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The Quote Of The Day:
I told you once I told you twice
Japanese eats lots of rice
-From Life is an Adventure
-Submitted by neil
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TOUR DATES (NEW TOUR DATES MARKED WITH **):
**Feb 13- Montego Bay resort, Jamaica **
(I think this is for contest winners only)
Mar 10- 7:30 p.m., Olympia, Dublin, IRL, 17.50-18.50 (P,O,T-IRL)
Mar 12- Corn Exchange, Cambridge, ENG (P,O)
Mar 13- 7 p.m., Hammersmith Palais, London, ENG, 14.50 (P,O,T-UK)
Mar 14- Elysee Montmartre, Paris, FRA (P,O)
Mar 15- Ancienne Bengique, Brussels, BEL (P,O)
Mar 18- Planet Music, Vienna, AUSTRIA (P,O)
Mar 20- Babylon, Munich, GER (P,O)
Mar 21- Longhorn, Stuttgart, GER (P,O)
Mar 22- Hugenottenhalle, Neu-Isenburg, GER (P,O)
Mar 23- Hirsch, Nuremburg, GER (P,O)
Mar 24- Kesselhaus, Berlin, GER (P,O)
Mar 26- Live Music Hall, Cologne, GER (P,O)
Mar 27- PC 69, Bielefeld, GER (P,O)
Mar 29- Train, Aarhus, DEN (P,O)
Mar 30- Rockefeller, Oslo, NOR (P,O)
Apr 1- AAS University, NOR (cooking vinyl)
Apr 2- Karen, Gothenburg, SWE (P,O)
Apr 3- KD, Malmo, SWE (P,O)
Apr 6- Manchester University, ENG (P,O)
Apr 7- Garage, Glasgow, SCOT (P,O)
Oct 25-Hammerstein Ballroom, NYC, NY
NOTA BENE: ‘O’ stands for the Official homepage
‘P’ stands for Pollstar
‘T’ stands for Ticketmaster
‘I’ stands for Insider Info
All other references are subscribers
To book a show, contact Hornblow USA at: hbgusa
Serious inquiries only.
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WHO/WHERE
Going to a VF concert? Want to know if anyone
else on the list also going? Check here first!
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WEB PAGES:
Official: http://www.vfemmes.com
Unofficial: http://tinpan.fortunecity.com/bluenote/936/
http://www.bigfoot.com/~planetblue
http://www.geocities.com/kittricken/
http://geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Show/6806/
http://www.violentfemmes.net
http://www.homestead.com/lucylittleland/vf.html
http://www.fortunecity.com/campus/bates/377/
Yahoo Chat: http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/newtimesviolentfemmesclub
Message Board:
http://www.insidetheweb.com/messageboard/mbs.cgi?acct=mb870757&TL=
Past Tour Dates:
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Lounge/1725/femmes/femmes.html
Guitar: http://www.smug.adelaide.edu.au/~therapy/femmes/
http://www.angelfire.com/hi/VFemmes
Glenn Gano’s Page: http://www.alaska.net/~ggano
Charm Records: http://www.charmrec.com
Victor DeLorenzo’s Page: http://victordelorenzo.com
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ALL CORRESPONDENCE CONCERNING THIS LETTER SHOULD BE DIRECTED TO
AMUSIC
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In Today’s Issue:
Hammerstein Situation
FEMMES IN JAMAICA
Viva the Violent Femmes!
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Hammerstein Situation
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Someone upstairs hates me. I’ve followed the Femmes for 5 years but
never been able to see them live because I lived in such outposts of
civilization as St Louis and Texas. I actually bought tickets to see
them Feb. 25 at the Hammerstein in NYC. I was going to fly up there
(ostensibly to see my girlfriend…but also the femmes!) and now the
show is postponed. I have two lovely but ornamental and expensive
tickets to see the femmes, and also airplane tickets. I guess you
shouldn’t stake your plans on the femmes, huh?
The news i have is that I talked to the Hammerstein people and they
have no idea why the show was postponed (obviously they just HAD to go
to europe) but that it probably would be rescheduled sometime in April.
sigh,
Josh
heyzeus
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FEMMES IN JAMAICA
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You posted a message about your friend compiling violent femmes tour
dates…..I’m the one that won the trip to see them…I have the date
for you for the show in Jamaica, 2/13/00 at the sunset beach resort
in Montego Bay..I get to meet the band too…
Peace…Liz
lizz70
-Pat. Says: Thanks for sending that in to us. I’m sure Nick will see
this date and add it to the list. Have a good time, and
say hi to the band from all of us. I think this show may
be for contest winners only, so please don’t rush out and
buy plane tickets to Jamaica.
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Viva the Violent Femmes!
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Found this interview at CD now, http://www.cdnow.com :
Viva the Violent Femmes!
By Steve Baltin
The Violent Femmes’ Gordon Gano, Brian Ritchie, and Guy Hoffman are all
grown up now, but the trio’s music remains eternally young.
It’s been nearly 20 years since the band’s debut spawned the adolescent
angst classics “Blister in the Sun,” “Add It Up,” and “Kiss Off.” And
for every horny teenager who gets laid and moves on, a new one takes up
the band’s cries of “Why can’t I get just one fuck?”
