Against Me!

I really want a physical copy but it's completely sold out everywhere I've gone. Is there any chance that someone has a copy of the magazine or the cuttings of article?
Thanks!

the whole article is somewhere on tumblr and I can link it here as soon as I get back home, as for the pysical copy idk, they don't sell it where I live

i have a copy of the magazine online if you want it... PM me your e-mail

Follow up piece

Inside Transgender Singer Tom Gabel's Rolling Stone Interview

'She was very open and honest and generous,' says contributing editor Josh Eells

By Andy Greene
May 9, 2012 1:05 PM ET

Tom Gabel of Against Me! performs in Park City, Utah.

Last night, Against Me! fans learned that the group's singer Tom Gabel plans to begin living as a woman and will eventually take the name Laura Jane Grace. The full story will appear in the latest issue of Rolling Stone, on newsstands this Friday (May 11th.) We spoke to contributing editor Josh Eells about reporting the piece.



What was your first reaction to the news about Tommy?
It would have been surprising news with most bands, but especially with Tommy. I think the reason that a lot of people have been so surprised – at least from what I've seen over the last day – is that a lot of people saw the band as "masculine," for lack of a better word. Their music is so aggressive and his voice was so deep and raw and all these these things we associate with maleness. It seemed like a very male band. It's the kind of band where most of their fans are angry teenage boys, so it became especially surprising to me in that context. That obviously doesn't have anything to with with how Tommy feels inside, but it's sort of ironic within the context of this band.

Tell me about your first meeting with Tommy.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/inside-transgender-singer-tom-gabels-rolling-stone-interview-20120509#ixzz1viCkqVUo

Thank you so much!
I found some physical copies on eBay, why is the postage SO expensive???
Really annoying! Also I was just wondering, does the article concentrate more on Against Me! or Tommy/Laura as an individual artist when it comes to the music side of things?

AGoodTime wrote:

Also I was just wondering, does the article concentrate more on Against Me! or Tommy/Laura as an individual artist when it comes to the music side of things?

Quotes an AM song about being a man who wants to be a woman

chanter wrote:

i have a copy of the magazine online if you want it... PM me your e-mail

Thanks.

bobbyw24 wrote:

Quotes an AM song about being a man who wants to be a woman

Okay, thanks! It's just I'm more into her solo music than Against Me! I need to listen to some more of their music.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/against-me-s-tom-gabel-makes-live-debut-as-laura-jane-grace-in-san-diego-20120526

Quote :

By Peter Holslin
May 26, 2012 10:55 AM ET
Against Me! singer-guitarist Tommy Gabel made her live debut as Laura Jane Grace on Friday, performing with the band under her new name for the first time since coming out as transgender.

Charging through a 40-minute set at Humphreys Concerts by the Bay in San Diego – the first stop in a month-long U.S. tour with British rockers the Cult – the quartet played six new songs, including the rollicking anthem "Transgender Dysphoria Blues," the title track of an album they're working on. Decked out in a loose-fitting black tank top, tight black jeans and black eye shadow, Grace was in high spirits as she delivered her trademark, throat-shredding screams.

"I was worried that some people expected me to come out looking like Little Bo Peep or something," Grace said after the show while hanging out at the merch table with her wife, Heather. (They're doing the tour as a family; their toddler daughter, Evelyn, was sleeping with a nanny in the tour bus.)

Though Grace says she's open to having a dialogue about her transition with fans, she kept stage banter to a minimum and never brought up her coming out or new name in between songs. Since many of the concertgoers were Cult fans who weren't familiar with Against Me!, the show wasn't exactly ideal for a punk-rock heart-to-heart.

For his part, longtime fan Jimmy Gomez, 23, doesn't think Grace needs to explain anything.

"She did it for herself, not for anybody else. This is about her," he said. "She's doing something she really loves now and she's really happy – that's really awesome."

Thanks to the outdoor venue's seating arrangements, a mosh pit never did break out during the set, but a handful of fans got up to sing along. When Grace belted out the lines to "The Ocean," a revealing track from the band's 2007 album New Wave – "If I could have chosen / I would have been born a woman" – fans broke into cheers and applause.

"I really support her in being able to come out to everyone," said Maddie Leyland, 18. "I'm excited to see what happens to the band, too, what they all do with it."

Grace is two weeks into hormone replacement therapy. The process involves redistribution of her body's muscle mass, and she was worried about how it would affect her stamina. The band talked before the show about taking some time between songs, but they ended up just powering through the set. The only problem Grace encountered was her guitar cutting out during one song.

While the band spanned its discography with classics like "Pints of Guinness Make You Strong" and "I Was a Teenage Anarchist," much of the set was devoted to new songs: "Osama bin Laden as the Crucified Christ," "Dead Friend," "True Trans Soul Rebel," "Drinking with the Jocks" and "Black Me Out."

