The VIOLENT FEMMES - American Music Email List 5/12/2004
Tour
Dates:
(new dates in red)
6/3/04
In This Issue:
Tour Info
Note from the Moderator
The 11 Most Important Things from
Brian Ritchie Shakuhachi Club in
Wilkenson
Quattro Commercial
Violent Femmes Article on Themelesswonder
E Zine
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finally, welcome to our 32 new subscribers from April/May. If you recently
saw the Femmes in
The 11 Most Important Things from
Hi Violent Femmes,
1. I love your
music.
2. I went to your
concert in the
3. I had the best
time in my life at your concert.
4. Me
and my friend waited for you after the concert.
5. One of your very
kind crew members gave us a really cool t-shirt.
6. You came out.
7. We acted like
complete groupies.
8. You gave us your
autographs.
9. I nearly peed
myself with excitment.
10. I am now a
professional Violent Femme fan.
11. Gave my boyfriend
two very cool presents ( see number 5 and 8)
Thanks for making such great music,
SUSAN
Brian Ritchie Shakuhachi Club in
Great music..!
I went to see
Brian Ritchie (the bassplayer from Violent Femmes)
play (on some japanese
flutes and rocks) at Grand Rokk last night. There he
performed with bassist Skúli Sverrisson,
saxist Óskar Guðjónsson and drummer Matthías
M.D. Hemstock. Brian started by himself, and after
two songs (or so) the rest of the band joined. The music was dreamlike, mantras
and ethnic (or something..!). Then they performed two songs from the Skúli and Óskar cd "eftir þögn" ("After Silence"). Man beautiful
stuff. And Skúli was great as always. And of course
the rest of the band was great to..! But I don't think they rehearsed "too
much" for this concert though.
A
great concert to cut a long story short. The encore was a John Coltrane number, Living Space.
Now I want to see
a full concert with Skúli and Óskar
playing the suff from "eftir
þögn".
This post was in english for my friends in Århus! ;)
Siggidor
Moderator's
Note:
Before the VF
dates there, Brian presented the first-ever Shakuhachi concert in
Brian Ritchie
Shakuhachi Club
Grandrokk,
Tuesday March 20
Brian
Ritchie-Shakuhachi and Iwabue
Matthias MD Hemstock-Drums
Skuli Sverrisson-Upright
Bass
Brian played Honkyoku and Gaikyoku solo for
Shakuhachi and then
performed jazz and improvisation with the trio.
Wilkenson
Quattro Commercial
Last week a
commercial starting airing here in the
Barbara
Violent Femmes Totally Freaking Rock by Greg Wood
I work in an office during the day. I assume many
of you do, too. It's something to do while I go to school, before I am dropped
into the free market economy and slowly forced to live on the couches of more
successful friends, because my chief interests are writing and music, and my
professors kindly inform me that I'll be wallowing in poverty most of my life;
albeit in a cardboard box decorated with pretty poetry. I like my coworkers,
and I enjoy working there - still, almost every day devolves into me playing
internet chess and date-stamping my own middle finger. Why the date-stamping,
you ask? It's because later that evening, I'm going to flip at least one person
off. And when I give them the finger, it says "RECEIVED" across it in
bold letters, and has the date, for their own personal records.
This is my job,
and how it fits into my life. When I am finished with it at the end of the day,
I get in my car, and I drive away. And as I'm disappearing over the horizon
towards the fading sun for the night's adventures (or lack thereof), it's
typically the Violent Femmes that are playing in the background. If my life had
a soundtrack, most of the tracks would be from Violent Femmes albums. (The
remaining tracks would be "Renegade" by
Here's the
rundown: In
Broken down
kitchen at the top of the stairs
Can I mix in with
your affairs?
Share a smoke,
make a joke
Grasp and reach
for a leg of hope
Words to memorize,
words hypnotize
Words make my
mouth exercise.
Words all fail the
magic prize
Nothing I can say
when I'm in your thighs
Oh my my my my
my mo my mother
I would love to
love you lover
City's restless
It's ready to
pounce
Here in your bed
from ounce to ounce
The songs range
from bitingly funny and clever to pure and simple - "Please Do Not
Go" features a chorus completely made up of the same phrase, which comes
across as honest and frank rather than repetitive. "Kiss Off" and the
above "Add it Up" stand out as two anthems
for love-related angst, before it was trendy to be broken in half by failed
relationships. Their general attitude radiates coolness like Joe Camel used to
(before he was assassinated) and they don't even encourage kids to smoke
cigarettes, at least in their music. I don't know how they spend their off
time. "Children of the Revolution" feels like the song every 80's pop
band was trying to write. "Prove My Love" will implant itself into
your brain and repeat endlessly, and you'll never get tired of it.
