40th Anniversary : The Pretenders Discover Violent Femmes
Aug 21, 2021 22:00:28 GMT
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Post by petrolino on Aug 21, 2021 22:00:28 GMT
đł 23 August, 1981 : The Pretenders Discover Violent Femmes Busking ... đ”
It's been called one of the great rock 'n' roll stories and it occurred on August 23, 1981. In a couple of days time, it will be 40 years since the Pretenders stumbled upon a group of ailing buskers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and gave them a helping hand. That band, the Violent Femmes, went on to become pioneers of "avant-folk punk" in the 1980s, before becoming virtually impossible to pigeon-hole.
"I started on viola in grade school. Then, to tell you the truth, I wasnât fascinated by music for the longest time. I started playing drums as a total fluke.
At the end of high school, I had a job working at a Holiday Inn as a janitor and my cousin called me and said, "Hey, Victor, I know you have a job now and you have some money, so are you interested in buying a drum set?" And I said, "A drum set? Why?" Turns out his friend was going to Vietnam and he asked if maybe I'd want to buy his drum set. So I thought, "Yeah, I do have some money. OK, what the hell, Iâll buy it."
I brought it home to my parents' house â they had a ranch house and I had a bedroom in the basement â and for the first week Iâd just come back from work and just look at them. I didnât know how to set them up or anything. I finally had a friend come over and set it up for me. I just started playing around with it, playing along with records, and then I got serious.
I studied jazz drumming at a little conservatory in Racine, reading rhythmic notation, learning the artistry of the brushes in the jazz vein. And then when I got in the Femmes, I totally bastardized the whole system so I could play it in more of a rock / punk kind of fashion."
At the end of high school, I had a job working at a Holiday Inn as a janitor and my cousin called me and said, "Hey, Victor, I know you have a job now and you have some money, so are you interested in buying a drum set?" And I said, "A drum set? Why?" Turns out his friend was going to Vietnam and he asked if maybe I'd want to buy his drum set. So I thought, "Yeah, I do have some money. OK, what the hell, Iâll buy it."
I brought it home to my parents' house â they had a ranch house and I had a bedroom in the basement â and for the first week Iâd just come back from work and just look at them. I didnât know how to set them up or anything. I finally had a friend come over and set it up for me. I just started playing around with it, playing along with records, and then I got serious.
I studied jazz drumming at a little conservatory in Racine, reading rhythmic notation, learning the artistry of the brushes in the jazz vein. And then when I got in the Femmes, I totally bastardized the whole system so I could play it in more of a rock / punk kind of fashion."
- Victor DeLorenzo, OnMilwaukee
'Waiting For The Bus' - Violent Femmes
On the day in question, Violent Femmes set up their instruments on the sidewalk outside the Oriental Theatre in Milwaukee in order to play a few songs. When guitarist James Honeyman-Scott passed them by, he found himself unable to pass on by. Hooked in to the music, Honeyman-Scott asked the trio if they'd like to support his group, the Pretenders, that night at the Oriental Theatre. Of course, the gig itself went terribly, and the group brought their musical clatter to a close during a walloping crescendo of boos. For the Femmes, it was business as usual in the city they called home.
"We had to play in the streets because no one wanted us to play in the clubs. I would say the thing about the Pretenders that was inspiring at the time was that these great international touring musicians recognized that we were interesting, whereas the people in Milwaukee thought we were losers."
- Brian Ritchie, SPIN
"Itâs a true story, but it wasnât a break. It was a tremendous experience, but it didnât lead to going on tour, getting any more gigs, getting hooked up in the industry, getting a record contract â none of that."
- Gordon Gano, SPIN
Brian Ritchie, Victor DeLorenzo & Gordon Gano performing outside Tuts in Chicago, Illinois in 1983
Violent Femmes discuss meeting the Pretenders and getting signed to a record label on 'At Twelve' with Howard & Rosemary Gernette
Violent Femmes perform 'Prove My LOve' on 'At Twelve' with Howard & Rosemary Gernette
Violent Femmes perform 'Sweet Misery Blues' on 'At Twelve' with Howard & Rosemary Gernette
Violent Femmes believed in themselves. In 1982, they played their first gig at CBGBâs in New York City, New York in support of Richard Hell. Their intense musical display at the club known as "punk Mecca" led to them being signed by Slash Records where they'd be joined by fellow Wisconsinites, the BoDeans.