With a recent live album, Viva Wisconsin, and the upcoming studio
collection of all new material, Freak Magnet, the trio from Wisconsin
is hoping that a new generation of youths will pick up the band’s
battle cries new and old.
Viva finds the band celebrating its roots by playing its classic songs
in the acoustic manner many of its fans have come to expect. But Freak
Magnet finds them moving forward with what they call the “most
rock-and-roll album of our careers.”
It’s a busy time in the lives of the Violent Femmes as it will
continue to be for as long as kids are horny, angry, and
misunderstood.
CDNOW: So you guys are spending most of the year on tour, correct?
Brian Ritchie: It looks like at least the first half of the year we’ll
be touring because we have a lot of different
territories to visit. We have two new records out; a
live one, Viva Wisconsin, and a studio one, Freak
Magnet, which will be coming out shortly. So we’re gonna
have to hit a lot of places as well as our usual spots,
like Australia and New Zealand.
Europe, we are starting to rebuild. For a while, we
neglected Europe for different reasons. Some of them had
to do with record company problems. Some of the labels
we were affiliated with over there were not going to
help us tour there efficiently, so we concentrated on
the places where it was easy for us to go.
Naturally, the U.S. is very easy for us because of all
of the universities. We could basically throw a dart at
a map of the United States, book a gig at any venue
there, and attract at least about 1,000 people. I think
we are one of the only bands that can do that. There are
a lot of bands that can play in New York, Chicago, and
L.A., but get them a gig in Idaho and see how many
people show up –20. Because we’ve been touring
constantly, building fans one by one, and showing people
that the show is good, we are able to basically go
anywhere. Some people will come out of the cornfields to
check it out.
“Our music is simple enough that when we need to learn new songs, we
can learn them in about five minutes. So we generally learn new songs
right before we go onstage and start to work them into the set.”
— Hoffman
CDNOW: Why the decision to put out the live album and the studio disc
so close together?
Guy Hoffman: Well the live album is coming out now because, like Brian
was saying, we’ve been playing to over three million kids
over the last six, seven years in America alone. This
record is kind of like putting the cart before the horse.
These kids have seen us play in concert, and we are
finally offering them a live album.
With Europe, it’s kind of different. We are really
re-establishing our name in Europe on every level. The
record company thinks it’s important that we interest our
fans with some old material that they can grasp and that
they know where it’s coming from. Perhaps we’ll have some
better success with new music in a few months. There are
also some artistic reasons for making two different kinds
of albums like this. We recorded the studio album, Freak
Magnet, first, and it’s a very electric, very powerful
rock album with pounding drums and blaring guitars. It’s
closer to traditional rock music than anything we’ve done
before. I thought it would be a good idea to do an
acoustic album as a counterpoint to that just to show
people that we’re still interested in some of the concepts
that we had developed in the first place.
And obviously it will continue to be an interesting
document for some time to come. It’s got all of our
representative tunes on it. So if a kid is curious about
the band and doesn’t have one of our records yet, it would
be an ideal way to start because it shows the band at its
finest, playing our best songs live acoustically. For
people who are familiar with the band, they are gonna want
to hear the studio album because they want to see what we
are up to now and what new directions we are going in.
Basically, if you get both records, you are doing pretty
well. You have a good idea what we are all about.
CDNOW: What obstacles did you face coming out of Wisconsin?
Ritchie: The big problem in Milwaukee is that a band that is trying to
make it regionally or nationally can hope to play for maybe
50 people at a bar or maybe 200 people in a club, and that’s
as far as you can get in that city. You just hope you get
lucky on other levels outside of your city otherwise you’re
stuck. It seldom happens.
CDNOW: With the three of you in separate cities, (two in New York, one
in Los Angeles), has it effected the band dynamic at all?
Hoffman: Not since ’84 have we had three band members in the same town.
It’s constantly shifting as to which members are in what city.
Our music is simple enough that when we need to learn new
songs we can learn them in about five minutes. So we generally
learn new songs right before we go onstage and start to work
them into the set. We don’t really need to rehearse like a
band like Yes. They probably have to get together for several
weeks just to relearn their material plus learn new material
and work on all the lighting cues. We’re not like that; we’re
very informal.
“Rock and roll really is music for youth. We’re adults; I don’t listen
to very much rock music anymore. I listen to classical and other
age-appropriate music like jazz.”
— Ritchie
CDNOW: Do you think the simplicity of the songs is part of what helps
to make the songs timeless and appealing to new generations?
Ritchie: We’ve gone through many new generations since we started.
It’s very gratifying to look out there and see young kids.
Rock and roll really is music for youth. We’re adults; I don’t
listen to very much rock music anymore. I listen to classical
and other age-appropriate music like jazz.
It’s nice to be able to appeal to the young kids, and I think
it is because the songs are very easy sing-along tunes. There
are other things going on instrumentally which might be
fascinating to the intellectual listener but not enough to
distract kids from the basic point of the songs. [He whistles
and sings the intro to “Blister in the Sun.”] See it’s easy to
play that song. You don’t even have to be a musician. That’s
the whole point.
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