New book gets deep into details of Violent Femmes debut album

If more than 7 million copies sold and a public-television special are not already enough validation of the classic status of the Violent Femmes’ 1983 debut album, here’s another indicator:

That album is now the subject of a book in the famed 33⅓ series about individual recordings.

Books in this series can vary widely from detailed music journalism to idiosyncratic personal takes. “Violent Femmes” (Bloomsbury Academic) by Nic Brown, a drummer as well as a writer, is both fannish and deeply reported. Brown interviewed original band members Gordon Gano, Brian Ritchie and Victor DeLorenzo at length. He also spoke with album producer Mark Van Hecke and other figures.

Brown knows enough about how music works to ask detailed questions about riffs, notes and words. He engages band members in smart conversation about Ritchie’s role as a lead bassist and DeLorenzo’s use of loud-soft dynamics. But his book never flies over a non-musician’s head. It’s hard to imagine a fan of the album not enjoying Brown’s work here.

As someone who has read many Milwaukee takes on the Femmes over the decades – and has written a few, too – I also enjoyed Brown’s view of the band from outside the local hothouse.

Brown explores the band’s formation, its unusual instrumentation and how it worked in the studio. He also goes over each song in detail, both lyrically and musically.

Here are a few takeaways gleaned from Brown’s book. While passionate fans may already know some of these, you’d have to be a certified expert to know them all.

Bassist Ritchie coined the Violent Femmes name as a label for the rhythm section he had with DeLorenzo, at a time when the pair played with various other musicians.
By the time he met Ritchie and DeLorenzo, the prolific Gano had already written all of the songs that would appear on the Femmes’ first two albums, and some of the songs that would turn up on the band’s third.
What led to the Femmes’ acoustic instrumentation, particularly Ritchie’s acoustic bass guitar? “I just thought that we should all be equipped to play acoustic music because there was an imminent apocalypse on the horizon,” Ritchie told Brown. “I thought we probably wouldn’t have electricity.”
The trio’s first gig was in the basement-level Beneath-It-All-Cafe on Downer Avenue (under the old Wash Tub laundromat).
The person who actually “discovered” the Femmes busking outside the Oriental Theatre on the day of a Pretenders concert in 1981 was Peggy Sue Honeyman-Scott, the wife of guitarist James Honeyman-Scott. It’s often written that James or even singer Chrissie Hynde was the initial talent spotter.
Who bankrolled the recording of the album? DeLorenzo’s father loaned the group the $10,000 they needed.
Castle Studios in Lake Geneva, where the album was recorded, was a facility that had been installed in the main lodge of the fabled Playboy Club there.
Given the enormous backlog of songs Gano had written and the limited studio time the band could afford, how did they decide what to record for the first album? Gano said Ritchie had “the brilliant idea” to pick only “the poppy songs.” That’s why the band’s second album, “Hallowed Ground,” is so different: it has the Gano songs influenced by gospel, country and jazz.
DeLorenzo calls the distinctive snare drum beats he plays at the beginning of “Blister in the Sun” “stutter flams.” A flam, Brown explains, is played with two sticks hitting one note together. Those familiar flams are heard today as pump-up music samples in stadiums and arenas around the country.
Penn Jillette, of the magic duo of Penn and Teller, gave Gano a specific and enthusiastic compliment about the timing of a line in “Kiss Off.” But you’ll have to read Brown’s book to find out what it was.

Jim Higgins is the author of “Sweet, Wild and Vicious: Listening to Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground” (Trouser Press Books, 2024).

‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’