"The first time I ever played there (CBGB's) was in 1987 with my hardcore band, Scream. I remember the craziest thing about that club is you could be in front of the stage, front row, it could be louder than any show you've ever been to in your life. But if you were towards the back of the club at the bar you could sit and have a conversation with someone. It was the weirdest thing for me."
- Dave Grohl, MTV
"I remember playing CBGB's and thinking that no one had cleaned the toilets in there for six or seven years ... It was horrible."
- Wayne Coyne, MTV
- Wayne Coyne, MTV
Gordon Gano
Violent Femmes perform 'Add It Up' at His Majesty's Theatre in Auckland, New Zealand
Innovative rock 'n' roll groups like R.E.M., 10,000 Maniacs, Throwing Muses and Pixies would also incorporate folk rhythms into their abrasive music in new and interesting ways. These bands were able to create their own unique and distinctive sound. Punk bands like Sonic Youth, Husker Du and Meat Puppets infused heavy doses of folk in to their music in the 1980s. Violent Femmes wrote their original (unwritten) manifesto with their self-titled debut album, 'Violent Femmes' (released April 13, 1983), which emerged at the same time as R.E.M.'s debut album 'Murmer' (released April 12, 1983).
"The latest success story from the rock underground is an enigmatic quartet from Athens, Ga., that goes by the initials R.E.M. (Rapid Eye Movement). It was only five years ago that the members of R.E.M. were content to play at local parties around the college town of Athens. Today, the band is selling out Radio City Music Hall in New York City and other big venues across the country.
R.E.M. is at the forefront of a movement that is gaining a strong foothold in the mainstream. Groups such as the Violent Femmes from Milwaukee, the Fleshtones from New York City, and other bands from Kansas, New Jersey, and points all across the country are heralding a kind of American rock renaissance, a return to the simple guitar-bass-drum format that the music was founded on.
Call it folk-rock or garage-band-rock or no-frills-rock, it's basically the same rough-edged, un-slick sound that R.E.M. has cultivated all along. No synthesizers, no drum machines, no 24-track digital recording equipment: This band stands in defiance of current record company standards. Yet their current album for the independent I.R.S. record label, ``Fables of the Reconstruction,'' has crept into the Top 30, and has already racked up sales of over 350,000 (a respectable figure for a major label artis t, a phenomenal figure for an underground band)."
- Bill Milkowski, The Christian Science Monitor
"Natalie Merchant's songs can be surprisingly difficult to describe. They are rooted in the folk groups of the â60s and â70s, with Merchant exhibiting the forcefulness of Sandy Denny and the erudite phrasing of Joan Baez, yet the band was enthralled by the same skuzzy postpunk that inspired R.E.M and The Men They Couldnât Hang. They started life as a reggae band, and their self-released 1981 debut EP, Human Conflict Number Five, sounds more like the Slits than Fairport Convention. Eventually â thankfully â they would abandon songs like âPlanned Obsolescenceâ and âDub Grooveâ for an equally esoteric folk-pop that balanced whimsy and gravity while providing a useful frame for Merchantâs studious story-songs. A high-school dropout from Jamestown (a burg most famous in the â80s for a particularly virulent Satanic panic scare), she penned aggressively intelligent songs about illiteracy, poverty, teen pregnancy, and alcoholism, eventually growing to address westward expansion, income inequality, fundamentalist Christian terrorism, the rape of Africa, the dulling of the American sublime, and other subjects ideal for a summer tour. Even when she sang in character, every song arose from the same perspective, the same set of eyes, however book-bound those eyes might have been."
- Stephen Deusner, Stereogum
Gordon Gano & Brian Ritchie
Violent Femmes perform 'Gimme The Car' at the Lyceum in London, England
In the mid-1980s, the Violent Femmes put together their own horn section called The Horns Of Dilemma. They drew inspiration from a number of sources, including Sun Ra And His Arkestra, Sly And The Family Stone, and the Horny Horns from Parliament-Funkadelic. Their members have been many over the years, including the Dresden Dolls.
"At 15, I had my own band, Throwing Muses, and loved anybody who sounded like us, like X and the Violent Femmes. Thatâs an obnoxious thing to say, isnât it? I didnât have time to be influenced. We were too young. We come from an island, [Newport, Rhode Island], where youâre either a skater or a surfer or youâre in a band. And we didnât skate or surf. I was just this little dork girl.
This dude owned a store, Doo Wop Records, and he would let me return a record if it sucked. I tried not to return them, but I didnât have a ton of money. And he said, âWell, I want you to keep listening.â So I did, because of him. He wasnât even a nice guy, but he thought music was important, and he knew that I thought it was important. That dude was amazing. Cold, angry, wonderful. I saw him a few years ago on tour and we both cried and hugged each other."
