Overheard at Lem's:
...the chemical composition of wood, the many roles that trees and wood play in our lives,.. Link
Xylenes were in the air no doubt during that bake-off. And you probably caramelized all the xylose in that sap. Then there's xylophones:
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Added: Can of Queso links to a new Femmes song in the comments:Also, a concert poster from the 90's in Italy
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25 comments:
The Femmes were a good Mi'waukee band!
I had heard the name but just now was the first time I heard their sound. Interesting, different, that's for sure.
Depressing video though.
the lead singer is creepy - like ted bundy.
Well..since they're a Milwaukee band maybe more like Jeffrey Dahmer.
I'm sure the lead singer of the VF is a fine person. but
Ted Bundy
Lead Singer of the Violent Femmes - Gordon Gano
Bundy it is.
Intriguing that you'd pick up on that similarity, CanofC. It looks like one dabbles in the dark water of psychosis and the other fell in headfirst! The quote below, written thirty years ago affirms some of their sameness and difference. While Gano appears to be conveying a persona on stage similar to the one Bundy attempted to hide, the two-sidedness is there for you to pick up as similarity in facial expression.
Gordon Gano, decked out in baggy plaid Bermudas and a white baseball cap, sits sipping a soda on a picnic bench outside Mesa Amphitheatre, looking every inch the Baptist preacher's son that he is.
The apple- cheeked Violent Femmes lead singer-songwriter-guitarist downs a Pepsi (you were expecting Jack Daniel's, maybe?) and chirps on about how "nice" the sweltering, mid-afternoon rays feel. Can this friendly, down-to-earth, even wholesome guy be the same randy adolescent who groaned about how he "stained his sheets" in "Blister in the Sun" or the psychotic who spewed pure hate for his fellow man on "Mother of a Girl"? The utterly believable outcasts, neurotics and all-around fuck-ups that Gano has unleashed on past records spurred one critic to write, "Gano conveys maladjustment more convincingly than any other songwriter." To the relatively well-adjusted Gano, this is heady praise.
The singer, for one, digs the dichotomy of the real-life Gordon "regular kind of guy" Gano and his twisted lyrical persona...
It was the Baptist church's gut-bustin' gospel music that continued to draw Gano back to the pews as a child, and, by twelve or thirteen, he was writing his own hallelujah numbers. So it only seemed natural that when the singer hooked up with drummer Victor DeLorenzo and bassist Brian Ritchie to form the Femmes, the band would showcase some of Gano's butt-shaking spirituals. Trouble was, Ritchie didn't want to have anything to do with these hard-core hymns.
"At the time, Brian was very aggressively anti-anything Christian," recalls Gano. "He said he didn't want to be playing in a band that was expressing something that he felt so vehemently against." In order not to create a rift in the fledgling trio, Gano agreed to put his religious rave-ups on hold for a while. "I figured they'd find their expression sometime later," shrugs the vocalist.
The band's 1982 eponymous debut was stocked with songs of unbridled horniness and sociopathic paranoia--hardly gospel fodder. When it came time to record a follow-up, it was Ritchie who suggested that the Femmes change direction and commit some of Gano's punk-gospel numbers to vinyl. Not that holy roller Gano had made a convert out of Ritchie or anything. It's just that the bassist had come to admire Gano's thrashed-out spirituals musically --regardless of their "Jesus saves" sentiments.
Gano's shown off his Bible belting on the band's last three albums, Hallowed Ground ("Jesus Walking On The Water"), The Blind Leading the Naked ("Faith") and the latest record, 3 ("See My Ships"). Together with the lovely and leggy Zena Von Heppinstall, Gano has also put together a thrash-spiritual side project, Mercy Seat. "It's funny," reflects the vocalist. "Brian now says that my Christian songs are some of my best numbers."
Gano includes a couple of his supercharged psalms during the near-sellout Mesa Amphitheatre show last Saturday. Still, the biggest crowd-pleasers are songs from the debut like "Blister in the Sun" and, especially, "Add It Up," which quickly degenerated into an audience singalong. (Favorite mass chant: "Why can't I get just one fuck?")
https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/music/gordon-ganos-gospel-hour-6412694
The strangeness of that made me wonder what he's doing today, with this article from 2019, describing his parent's influence, which may be what's allowed him to touch the dark without being taken over by it.
Looking at what you do now and what your family did in your youth—your dad as a minister, your mom a theater teacher—who do you see more of in yourself?
