AMERICAN MUSIC – October 26, 2003
THE VIOLENT FEMMES Email List
List archive online at http://www.oocities.com/violentfemmeslist
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TOUR DATES (*=New Dates)
Thursday 10/30/03 Spokane WA Spokane Center
Friday 10/31/03 Boise ID Big Easy Concert House
Saturday 11/01/03 Missoula MT Wilma Theater
Friday 11/07/03 Indiana PA Indiana University of Pennsylvania PRIVATE Show – Students ONLY
**Saturday 11/8/03 Pittsburgh PA CLUB LAGA
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IN THIS ISSUE:
Pittsburgh Show Venue Changed
RE:Violent Femmes on UPN’s ROCK ME BABY!!!
RE:KROQ Inland Invasion
VF at the Catalyst
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The Femmes show on Saturday 11/8 in Pittsburgh has been MOVED.
The show will now be held at CLUB LAGA (3609 Forbes Ave-4th Floor)
Tickets for the original Metropol location will be honored.
The online AM archive has been updated and the photo that Anje Vela submitted along with her email a few weeks ago is available to view.
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RE: Violent Femmes on UPN’s ROCK ME BABY!!!
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dudes what tha?????????
Eric
wisconsinsane13
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KROQ Inland Invasion
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Except for the fact that I think they should have called it “KROQ British Invasion” the
gig in East, East LA a few weeks back was excellent!! The Femmes received the
warmest and most genuine welcome of the day and I left with the echoes of 65,000
(yes, I said 65,000!!!) voices singing along to their greatest hits in my head. Quite an
experience I must say! The guys cruised through a fun set and the crowd partied.
Brian was also sporting the only attire to get any special camera time during the day –
a pair of funky surf shorts with larger than life Jimi Hendrix fro’s! (nicebutt6 and
lindyk you know what that means!) The day was not just an 80’s love-in (although it
was VERY cool to be given license from KROQ to revel in still loving 80’s music) Hot
Hot Heat and Interpol repped the 00’s admirably. I still think Echo and the Bunnymen
suck and Marc Ormond is still sexy singin’ Tainted Love. Duran Duran weren’t quite
the performers I expected but then again it would kind of be hypocritical of me to
admit to liking them after all the shit I gave Mary Beth K. in high school for that
ignorant jean jacket she wore covered with D2 pins!!! :oP Fat Bob came through
BIG time in the end and The Cure’s set was absolutely exquisite! As Greg mentioned
last week with Gordon, to my surprise and enjoyment some of the who’s who in the
Rock world were seated amongst us – just like regular folk. Adrian (now I know
what’s under that kilt!) and Tony from No Doubt were just a row to the left of me
(Adrian drummed for Bow Wow Wow early in the day) and other sightings nearby
included Fred D, Dave Navarro & Kelly Osbourne.
It was a great party!
You can view pics of the extravaganza (including our boys onstage) at:
http://www.kroq.com/kroqnow/kroqnow.html
Scroll down and click on KROQ SHOTS on the bottom left
Deana
vivawisconsin
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Mad Adders
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They’ve been icons of the alternative sound for two decades and still deliver one
of the best rock shows you’ll ever see. So when the Violent Femmes say dance,
you best dance. ‘Add It Up’ is cool, ‘Kiss Off’ is cool, but ‘Blister in the Sun’ is kind
of a ball and chain–that song is overrated,” says Violent Femmes bassist Brian Ritchie.
He’s talking a bit of trash about one of the Femmes’ most famous and beloved songs.
“I can accept it though, it’s part of my Bodhisattva Vow–doing three minutes at a
concert date of a song that I don’t like just to make people happy. I think rock bands
should play their hits. It’s part of the implied deal between the band and the audience:
You love my music, therefore I will play it for you,” says Ritchie. Promising words from
a man whose band’s most famous and beloved album was recorded back in 1983.
They’ve put out nine more albums since then, but their first is the one that will ensure
their immortality. The entire album is totally acoustic, yet punker than most punk rock,
riding high on the strength of the band’s singular raw sound–Gordon Gano’s whiny,
anxious voice and lyrics, Victor De Lorenzo’s sparse drum kit (featuring brushes and
a homemade instrument made from a metal bushel basket on top of a tom tom that
they call a “tranceaphone”), and Brian Ritchie’s dominating acoustic bass lines.