"Country Death Song," a ballad about a man pushing his daughter into
a bottomless pit, is a perfect song to play for your children before bed.
Regardless of the
atmosphere of the song, Brian Ritchie's acoustic bass playing is driving and
catchy beyond belief. I've never come across a band to surpass the Femmes' bass
solos, and their love for improv jamming only brings
out the flow of every instrument even further. Victor De Lorenzo's drum setup
consists solely of a snare drum, a tranceaphone, and
a cymbal. The minimalist setup allows him to allocate time that may have been
used for unnecessary drum solos to instead devote time to more important
on-stage pursuits, like pretending to make love to inanimate objects, singing,
or anything else that seems amusing or otherwise entertaining at the time. They
do all of this refreshingly devoid of any trace of ego. Not that they don't
have a right to it -
this is a band whose resume is impressive, to say the least. If
you need only one reason to respect them, ponder this: When Nirvana opened for them, Kurt Cobain refused to go onstage until someone
brought him drugs. The Femme's manager at the time, Willie MacInnes,
gave him two Tylenol and told him they were powerful narcotics. Cobain
commented that he felt much better and went back on stage a few minutes later. Owned.
The Violent Femmes
are one of the best bands around. I don't go around making that claim. Their
songs are original and their sound influential. Buying their albums is a sound
investment in the quality of your life. One day Martian death fleets are going
to show up in the
As evidence of
their accessibility, I called up Darren Brown, their manager, and asked for an
interview. Within five minutes, we'd pretty much set things up, and I was set
to get in touch with Brian Ritchie, who I had the pleasure of interviewing. In
the spirit of true journalistic integrity, I'll let that do the real talking.
Brian Ritchie with
his patented acoustic bass, just before the pyrotechnic blasts, a staple of
Violent Femmes shows, go off right behind him.
TW: I know you
have no way of telling this, but at the moment, I’m eating Chinese food. And I
figure that my love of the culinary delights of the orient is as good a way
as any as breaking the ice with an infamous
rock dude such as yourself. It was either that or your views on ninjas. So
let’s start off on the right note – what do you order at Chinese restaurants?
BR: Evidently I
order the wrong things, because the waiter usually says, "No sir. For Asian only!"
I then tell him I AM Asian and go on to eat my raw crab soaked in brandy
and fermented duck eggs. He usually says, "OK, but if you don't like you
still pay!"
TW: Alright. Now, on to semi-legitimate questions. How’d the Violent
Femmes come into being? We know the general backstory
– It’s 1980, In Wisconsin, and yourself and Victor De
Lorenzo create the band, adding Gordon Gano a year
later. How’d you decide to give it a shot, though?And how did Gordon come into the picture? This is so
the kids at home know who we’re dealing with before I launch into the really
important questions.
BR: Victor and I
had been in a number of bands together and we also freelanced as a rhythm
section called "Violent Femmes." So it would be "Drake Scott and
the Violent Femmes" or "Doorway Dave and the Violent Femmes."
Eventually we went to one of Gordon's coffehouse gigs
and sat in with him and his bass player Curtis. I played banjo. So that night
we were called "Gordon Gano and the Violent
Femmes (with Curtis)." Curtis did not want to be associated with the term
'Violent Femmes!' Before that I had performed once with Gordon at his high
school. He got expelled for that.
The incident
Brian's referring to is the first time he played with Gordon, at Gordon's
National Honors Society Program. They played "Gimme
the Car," and a riot erupted, resulting in Gordon's expulsion. Portions of
the song have been reproduced below for your own edification, so you might
understand the situation:
Come on dad,gimme the car tonight
Come on dad, gimme the car tonight
I got this girl I wanna....[guitar squeal.]
Come on dad gimme the car
Come on dad gimme the car tonight
I tell'ya what I'm gonna do
I'm gonna pick her up
I'm gonna get her drunk
i'm
gonna make her cry
I'm gonna get her high
I'm gonna make her laugh
I'm gonna make her...shh
woman, woman, woman..
she gotta, knows
she's it
cause I'm gonna touch
her
all over her body
gonna
touch her
all over her body
gonna
touch her
all over her body
gonna
touch her
all over her body
and she can touch me
all over my body
she can touch me
all over my body
she can touch me
all over my body
she can touch me
all over my body
Etc. It's a good
song.
