The legendary folk punk debut, for its 40th birthday, supplemented by uninformative demos as well as very interesting live recordings from the same creative phase.
The fact that the Violent Femmes made a short appearance in the series “Sabrina – Totally Verhext!” at the end of the nineties seemed a bit strange at the time because the band was already in the autumn of their career and seemed pretty old in the teenage setting. On the other hand: It’s strange enough that no one has yet come up with the idea of condensing the early songs of the trio from Milwaukee into a series.
Because what Gordon Gano is singing about here contains everything that characterizes true teen dramas with a high level of comedy: masturbation and loneliness, being high and waking up sober, broken promises and late confessions, trouble when dating and even more trouble because there is simply none Dates want to come about. And then there is the pleading wish to the father: “Please, please, please, can I have the car? Because maybe something will happen tonight…”
Gordon Gano, singer, guitarist, songwriter, was just 17 when he founded the band with bassist Brian Ritchie and stand-up drummer Victor De Lorenzo. At the beginning of the eighties, American youth were mostly into hardcore, postpunk or new wave. The Violent Femmes don’t care, playing folk punk like a street troupe informed by Jonathan Richman, Willie Dixon and Johnny Cash.
The best songs are the ones in which Gordon Gano writes his frustrations off his chest
This music hits a nerve especially because Gordon Gano, as the lyricist, simply sings about the things that concern him – as not exactly the coolest boy in high school. The best songs are the ones in which Gordon Gano writes his frustrations off his chest. Above all, “Kiss Of” and “Add It Up” with a few lines that perfectly summarize the high school misery of adolescents: “Why can’t I get just one fuck / I guess it’s got something to do with luck / But I waited my whole life for just one…”.
VIOLENT FEMMES, the debut album, is one of the records that is still passed down from generation to generation to this day. And when young people start building an LP collection, the work is often at the top of the list, as a central part of the indie canon.
And rightly so: the catchiness of “Blister In The Sun” or the xylophone madness of “Gone Daddy Gone” still sound incredibly fresh today. To mark the album’s 40th birthday, the band re-pressed it as a deluxe edition. The set, which costs just under 100 euros as a vinyl box and is much cheaper than a double CD or can be heard via streaming, offers, in addition to the ten original songs, the two single tracks “Ugly” and “Gimme The Car”, which thematically fit the album perfectly. Another bonus are all sorts of demo recordings, which are not very interesting because the recordings on the record basically sound like demos. Which is exactly what makes it so attractive.
The Violent Femmes thought beyond their debut early on
The 13 live recordings, on the other hand, are a real treasure: you can hear shows from 1981 and 1983, the Violent Femmes play for their peers, i.e. for a stoned high school audience. “Who else is high here?” asks Gordon Gano. You don’t hear much response, but you think you see people’s radiated nods. In addition to the hits from the album, the band plays other early material that didn’t make it onto the record. Songs like “Her Television” or “How Do You Say Goodbye” are absolutely equal.
But it is also clear that the Violent Femmes design their early pieces according to a formula: start dynamically, get faster, add a whisper part, play a broken blues solo, get even faster, coast down. Shortly after the release, the band became bored with their own method. As a result, her next work HALLOWED GROUND a year later was a much more sinister affair.
The band played the sensational “Country Death Song” that opens this second record at concerts in 1981; the recording can be heard on the deluxe edition: Gano slips into the role of a family man and penniless farmer who, out of boredom, begins to have murderous fantasies to develop – only to end up hanging himself in the barn. With its boom-chicka-boom structure and lyrics, “Country Death Song” completely breaks the mold of the high school dramas of the debut. He is much better off on the second record, hearing him here in an early live version shows: The Violent Femmes thought beyond the debut early on. They never regained the incredible freshness of their first record; When it comes to variety, they got what they could out of the trio line-up.