- Kristin Hersh, Pitchfork
"On a list of the best college-alternative-indie-whatever youcallit albums ever released, Throwing Musesâ debut ranks with R.E.M.'s âMurmurâ and the most accomplished albums of the Replacements, Violent Femmes, Husker Du and Sonic Youth.
There was no obvious precedent for âThrowing Muses.â The Muses did gather strands of influence from the Velvet Underground, Patti Smith, Devo, B-52âs, Yoko Ono and other underground icons. The Rhode Island-bred band also appreciated a good folk-rock melody and was open to the pleasures of a galloping, countrified beat. But the Muses (founders Kristin Hersh, Tanya Donelly and David Narcizo were still in their teens when they made the album, and bassist Leslie Langston was only slightly into her 20s) emerged with something distinctively and strangely their own.
âThrowing Musesâ is an album of constant dips, turns and reversals, in which hard, driven guitar passages evoking a race through a dark and scary tunnel can give way suddenly to lovely, gently rueful ballad singing. Hersh, the main singer and songwriter, is the one doing most of the tunneling (Donelly, who went on to front Belly, contributes one song, the haunting, ethereal âGreenâ). Hershâs lyrics are oblique shards of imagery and symbolism; most of the time she seems to be fighting off night fears of being blanketed by some unidentified psychosexual dread. Her voice makes vivid the barking fear of a madwoman being set upon by her worst demons, but it can subside into a quiet, intimate zone of emotional weariness.
Dread may have been the albumâs keynote, but a fresh listening reveals a good deal of humor as well. The slyness and exaggeration in some of Hershâs vocal contortions suggest that she could momentarily distance herself from the woes being enacted and gain a wry, self-mocking perspective on her angst."
There was no obvious precedent for âThrowing Muses.â The Muses did gather strands of influence from the Velvet Underground, Patti Smith, Devo, B-52âs, Yoko Ono and other underground icons. The Rhode Island-bred band also appreciated a good folk-rock melody and was open to the pleasures of a galloping, countrified beat. But the Muses (founders Kristin Hersh, Tanya Donelly and David Narcizo were still in their teens when they made the album, and bassist Leslie Langston was only slightly into her 20s) emerged with something distinctively and strangely their own.
âThrowing Musesâ is an album of constant dips, turns and reversals, in which hard, driven guitar passages evoking a race through a dark and scary tunnel can give way suddenly to lovely, gently rueful ballad singing. Hersh, the main singer and songwriter, is the one doing most of the tunneling (Donelly, who went on to front Belly, contributes one song, the haunting, ethereal âGreenâ). Hershâs lyrics are oblique shards of imagery and symbolism; most of the time she seems to be fighting off night fears of being blanketed by some unidentified psychosexual dread. Her voice makes vivid the barking fear of a madwoman being set upon by her worst demons, but it can subside into a quiet, intimate zone of emotional weariness.
Dread may have been the albumâs keynote, but a fresh listening reveals a good deal of humor as well. The slyness and exaggeration in some of Hershâs vocal contortions suggest that she could momentarily distance herself from the woes being enacted and gain a wry, self-mocking perspective on her angst."
- Mike Boehm, Los Angeles Times
Violent Femmes performing at Tower Records in Sherman Oaks, California in 1985
Violent Femmes perform 'Country Death Song' in Madrid, Spain
Violent Femmes have collaborated with a number of musicians on their albums who I respect and admire. This includes Sid Page (Sly And The Family Stone), Steve Mackay (The Stooges & Carnal Kitchen), Fred Frith (Henry Cow), Sigmund Snopek III (The Bloomsbury People), Jerry Harrison (The Modern Lovers & Talking Heads) and Tom Verlaine (Television). They've also worked with experimental musicians and composers like Pierre Henry, Leo Kottke, Tony Trischka, Tommy Mandel and John Zorn.
"I started playing shakuhachi 12 years ago in NYC. I went to a flute convention in New York and encountered the shakuhachi there, tried it out. A shakuhachi teacher, James Nyoraku Schlefer, heard me and offered me lessons. I went for a few lessons and got hooked. It is a simple but profound Japanese bamboo flute, associated with the Zen temples.
They are made simply by cutting a mouthpiece in a piece of bamboo and drilling 5 holes. The rest is artistry. We use different lengths to play in different keys. The longer the flute, the lower the pitch. There is a great variety in the tone you get from one to the other, but the main factor in the sound is the player."