Though some fans at the concert wondered how the hormones would affect Grace's voice, Eryn Ramynke, 22, looks forward to any changes that may come. Really, the only issue that seemed to concern her was the venue's many plastic chairs.

"This is crazy," she said. "I didn't know Against Me! played places that had seats."

Thats so awesome. I'm not even going to pretend to understand what it must be like to live your entire life feeling disconnected from your own body, but I think it's great that she has the strength and support now to be able to still go on stage and perform.
I wish I could see them in my town next month, but I don't think I'll be able to get there

and Heather Gabel is so badass

Really enjoyed that article Laura has the support and she is gonna kill it on this tour. Its a solid step in the right direction. Can't wait to see this band on tour

i finally bought my copy of white crosses on vinyl tonight! such a perfect album.

Graduated from College yesterday.
Going to see Against Me! tonight.

LIfe is good.

So proud of 'dat Sanam
Tell Laura sup for me!

Thats awesome. Thats so awesome.Wish I could go see them next week

https://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=TEhYaUNLU1BuSlFFSzhUQw

Denver - 2012.05.30

Quote :

MTV News ‏@MTVNews
Talking to @LauraJaneGrace tmrw in her 1st interview since revealing shes transgender. Got a question for her/bandmates? Use #askam!

Wonder when they'll air the interview...and whether it will be serious or full of snark?

Also interesting to note that @tommygabel has now been officially changed to @LauraJaneGrace on twitter.
It was still @tommygabel as of last night, but the change game about 3am ET.

Quote :

Laura Jane Grace ‏@LauraJaneGrace
Would have done sooner, just had to have a friend show me how to do it.

njguy99 wrote:

Quote :

MTV News ‏@MTVNews
Talking to @LauraJaneGrace tmrw in her 1st interview since revealing shes transgender. Got a question for her/bandmates? Use #askam!

Wonder when they'll air the interview...and whether it will be serious or full of snark?

No way they have the guts to actually be a dick to her face. They'll be respectful. It's easy for the lowlifes on YouTube to make fun of her, but if they saw her in real life they'd keep their mouths shut.

JohnnyC wrote:

njguy99 wrote:

Quote :

MTV News ‏@MTVNews
Talking to @LauraJaneGrace tmrw in her 1st interview since revealing shes transgender. Got a question for her/bandmates? Use #askam!

Wonder when they'll air the interview...and whether it will be serious or full of snark?

No way they have the guts to actually be a dick to her face. They'll be respectful. It's easy for the lowlifes on YouTube to make fun of her, but if they saw her in real life they'd keep their mouths shut.

this! and i am very excited to see what they come out with.

JohnnyC wrote:

njguy99 wrote:

Quote :

MTV News ‏@MTVNews
Talking to @LauraJaneGrace tmrw in her 1st interview since revealing shes transgender. Got a question for her/bandmates? Use #askam!

Wonder when they'll air the interview...and whether it will be serious or full of snark?

No way they have the guts to actually be a dick to her face. They'll be respectful. It's easy for the lowlifes on YouTube to make fun of her, but if they saw her in real life they'd keep their mouths shut.

I sure hope so. At least, I know she'll destroy them if they do treat her badly. That could be fun to watch, now that I think about it But who needs that, right?

If anyone has any spare time, can they please type up the MTV interview/ post it somewhere so outside of the US people can see it/find a link?
Thanks!

The interview is quite long (about 20 minutes, once you go through all the videos). But MTV did post a write-up about it along with the videos...

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1687702/laura-jane-grace-tom-gabel-against-me-interview.jhtml

Quote :

Laura Jane Grace: A Life Unburdened
In first interview since announcing she's transgender, Against Me! singer talks with MTV News about painful past, new life and future of her band.

By James Montgomery (@positivnegativ)

This is the story of a woman named Laura Jane Grace, who was born in the body of a boy named Tommy Gabel, and spent the next 31 years of her life trying to get out.

It starts a long time ago, back when Gabel was 4 or 5 years old and had just watched a televised performance by Madonna. It was the moment Laura first let herself be known, when the boy who spent skinned-kneed summers dressed as a cowboy or Superman realized she was not actually a boy at all. And not surprisingly, given her strict upbringing on military bases across the South (Gabel's father is a retired Army major), she didn't understand how to process this rather pertinent bit of new information. All she knew was that, for the first time in her life, she felt somehow different.

"When you're younger, you don't necessarily get it, [but] I just completely identified with Madonna," Laura admits. "Watching 'Rosemary's Baby,' and seeing Mia Farrow with a boy's haircut, was another moment I remember thinking, 'That's me, that's what I'm going to grow up to be, that's the kind of woman that I'll be.' "

Laura Jane Grace 'Humbled' By The Coming Out Experience

Of course, over the next 20-something years, a life like that seemed impossible. Gabel's parents got divorced, and she moved to Florida with her mom. As a teen, she lived with a secret shame, experimenting first with cross-dressing — then eventually graduating to drugs and alcohol — as a way of coping with what is clinically known as gender dysphoria, one's discontent with the sex they were assigned at birth and the gender roles associated with that sex. But back then, without the Internet and only films like "The Silence of the Lambs" to serve as reference points, Gabel felt like she was some kind of pervert or a freak. And the kids she went to school with didn't do much to dissuade those feelings, picking on her and calling her a "f----t." She hated the way she looked, hated the way she felt and, above all else, hated herself. It was, needless to say, the low point of her story.

