Violent Femmes Still Walk On Hallowed Ground
Thursday March 02, 2006 @ 07:30 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff

Violent Femmes

Just add it up, and the Violent Femmes probably shouldn't be playing respected theatres like Toronto's Massey Hall 25 years after forming in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Singer/guitarist Gordon Gano, bassist/multi-instrumentalist Brian Ritchie and drummer Victor De Lorenzo started playing on street corners for spare change and were given their first break when James Honeyman-Scott caught one of these impromptu performances and asked them to open for The Pretenders.

Slash Records was the only label to offer the band a recording contract, but it didn't think enough of them to follow standard music industry procedure and offer a cash advance. They were forced to borrow $10,000 from De Lorenzo's father to make their self-titled 1983 debut, which featured such songs as "Blister In The Sun," "Add It Up" and "Gone Daddy Gone." It has become a cult classic and is the only album in the history of Billboard to be certified platinum without ever making the magazine's top 200 sales chart.

The debut's combination of bass-driven folk-rock, nervous punk energy, somewhat whiny vocals, and often dark and neurotic lyrics became a template that the band (and others since) still follow. The Femmes have released 10 studio albums as well as live records and compilations featuring such familiar songs (calling them hits would be a stretch) as "Jesus Walking On The Water," "I Held Her In My Arms," "Nightmares," "American Music," "Country Death Song" and a cover of T.Rex's "Children Of The Revolution."

The band briefly broke up and then reformed after the release of 1986's Blind Leading The Naked, and De Lorenzo left in the '90s but has since returned to the fold. All three group members have also released solo albums over the years, but the Femmes seem to have some magnetic power over both their members and their followers that keeps drawing them back.

The Violent Femmes have played in more than 400 cities in 40 countries, all 50 U.S. states, and even at the north pole. They performed in Greece, Ireland, England and Norway last month and will be at Massey Hall with Shane Koyzcan on March 8.