This year, the Violent Femmes’ eponymous first album marks its 40th anniversary, celebrated with a new deluxe edition. It’s a remarkable milestone, to be sure, for the post-punk rock band that originally cut its chops playing gigs on Milwaukee street corners. But as founding member and bassist Brian Ritchie pointed out to me in a recent conversation, the Violent Femmes self-consciously built the LP to stand the test of time.
Ritchie contrived the band’s unusual name when he was performing as a duo with drummer Victor DeLorenzo. In the early 1980s, the Violent Femmes were rounded out by lead singer Gordon Gano. The group’s big break came in August 1981 when the Pretenders’ James Honeyman-Scott observed them as they busked outside Milwaukee’s Oriental Theatre, where the Pretenders were set to play a gig. That night, Chrissie Hynde invited them to perform an acoustic set before the Pretenders took the stage.
Ritchie recalled the fateful night that would transform the Violent Femmes’ destiny. “We had been kicked out of a venue that we were trying to audition for, which was called Century Hall, but we call it Centipede Hall," he remembered. "And we went in with our instruments and said, ‘Hey, we want to audition. We want a gig at your club.’ And they said, ‘No, leave, please.’”
It was no accident that they found themselves outside of the Oriental Theatre that day. In their dejected state, the trio took advantage of the crowd coming to see the Pretenders. “We just set up in front there and started playing, as we usually would do,” Ritchie explained to me. “But this time they heard us, and then they asked us to open the show for them. Well, we were thrilled. I mean, it was kind of like a Cinderella-type story. We got up there, and we played three songs. At first when we came out, everybody was booing. And then by the end of the three songs, half the people were booing, and half were were cheering. So we considered that a victory.”
The Violent Femmes’ victory as the Pretenders’ impromptu opening act helped to establish the momentum that led to the production of their inaugural album. Recorded in July 1982 at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin’s Castle Studios, "Violent Femmes" served as a showcase for the trio’s unusual punk- and folk-infused soundscapes. “We designed the album to endure,” said Ritchie. “We made what we thought was going to be a timeless recording. And amazingly, it has turned out to be one.”
Ritchie chalks up the LP’s perseverance to the Femmes’ effort to avoid sounding clichéd. On the album, “some of the music sounds like '50s music or even earlier,” he points out. “The recording was comprised of very simple acoustic sounds. We used very conservative reverbs.” In this way, “We were trying to make something that would last, but we certainly didn’t know that it would. Because let's face it, at that point, when we made the album, rock ‘n’ roll itself had not even been around for 40 years.”
When pressed for the band’s real secret, Ritchie admitted that the Femmes gravitated towards punk rock because it “was a much more malleable form. Punk rock was in the process of becoming codified, and we just resisted that by doing it differently.” With their acoustic, rhythm-oriented sound, “We did it our own way,” Ritchie added, while retaining an overarching sense of “punk energy.”
The result was a spate of extraordinary songs, including the Femmes’ signature composition “Blister in the Sun,” which, like the album itself, has stood the test of time and remained influential four decades hence. For his part, Ritchie doesn’t see the end coming any time soon. “Maybe we'll be doing a 50th anniversary tour,” he said. “I wouldn't be surprised. It’s fun because we keep getting new generations into it.” They may be decades removed from busking on street corners and playing in coffee houses, but the Violent Femmes have hardly lost their edge, having grown their audience during the intervening years. Ritchie proudly observed, “During our latest tour there were a lot of young people in the crowd.”
"Violent Femmes" 40th anniversary deluxe edition is on sale Dec. 1.
