Violent Femmes (album)

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Violent Femmes
Studio album by Violent Femmes
Released	November 30, 1982
Recorded	All songs: July 1982 at Castle Studios in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin Track 11 & 12: Music Works Studios in London on August 31-September 1, 1983
Genre	Alternative rock
Length	43:21
Label	Slash Records
Producer(s)	Mark Van Hecke
Professional reviews
All Music Guide link Robert Christgau (B+) link Rolling Stone link
Violent Femmes chronology
	Violent Femmes (1982)	Hallowed Ground (1984)

Violent Femmes released their eponymous debut album, Violent Femmes, in 1982. The album has gone on to become one of the most acclaimed cult albums, in spite of having never achieved massive fame, and went platinum about ten years after it was released.

Contents 1 Album 2 Track listing 2.1 CD bonus tracks 3 Personnel 4 Influence 5 Charts 6 Certifications

[edit] Album

Most of the songs on the album were written when the songwriter, Gordon Gano, was still in high school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Violent Femmes peaked at #171 on Billboard's Top 200 album chart.

Of particular note are the first two songs, regarded by Femmes fans as two of the best songs on the album. "Blister in the Sun" is a clever song with a chanted chorus that grows quieter and quieter until erupted in a climactic recitation at full volume. "Kiss Off" is, lyrically, most typical for Violent Femmes. In it, the singer expresses the whole gamut of teenage emotions, from a desire for acceptance to a stubborn hatred for those who are accepted, conformity, playfulness, angst and rebellion. The legendary "counting" section is at the climax of the song, when the singer recites issues he is facing in his life and the corresponding amount of drugs he has taken to cope with each issue, it begins "I take one, one, one 'cause you left me and two, two, two for my family and three, three, three for my heartache, and four, four, four for my headaches" with the tension slowly mounting, then erupting with "ten, ten, ten, ten for EVERYTHING! EVERYTHING! EVERYTHING! EVERYTHING!." This lyric brings Violent Femmes' characteristic humor into the song at its most tense and potentially melodramatic.

Violent Femmes has been called folk punk; it is an amalgamation of multiple influences. The first wave of punk music (bands like the Sex Pistols - Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols - 1977) had largely burned itself out by 1978. Post punk music had split off into multiple, widely varying genres. Violent Femmes incorporated influences from several of them, most notably the dark Gothic sounds of the Cure (Three Imaginary Boys - 1979) and Siouxsie & the Banshees (Kaleidoscope - 1980), as well as New Wave acts like Depeche Mode (Speak and Spell - 1981) and art rock with a punk atmosphere like Devo (Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! - 1978) and Joy Division (Unknown Pleasures - 1979); even the pop-punk of the Go-Gos (The Beauty and the Beat - 1981) influenced the album. Gordon Gano's blunt, snappy delivery and his humorously nihilistic tales about outsiders, drugs and sex hark back to the proto-punk of the Velvet Underground in 1967 (The Velvet Underground). Additional post-punk artists like Elvis Costello & the Attractions (This Year's Model - 1978), Adam & the Ants (Dirk Wears White Sox - 1979), Talking Heads (More Songs About Buildings and Food - 1978) can be heard in Violent Femmes. Folk influences were also important in shaping the sound of Violent Femmes. Late-era Bob Dylan (Desire - 1976) and the hard rocking folk of Jefferson Airplane (Surrealistic Pillow - 1967) had a great influence on the development of Violent Femmes.

As one of the premiere cult albums of all time, Violent Femmes helped kickstart the college and alternative rock movements that began in the 1980s with bands like R.E.M. (Reckoning - 1984), The Replacements (Let It Be - 1984), Hüsker Dü (New Day Rising - 1985), and later the Pixies (Doolittle - 1989) and Sebadoh (III - 1991) and peaked with the mainstream success of Nirvana (Nevermind (1991) and other grunge bands in the early 1990s. Quirky songs like "Kiss Off" and "Blister in the Sun", with sing-along choruses and a fast-paced, tension-building beat, helped define what eventually became known as alternative rock. The distinctive, catchy and powerful riffs and choruses established the album as power pop, influencing later bands like Weezer (Weezer - 1994) which similarly used teenage, outcast angst to fuel quirky, pop-oriented songs and establish a devoted audience who sympathized with the outsider point-of-view. In addition, as the inventors (and, perhaps, the only practitioners of) folk punk, Violent Femmes also influenced later folk musicians such as David Gray (A Century Ends - 1993).

The cover photograph is by Ron Hugo.

[edit] Track listing

All songs written by Gordon Gano, except as noted.

1. "Blister in the Sun" – 2:25
2. "Kiss Off" – 2:56
3. "Please Do Not Go" – 4:15
4. "Add It Up" – 4:44
5. "Confessions" – 5:32
6. "Prove My Love" – 2:39
7. "Promise" – 2:49
8. "To the Kill" – 4:01
9. "Gone Daddy Gone" (Gano, Willie Dixon) – 3:06
10. "Good Feeling" – 3:52

[edit] CD bonus tracks

11. "Ugly" – 2:21
12. "Gimme the Car" – 5:04

[edit] Personnel

• Gordon Gano - guitar, violin, lead vocals
• Brian Ritchie - acoustic bass guitar, electric bass guitar, xylophone, vocals
• Victor DeLorenzo - drum set, Scotch marching bass drum, snare drum and tranceaphone, vocals
• Mark Van Hecke - piano on 'Good Feeling'

[edit] Influence

• Ethan Hawke's character in the 1994 film Reality Bites, plays a cover of "Add It Up" with his band Hey That's My Bike.
• A May 2005 episode of the television series How I Met Your Mother featured engaged couple, Marshall and Lily, trying to sneak into a high school prom to see if the band, The 88, who Marshall had tentatively booked for the wedding, could play the couple's song, which was "Good Feeling."
• Gnarls Barkley's 2006 debut album St. Elsewhere featured a cover version of "Gone Daddy Gone."
• "Add It Up" was used as a track on the computer video game Tony Hawk's Underground 2.
• The film, Lost and Delirious features "Add It Up" in a scene.
• Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine covered the song "Add It Up" into a Lounge style on their 2005 album "Aperitif for Destruction".
• "Gone Daddy Gone" borrows a complete verse from Willie Dixon's 1954 song "I Just Want To Make Love To You." The Femmes give proper credit for this in the liner notes of their debut album.
• The song "Blister in the Sun" is the song on the previews for the show Psych on the USA Network.
• The song "Blister in the Sun" plays at the beginning of the My So-Called Life episode entitled "Betrayal," originally aired January 12, 1995.
• "Blister in the Sun" appears in the movie Grosse Pointe Blank as part of a radio retrospective on the '80s.
• "Gone Daddy Gone" also features in the seminal '90's Italian film Jack Frusciante è uscito dal gruppo.
• Songs from this album were covered by Guster (with some assistance from its creators) on an episode of MTV2's short-lived Album Covers series in 2004.
• The song "Blister in the Sun" is played as the background music in a 2007 Wendy's commercial.

[edit] Charts

Album

Year	Chart	Position
1983	The Billboard 200	171

Single

Year	Single	Chart	Position
1983	"Blister in the Sun"	Mainstream Rock	26

[edit] Certifications

Organization	Level	Date
RIAA – USA	Gold	December 8, 1987
RIAA – USA	Platinum	February 1, 1991