Violent Femmes on the local news

February 10, 2023 9:31 PM

The Violent Femmes interviewed on Milwaukee local news by Howard Gurnette, 1983. An amazing juxtapostion of 80s local news guy and weird/peevish new wave dudes. They also played "Prove My Love."
posted by escabeche (15 comments total)

(the first of these links, but not the second, appeared in a linklist on another FPP in 2016, but I felt it was outside the statute of double post limitations, and also, this version of "Prove My Love" rocks extremely hard.)
posted by escabeche at 9:32 PM on February 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

And interviewed on the national music TV show, Radio with Pictures, in New Zealand in 1984.
posted by maupuia at 11:12 PM on February 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

One of the most fun concerts I've ever been to was the Femmes playing at the Milwaukee County Zoo in 2004. Love these guys...thanks for posting this!
posted by TheFantasticNumberFour at 5:24 AM on February 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

This is adorable, thank you for posting it.
posted by LobsterMitten at 7:51 AM on February 11, 2023

Guess this was their Bill Grundy moment.
posted by Paul Slade at 8:14 AM on February 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

This is really adorable. But 1983!? I started listening to them in probably 1992, and because that is when I discovered them I just assumed that was when they get started (yeah I was a teenager). That album with the little girl on it Gordon mentions was the first & only cassette tape I physically wore out.
posted by gryphonlover at 10:53 AM on February 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

I'm pretty sure their self-titled album was distributed to every person born in the midwest between 1970 and 1990. Flipping through friends' CD binders back in the day, coming across this one was pretty much a given.
posted by onehalfjunco at 11:25 AM on February 11, 2023 [6 favorites]

gryphonlover, oh you sweet summer child.
posted by evilDoug at 11:34 AM on February 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

I had that entire first album memorized. Kiss Off and Add It Up were in heavy rotation at whatever parties I was going to in 1985, and the whole room would belt out the most iconic of those lyrics whenever they came around.
posted by expialidocious at 12:33 PM on February 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

I've never seen the Violent Femmes, but as a young spud I did get tipsy with some friends and snuck under a fence so we could hide out under some bleachers or something and hear their set.

I think the Femmes might agree that it's the ideal way to experience their music. Foundational memory.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 12:43 PM on February 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

I got to see the Violent Femmes at the Living Room in 1984. Incredible show. We walked back to campus soaked with sweat and high on adrenaline and weed. We tried to walk through a drive-thru, but that didn't work so we piggy-backed each other through the drive-thru, which did.

A few weeks later a local band doing a show on campus made the mistake of doing a flawless Violent Femmes cover, at which point the crowd demanded they become a Violent Femmes tribute band for the rest of the gig. Which they did, reluctantly, but brilliantly. And the crowd went wild.
posted by MrVisible at 1:34 PM on February 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

Gordon Gano no longer looks like a 12 year old.
posted by brujita at 6:15 PM on February 11, 2023

EVERYTHING
EVERYTHING
EVERYTHING
EVERYTHING
posted by not_on_display at 6:27 PM on February 11, 2023 [7 favorites]

I was working in college radio at a small school in a tiny Southern town when their first album was released. It was such a change from all the English synth stuff we heard and were reading about in NME and Melody Maker (yes, even hicks from the sticks like us had subscriptions) and listening to it felt like a shift in the wind, that something new was on the way.

If I remember correctly the station manager finally had to put a limit on how many times they could be played in a day, because a few DJs would just play the entire record from start to finish.

I saw them live at 688 in Atlanta in 1985, and the club was about half and half with kids from the punk scene and kids from indie scene, and it was a great show.

Someone upthread mentioned that all the Midwestern kids were issued a copy, and I can believe it. A few years later I was in school with a bunch of folks from all over the Midwest, and just about every one of them had that album. The metal kids, the country kids, the synth pop kids...everyone had a worn out copy of that record and knew all the words.
posted by ralan at 7:45 AM on February 12, 2023 [3 favorites]

I didn't hear their first album until 1987 or so, when it must have fed my brain the forbidden token. Though they had the Weezer curse -- one perfect debut album that they could never top. I also remember everyone in a band became acoustic-bass-curious around this time.

Recently, their cover of Crazy is pretty cool.
posted by credulous at 9:01 AM on February 12, 2023 [3 favorites]