TW: I had a
girlfriend that lived in
BR: Yeah Danielle,
I know her. She is my pedicurist. In fact, she is going to paint my toes with
the face of Jimi Hendrix later on today.
TW: Over the
course of your pretty insane career, you guys have hit over 500 cities and all
50 states, touring with a pretty impressive list of other musicians. Which
artist did you enjoy touring with the most, and who was a dick?
BR: One guy I
thought might be a dick and wasn't was Ice T. He was
cool. Also, Henry Rollins can be a dick to some people but he's always cool
with me. In fact, we haven't had any problems with any musicians other than the
Fugees. They were opening for us but they thought
that was an injustice, so they tried to say they were switching the order of the bill. The
promoter told them, "get on stage or I won't pay you!" That was the
end of that. Ramones did the same thing when they
opened for us. One of the guys just didn't show up on time, so we had to play
first. That was fine with us because we love the Ramones
so much that we were happy to be through with our job and just relax and watch
them. A partial list of the people we have really enjoyed touring with might
include Fishbone, Moby, Midnight Oil, 10,000 Maniacs, Devo,
and on and on. Most musicians are tolerable.
TW: I dreamt a few
days ago that I toured with Rush when Alex Lifeson
got arrested. Geddy Lee screwed me over when we were
playing on Conan O’Brien by filling my spot with a roadie while I was going to
the bathroom between "Tom Sawyer" and "Spirit of Radio." I
guess the important question here is why we were playing on Conan in the first place.
BR: Maybe you should
see a psychiatrist about that.
TW: Probably. The
writing of the songs is credited to Gordon – does he do most of the writing, or
is it more of a collective? Do you struggle to face your inner demons through
the creation of new music? Do they have names?
BR: Gordon
struggled with his inner demons when he wrote them, and he struggles with those
demons when he's not writing them. He writes the lyrics and basic melodies
usually and then Victor (or Guy when he was in the band) changes and add as
much as is necessary. Sometimes what Gordon writes is pretty finished but most
songs and all of the best ones required radical arranging and restructuring to
make them into what you fans would call "great songs." Before that
they would have been "ditties." Basically when you listen to the
band, whatever Victor plays he made up most of it, what I play I made up most
of it and what Gordon does is his thing which may have been edited by the band
as a whole.
TW: You’re
popularly considered one of the most influential bassists in rock, at least by
the people who matter. How do you deal with that? Between all the
champagne-filled guitar-shaped pools and snorting coke off of the chests of
dead strippers, where does the real Brian Ritchie find happiness?
BR: Thanks for the
compliment on my bass playing. I don't think I have been very influential in
terms of spawning imitators, but I know I have inspired a lot of people to
play. It was so embarrassing once at a fancy
TW: Jerry Harrison
[of the Talking Heads] used to be your producer, right? I imagine him being
difficult to understand and occasionally making comments along the lines of
“this is not my beautiful album” when things got frustrating in the studio.
BR: Funny you
should mention frustration. That was the most frustrating album we ever made.
Gordon had basically quit the group right before entering the studio and barely
wanted to participate. Victor was busy producing Sigmund Snopek
III's album. Jerry, Dave Vartanian
(engineer) and I spent weeks assembling the tracks and sometimes we wouldn't
even see Gordon or Victor for days. So the album was basically built track by
track for many songs, which is not the right way to make a record, but we had
to because the band was so fractured we couldn't make it any other way. The
fact that it's listenable and in fact has a lot of good songs and performances
on it is a testament to Jerry's resourcefulness as a producer. So, no, he's not
difficult to understand. In fact he is one of the most articulate men in rock.
He spends a lot more time talking than playing, that's for sure! He's great.
That album is
"The Blind Leading the Naked," released in 1986, and it's good. It
contains one of my favorite Femmes songs of all time in the form of "No
Killing." That album feels a little 80's, because
it is. And that makes it neat.
TW: It seems
unfair to focus on your bass playing, since the word on the street is that you
play a myriad of other instruments. What else have you got under your belt? If
the answer is something like, “Well, I also play drums,” screw it, because
that’s boring. Make it entertaining or make up some instruments; it doesn’t
matter to me. And it certainly doesn’t matter to the derelict readers of this
site. They won’t know the difference.