They are made simply by cutting a mouthpiece in a piece of bamboo and drilling 5 holes. The rest is artistry. We use different lengths to play in different keys. The longer the flute, the lower the pitch. There is a great variety in the tone you get from one to the other, but the main factor in the sound is the player."
- Brian Ritchie, The Indie Music Review
"I still stretch out my guitar strings like James Honeyman-Scott showed me. But as far as a break, that was here in New York when we opened up for Richard Hell at CBGBâs."
- Gordon Gano, Diffuser
- Gordon Gano, Diffuser
Violent Femmes perform 'American Music' in the United States of America
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Violent Femmes ~ Studio Albums (10)
'Violent Femmes' (1983)
'Hallowed Ground' (1984)
'The Blind Leading The Naked' (1986)
'3' (1989)
'Why Do Birds Sing?' (1991)
'New Times' (1994)
'Rock!!!!!' (1995)
'Freak Magnet' (2000)
'We Can Do Anything' (2016)
'Hotel Last Resort' (2019)
'Violent Femmes' (1983)
'Hallowed Ground' (1984)
'The Blind Leading The Naked' (1986)
'3' (1989)
'Why Do Birds Sing?' (1991)
'New Times' (1994)
'Rock!!!!!' (1995)
'Freak Magnet' (2000)
'We Can Do Anything' (2016)
'Hotel Last Resort' (2019)
"Everybody knows whatâs good about their first album but âNever Tellâ off Hallowed Ground has got that fucked up, âGlass Onionâ thing and [Gordon Gano, vocalist/guitarist] could have just gone that way. Every now and then a song will pop out of a time or a band and you think, âYeah, go there.â And then when they donât itâs like, âWhat were you thinking? You had the road open up in front of you.â [laughs] And I wanted them to go down the road suggested by âNever Tellâ. I love the first album of course but itâs so very young. Young in a good way but I thought he was going to go to âNever Tellâ next and take that wretchedness to another level.
Songs interest me and itâs rare to hear a good song performed poorly. Usually, if people use lame production itâs because thereâs nothing there to honour. And Violent Femmesâ production is fascinating to me. They are full spectrum. They take three acoustic instruments and recorded them in your face and added a dry vocal, it has an incredible musculature behind that texture. And this is what the blues guys, like Robert Johnson couldnât not do. Itâs the Robert Johnson sound. If you could hear Robert Johnson without static he would sound like the Violent Femmes.
Gordon was one of the few songwriters I could relate to. We were both so wretched and little and we had weird china doll faces and we were squealy. We used to play together⊠a million years ago. I was a teenager! When? 1908 I think! [laughs] But he and I were very similar. We had the transmutation approach. I wrote a book called Rat Girl [Paradoxical Undressings in the UK] in which I said there are some people who are so wretched that it becomes almost like their power. Thatâs what they have to get through, to survive this absolute wretchedness, and Gordon felt the same way. Itâs humiliating to be that kind of person and you become self-deprecating because of it. And you hear that in Gordonâs songs. âI am a joke. This has fucked me up.â And youâre like, âThatâs both funny and really not funny at the same time.â
- Kristin Hersh, The Quietus
Songs interest me and itâs rare to hear a good song performed poorly. Usually, if people use lame production itâs because thereâs nothing there to honour. And Violent Femmesâ production is fascinating to me. They are full spectrum. They take three acoustic instruments and recorded them in your face and added a dry vocal, it has an incredible musculature behind that texture. And this is what the blues guys, like Robert Johnson couldnât not do. Itâs the Robert Johnson sound. If you could hear Robert Johnson without static he would sound like the Violent Femmes.
Gordon was one of the few songwriters I could relate to. We were both so wretched and little and we had weird china doll faces and we were squealy. We used to play together⊠a million years ago. I was a teenager! When? 1908 I think! [laughs] But he and I were very similar. We had the transmutation approach. I wrote a book called Rat Girl [Paradoxical Undressings in the UK] in which I said there are some people who are so wretched that it becomes almost like their power. Thatâs what they have to get through, to survive this absolute wretchedness, and Gordon felt the same way. Itâs humiliating to be that kind of person and you become self-deprecating because of it. And you hear that in Gordonâs songs. âI am a joke. This has fucked me up.â And youâre like, âThatâs both funny and really not funny at the same time.â
- Kristin Hersh, The Quietus
Violent Femmes - 'Never Tell'