The folk-punk band Violent Femmes has released 10 albums over the years, but its eponymous April 1983 debut LP, which ultimately earned platinum certification, remains its bestseller. The record, which was rereleased in a 40th-anniversary deluxe edition on December 1, 2023, is widely and understandably viewed as its best moment.
Consisting of lead singer, guitarist and songwriter Gordon Gano, percussionist Victor DeLorenzo and bassist Brian Ritchie, the trio has frequently been compared to Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers; its minimalist approach additionally recalls Richard Hell (the show headliner when the Femmes first played New York) and early Talking Heads. You can also hear echoes of the Velvet Underground—or at least of what that group might have sounded like if it had started making music when its members were teenagers.
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That, in fact, is what Violent Femmes did: Gano was an 18-year-old high school student when he wrote most of these songs, and you can sense his teenage angst boiling over throughout the record. In “Kiss Off,” for example, he shouts every adolescent’s nightmare: “I hope you know that this will go down on your permanent record!” And, in “Gimme the Car,” one of two tracks added to a CD version of the album in 1987, he begs his father to hand over the keys to his wheels so he can pick up a date and “touch her all over her body.” (In liner notes for the new deluxe release, David Fricke writes that Gano and Ritchie performed that sexually charged song at a National Honor Society induction ceremony at their high school, and that as a result, the institution kicked Gano out and denied him his NHS medal.)
The new edition of the self-titled Violent Femmes debut contains the 1983 album and the two numbers added in 1987, plus nine demo recordings and 13 concert tracks, eight from 1981 shows in the group’s Milwaukee, Wisconsin, hometown, and five from a 1983 gig at New York’s Folk City. All of this material previously appeared on a 20th-anniversary edition (whose remaster of the original LP is featured here), but fans who missed that might well want to pick this up.
A top editor at leading consumer and trade magazines for more than 40 years, Jeff has interviewed dozens of musical luminaries, including Bruce Springsteen, Steve Van Zandt, Roger McGuinn, John Sebastian, Wolfman Jack, Tommy James, Tom Waits, the Righteous Brothers, and the members of Steely Dan.
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