Ritchie, for one, was amused by the infamous epithet given to the band by my dad
when three out of his four kids were playing the shit out of their debut album. “The
Kitchen Utensils Band,” he called them–and to this day, he stands by what he calls
his “on-the-mark” description of them. The Femmes (Milwaukee slang for “wimps,”
or ad-libbed BS–the world may never know) developed their sound playing acoustic
in the streets, because, according to lead singer Gano, “we couldn’t get any place
to play inside. Our peers would often cross the street and pretend they didn’t know
us because they thought it was just embarrassing, what we were doing.” But when
Chrissie Hynde and James Honeyman-Scott of the Pretenders caught them busking
outside of a theater where the Pretenders were about to perform, they were more
amused than embarrassed, and decided to invite the Femmes to open the show.
Eventually, the band caught the attention of Slash Records in Los Angeles, who
also released landmark albums by Los Lobos, X, the BoDeans and L7 as well as
the soundtrack to the 1981 documentary The Decline of Western Civilization. The
recently revitalized label was the only one to offer the Femmes a deal, to the tune
of a whopping advance of zero dollars. Their self-titled debut eventually went
platinum, despite the fact that they never even broke into the top 200 on the
Billboard charts. At the time, the Femmes felt like they were out on their own with
the music they were making. “The only other person who had been doing kinda
the same thing was Jonathan Richman, but we thought we were much more
aggressive and serious than he was,” says Ritchie. “Don’t get me wrong–I love
him, I think he’s the most entertaining musician on the planet! But he doesn’t rock
as hard as we do, that’s all.” Their follow-up album, 1985’s Hallowed Ground, was
a whole different story. Because in addition to all the teen-angst material that
showed up on their debut record, Gano, a devout Baptist, had also written a good
deal of religious songs that would later become their sophomore release. After
people realized that it wasn’t actually a joke, the album cost the band a huge chunk
of their fan base. Though he doesn’t share Gano’s religious beliefs, Ritchie remains
unapologetic for Hallowed Ground, which he still considers one of the Femmes’ best
studio albums. “I’m an atheist and Victor’s an atheist,” says Ritchie, “so neither one
of us can relate to Christianity. But Gordon’s beliefs are Christian, and we had written
some of those songs together. I thought of it as a practical joke on the audience. I
thought it was funny, kinda snotty to do it. You can get up there and sing a song like
“Kill Your Parents,” but to get up there in a punk venue and sing some gospel music
was really weird. I thought it just broadened our musical scope a bit.”
The Femmes have maintained a healthy fan base and a stylistically consistent sound
over the years, veering somewhat erratically within the folk/punk confines of their
invented genre, and even adding a heavy dose of poppy electric guitar on their 2000
release, Freak Magnet. A temporary breakup in the late ’80s spawned solo projects
from all members, but it wasn’t until the 1993 release of the Femmes compilation Add It
Up that drummer De Lorenzo called it quits for a solid nine years, citing creative
differences for his departure. De Lorenzo is back with the band, who will be performing
on Sept. 19 at the Catalyst. Once again, they’ll share the stage with Santa Cruz
resident, VF alumnus and sitar/tabla player extraordinaire Ashwin Batish, who Ritchie
met at a new-music festival in Germany. They hit it off while playing together in a
superstar improv group, and now the Femmes invite him to play with them whenever
they come through town. “The fun part is when Brian Ritchie jumps up and does
his Chuck Berry imitation,” jokes Batish from his music store on Mission Street. “Brian
invited me to a show up in Santa Clara when we first played. We just like to play
together. I play a lot of variety on the sitar, so for me, I just do it for fun. Brian’s a
great bass player; it’s natural that we go and just jam together. As long as it’s in
the right key, I’ll play it. I also like to bring my tablas nowadays–the Indian tradition
is to basically do your homework and have fun, so that’s what I try to do.” Anyone
who’s followed Ritchie’s solo career knows that he’s an accomplished multi-
instrumentalist, even achieving the rank of Jun Shihan (teaching master) of the
Japanese shakuhachi flute, which he once played for a sunrise concert at
Machu Picchu. “We all have big ears,” Ritchie says. Which is all fine and
dandy and believable, but what’s the deal with the Ritchie song they
consistently do live, “Dance, Motherfucker, Dance!”? “I’ve got a few other
songs, but Gordon’s just a very paranoid guy, he doesn’t want to share the
spotlight. We just let him sing most of the stuff to make him feel
good,” says Ritchie. “I usually use ‘Dance, Motherfucker, Dance!’ to bail us
out, if the audience seems to be losing energy. It gets it going. That song
shouldn’t be taken seriously. It’s like throwing a bucket of water on
somebody–I just want to get a reaction.”
From the September 17-24, 2003 issue of Metro Santa Cruz.
Mike Conner
www.metroactive.com/papers/cruz/09.17.03/femmes-0338.html
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