stage with the crowd in an uproar. The mosh pit formed immediately as the first notes of Transgender Dysphoria Blues’ “FUCKMYLIFE666” rang through the Majestic. Those who weren’t blown away with the first song were swept into the frenzy by the end of song two.
The band’s latest album, TDB, took center stage at the concert. A record born from Grace’s struggle as a transgender woman, songs like “True Trans Soul Rebels” and the not-so-somber memorial “Dead Friend” (and its ever-familiar final chords punctuated with a cry of “teenage wasteland!” from Grace) fit in perfectly with long-time favorites like “Thrash Unreal” off of 2007s New Wave. The audience fully supported the singer, chanting along with every TDB cut in a unanimous cry of support for Grace.
Against Me! topped off the show with an encore ranging from Irish drinking eulogies (“Pints of Guinness Make You Stronger”) to cries of defiance (“We Laugh at Danger”). When their final chords echoed, a tsunami of applause washed over the amplifiers’ feedback. The band gave one final bow, and left with the same smiles they had given the audience.
I returned to my dorm a shaggy mess with ringing ears, infected with that same ear-to-ear grin. Against Me!, with a rejuvenated Grace confidently at its front, lit a fire in me akin to those in the mosh pit’s seasoned fans. Many hold to a stigma that punk’s a place for the angry and disheartened, Against Me! proves the contrary; never before have I seen a crowd and a band share a smile so wide.