About this time, Gabel also discovered punk rock, mostly as a way of fighting back. She'd begin writing songs in her bedroom, using the name Against Me!, which she now admits was a nod to her gender issues, and at 18, she moved to Gainesville, Florida, to form a band. Over the next decade, she'd get married (and divorced), live a life of anarcho-punk austerity, tour the world with Against Me! and even get signed to a major label. She'd begin to pepper AM! songs with references to her secret, and at points, she'd even swear off cross-dressing and do her best to bury her transgender feelings. But no matter how much she tried, she just couldn't do it.

"You don't understand what's happening to you ... though, as you grow older, you realize this isn't something that goes away," she says. "When you're younger, you have these moments where you're like, 'OK, I'm going to choose to be male. I will be male. This is it. I'm going to take all my women's clothes that I have secretly hidden away under my bed, and I'm going to put 'em in a garbage bag and I'm going to throw them in a dumpster, and that's it. I swear off this behavior for the rest of my life.'

"And then you get to that point where you're like, 'This isn't something that's going away,' " she continues. "And you start hearing so many other people's stories, and you realize, 'That's me. This is what I'm going through.' And it becomes so apparent that you'd be a fool to continue to deny it."

For Laura, the end of the denial began in 2009, when, newly married and with a daughter on the way, she began to realize that she could no longer continue living two lives. "I couldn't exist as a woman in hotel rooms by myself and then come home and pretend to be someone else," she now admits. "I'd end up killing myself." She decided to finally reveal her secret. Over the next year, she first came out as transgender to her wife, Heather, then her Against Me! bandmates, and finally, the world, via a much-publicized feature in Rolling Stone magazine. And in doing so, she not only became the most prominent artist to live openly as transgender, but for the first time in her life, she felt unburdened. And free.

"I was really, honestly excited. When I first told my wife, immediately it was just like this huge weight being lifted off my shoulders, and subsequently every other person that I've told, that feeling was more and more there," Laura says. "I've been completely blown away by the majority of people's reactions. ... They've been more than respectful and more than supportive, and it's been, for me, completely humbling."

Against Me! Want Their Friend To Be 'Happy'

In the month since the Rolling Stone story broke, Laura Jane Grace has begun hormone treatments and returned to the stage with Against Me! And before their show at New York's Terminal 5 — where they'd be joined by Joan Jett for a cover of the Replacements' "Androgynous" — Laura and the band sat down with MTV News for their first on-camera interview. For an hour, they spoke openly and honestly about the state of the group and the fallout from Laura's revelation. There were jokes about personal pronouns and applying makeup in the back of the tour bus, touching moments of brotherly (and sisterly) love — "She can take care of herself," beefy guitarist James Bowman laughed, when asked whether the band felt the need to protect Laura — and a general camaraderie that, for an act with as tumultuous a history as AM!'s, was positively revelatory. In every conceivable way, they seem like a new band, one as free as Laura herself.

"We didn't want to make it melodramatic. ... It was kind of simple in a way," bassist Andrew Seward says. "It sounds cheesy, but it's not: You just want your friend to be happy. When this came out, I think the bottom line for all of us was just 'be happy.' "

"I've been a jerk over the past few years. I've been an absolute ass in so many ways, just from, you have this thing you're dealing with that you don't know how to process it, and it bears on you," Laura adds. "And it comes out in so many different ways. ... You express your anger at what is going on, and you take it out on your closest friends. And now, I've obviously apologized."

And it's about the only time she's apologized for anything. Laura admits that her new life hasn't been accepted by everyone — "It's completely ended my relationship with my father," she says — but after 31 years spent wrestling with the supposed shame and stigma of gender dysphoria, she's finally found happiness in honesty and the supreme freedom of living life on her terms. And she's never going back now. In a lot of ways, Laura Jane Grace's story is only just beginning — and we're honored to be able to tell the next chapter. Of course, Laura isn't too concerned with any of that. She doesn't want to be mythologized and isn't interested in being seen as a transgender icon. Instead, she just wants to enjoy living a life unburdened. And really, she's earned that.

"I never thought any of this would be possible. It was just something that, conceptually, I could never realize. But ... my life improves every single day. I try to make a step every single day, no matter how big or how small," Laura says. "It feels like I'm in control of my life, and I'm in control of my person, and that's empowering. Saying to someone 'I'm a transsexual' is the most empowering thing I've ever felt in my whole life."

Thank you so much!

That made me cry...