BR: The main music
I have been making for the last 7 years has been traditional Japanese music
with the shakuhachi (bamboo flute). I also play that
instrument in western contexts. That's my main musical pursuit although most of
that occurs outside the public eye. Besides that I play any instrument I want
to because I don't think of instruments as exclusive things. They are just
tools. A carpenter wouldn't say, "I only use the hammer. Find someone else
who specializes in screwdriver." If I hear a sound in my imagination I
just find the right instrument whether it's a marimba, didgeridoo, trumpet,
mandolin or whatever, figure out how it works and play it.
Brian's house is,
in fact, filled with a few hundred instruments, and his shakuhachi
abilities are somewhat downplayed by his response. He's extremely talented and
has, I believe, five solo albums to his name at the moment.
TW: Did you learn those bonus instruments for
the Femmes, or for your solo albums?
BR: I have always
been like that. When I was in High School I spent almost the whole day in the
practice rooms in the music department just experimenting with different
instruments. Unfortunately, I didn't study music itself very thoroughly.
TW: What are your
primary influences, then? I feel like I detect some strong Tears for Fears
influence, though it’s conceivable that I’m hearing what I want to hear. Don’t
keep it to music, though. What do you watch on television, if anything? What do
you read?
BR: Some of my
main musical influences are John Coltrane, Syd
Barrett, Velvet Underground, Kinks, Sun Ra, Pierre Henry, Son House, Brian
Jones, Roxy Music, Albert Ayler,
etc. I watch TV mainly for sports and old movies. My favorite series is 24. I
read a lot of European and Asian literature, not much American.
TW: Neil Young,
yes or no? (There is a right answer.)
BR: Anybody who
has a harmonium installed in his bus is OK with me.
TW: While we’re
talking about this sort of thing, what bands have come around lately that you
think are worthwhile?
BR: My favorite is
called Lattekkeinsodusertekkijanna. They are from
TW: Pop quiz, hot
shot: You’re in
BR: I turn to my
wife and say, "You deal with this." Because she's
an entomologist.
TW: Since we’re
into giving people what they want, and force-feeding them fistfuls of what they
don’t want, we took some reader questions. The next several are from people
around the nation desperately waiting to hear your answers, constantly
reloading our website while downloading anime pornography in a separate window:
Danny, in Notre
Dame, Indiana, asks: In the 80’s, you were already making things explode.
Meanwhile, I was watching G.I. Joe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And I
always secretly hoped that, occasionally, you were too. Are my childhood dreams
in vain?
BR: I watched my
share of Ninja Turtles because my son Silas was into them big time. Except he called them "Teenat Mutant
Linger Turtles." I asked him what "teenat"
means. He said, "tough."
Steven Hawking
writes: Do you fear the day that artificial intelligence will grow advanced
enough that it can perpetuate its own learning and become powerful enough to
enslave humanity?
BR: I think maybe
that has already happened.
Several people,
mostly from the Southeast: Favorite beer?
BR: I do not have
brand loyalty to beer, but I guess my absolute favorite is Rochefort
from
Nathan Cox,
BR: It's hard to
feel like participating in a so called democracy when elections are bought and
sold like in 2000. Nevertheless, I follow politics and maybe Gordon and Victor
do too, but we don't have a group policy and it's something we seldom discuss.
TW: And this,
Brian, is for me. I’ve spent most of my life building forts out of pillows and
playing Nintendo. I understand Megaman’s history more
than I understand the history of my own country. Frankly, I need to know this,
for my own personal gratification: What Nintendo games have been important to
you over the years, if any?
BR: The only
Nintendo game I ever played was Super Mario, which I gave up when I realized I
could serve humanity better by using that time to make music (and do
interviews).
The interview
ended with a thanks from me and a "party
on!" from Brian, and I'm left fulfilled. To my credit, I've waited about
three months since the interview to actually write this article, and I feel
like a slacker, but it's better late than never.
In the final
analysis, you owe it to yourself and to your children's futures to check out
the Violent Femmes if you've missed them over the years. Do it because you
enjoy music, and because if you don't I will find you, and I will kick your
dog. If you don't have a dog, I will purchase one for you, wait for you to get
attached to it, then kick it.
I'm not joking.
http://www.themelesswonder.com/femmes.htm
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