Violent Femmes courtesy DMK Publicity
I know I heard Violent Femmes before I stumbled on an abandoned cassette of their 1983 self-titled debut masterpiece sitting in a boom box at a menial job I was working. A decade after its release, their archetypal track, ”Blister in the Sun,” was still a college radio staple and a signifier of underground cool.
But I didn’t really get the Violent Femmes until I played their lo-fi rock ’n’ roll over and over while having to endlessly scrape algae off of fish tanks at a university laboratory. The jazzy, beatnik instrumentals, with lyrics sung in almost spoken word form by singer Gordon Gano, felt like a soundtrack of underappreciated youth. It captured all the angst, unfulfillment, lust and demand for love and adulation that so many feel until life kicks it out of them.
Violent Femmes were started in Milwaukee, Wisconsin by three Velvet Underground obsessives. “Someone introduced Gordon to me as a pint-sized Lou Reed imitator,” bassist Brian Ritchie told me in a 2015 interview. “He was very young. We all were, but I recognized his raw talent right away.”
The band played where they could, busking at any street corner, coffee shop or venue that would have them. “When we started out, we didn’t want to fit into the music scene, and we still don’t,” Ritchie said. “We see ourselves as storytellers,”
They’ve put out ten albums of their stories in rock form. But it’s that debut that continues to be their claim to fame, whether its Ethan Hawke performing “Add It Up” in 1994’s Reality Bites, Gnarls Barkley covering “Gone Daddy Gone” in 2006, or Ritchie and Gano making sure to play that first album in its entirety on just about every tour date.
I never found out who left that Violent Femmes cassette behind in that lab. But when I was unceremoniously fired from my post I made sure to leave the tape just as I found it. Maybe these songs of alienation would help the next worker also feel not so alone.
Violent Femmes play 8pm Friday, Sept. 27 at Pompano Beach Amphitheater vfemmes.com ~ david rolland