That’s difficult, only in that I feel both of them very strongly. I can see a lot how both influence me. I would, though, have to say—my mom is still alive at ninety-two, and I’m quite sure she won’t read this or what comes of this—that it’s my father. That’s an intuitive feeling I have. I’ll always wonder, and I’ll never know, if there is some gender aspect to it. I would think there could be. There’s just something I feel, a connection. When you get to a certain age—and I hear this more from women who feel as if they are turning into their moms—there is an inclination toward becoming more like a parent. Unless you resist that. Or embrace that. I’m becoming more like him, though.
All of which, affirms what your eyes and senses perceived, CanofC, while also clarifying once again what matters most. Thanks for prompting that journey back!
https://floodmagazine.com/67073/violent-femmes-gordon-gano-and-his-not-so-last-resort
Even though rock stars age, I tend to keep many of them in time capsules. I hear some old song, in my mind I conjure how they looked when the song was current. and they stay that way forever.
My older brother liked the Femmes. I wasn't a fan. Again - the lead singer gave me the creeps. Thanks for that Mamma M. I really don't know much about the guy.
I recall a mean song the Femmes wrote about Nancy Reagan. "I don't know why she's so dumb" or something like that.
I was watching something current on Robert Plant - and wow has he aged. Tho he looks like he drinks too much with as he carries a very puffy face.
oops ...MamaM.
Compare and contrast that last statement by him with this:
Was Bundy's grandfather actually his father?
After Bundy’s mother, Louise, gave birth to Ted (or “Theodore”) at the unwed mother’s home, she initially returned to her family home without him, Michaud said during “Conversations With A Killer.” She had no plans of keeping the child, but ultimately went and retrieved him at her father’s insistence, according to Michaud.
Michaud said that Bundy’s grandfather — the man he thought was actually his father during the beginning of his life — had a “violent streak” and may have abused Bundy as a child. More troubling still, some believe that Bundy’s grandfather was actually his biological father, Rule wrote in “The Stranger Beside Me.” There is no proof as to the legitimacy of the theory; it was never scientifically tested, as DNA testing was not yet available, Rule explained.
Bundy’s parentage seemed to go largely unaddressed by the people in his life. Bundy’s mother never even admitted to being his mother, according to the Deseret News. Growing up with his mother, aunts, and grandparents in Pennsylvania, the young Bundy believed that his grandparents, Samuel and Eleanor Cowell, were his mother and father and thought that his actual mother was his sister. When he was about 14 years old, in an old trunk, he found his birth certificate, and in the spot where it says, ‘Father,’ it said, ‘Unknown.’ So that’s how he found out that he was illegitimate,” Carlisle said.
What goes unspoken is how off the track his mom must have been, including the intensity of the emotions (hatred, rage?) she carried and conveyed to him from pregnancy onward with regard to the web of deceit, abuse, and abandonment she was tangled in and perpetuated. While there's no excusing his behavior as an adult, there are some roots that go deep into the darkness within his "family" of origin.
I'd say your instincts were spot on, CanofC. That's a creeply look and creepy behavior being portrayed, regardless of how nice the guy might be in real life. While Gano had a solid base to fall back on, a reality to return to that was reliably loving, Bundy didn't. I can hardly look at his picture without being creeped out.
Thanks again for the link above, MamaM.
It introduced me to this->>> & I like it. A new song by the Femmes and I think it might be a bit of an anti-woke anthem of sorts. What do you all think?
I'm Nothing
HAPPY to report that Mr. Gano no longer reminds me of Ted Bundy. He aged out of it!
wooo hooo!
American music: Using a Weber grill as your drum kit.
*lucky for us and for Gordon, we will never see Ted Bundy age.* We executed that mofo.
Back when America had a backbone.
and... we are back to Ted Bundy
Newer Femmes video filmed in Milwaukee. Oriental theater - North Farwell near East North Avenue.
Thanks Chickie. Without MamaM's sluething - we'd probably have missed it.
I'm glad to see that the VF band members got over their differences and regrouped. I can hear some of their older sounds in their new. I'm going to upload a photo of a poster I have up from the "90s in Florence, Italy.
Gordon Gano is very short as you can see in that poster.
superb poster.
He's so short that Rosalyn Carter looks up to him!
Now if only Jello Biafra could get his old band together...
Sounds Heino.
German crooner?
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