With that Lollapalooza festival connection from yesterday, here indeed are the Violent Femmes, with perhaps their best-known and first song from their eponymous first album of 1983. Fresh, raw and hard-hitting, the Milwaukee band breathed new life into American post punk with an acoustic folk-garage edge, underpinned by Gordon Gano’s scathingly skilled vocal delivery and guitar work, Brian Richie’s fresh and vibrant bass lines, and the cheeky snare work of drummer Victor DeLorenzo. It feels so easy, laced with clever changes of pace and volume, just like three guys banging it out in a street corner or in record store somewhere, and that’s why it’s great. The subject matter divides opinion, some thinking it is about masturbation, but Gano asserting it is, if anything about the mess that drug abuse can do to a relationship, as well as the bedsheets. After various splits and reforming, DeLorenzo left, and the band still exist, despite a legal dispute between Gano and Ritchie over the former allowing the song to be used in a Wendy’s burger commercial. Raw meat indeed.
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