ARTS
Page 10 Saturday, July 9, 1983 The Michigan Daily
The Femmes are really hommes
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By Joe Hoppe
S AVE SUNDAY night for the Violent
Femmes, folk punkies from
Milwaukee, who are appearing at Joe's
Star Lounge.
The femmes are actually hommes;
19-year-old Gordon Gano who writes the
songs, sings them, and plays guitar,
Brian Ritchie, 23, who plays a big am-
plified acoustic mariachi bass guitar,
and Victor DeLorenzo, 29, who plays a
drum set consisting of a snare, cymbal,
and tranceaphone - a washtub inver-
ted over a floor tom. And while they
aren't true femmes, the band isn't truly
violent, either; except for an occasional
snarl or scream. The name comes from
the "femme" that was synonymous
with "wussy" in junior high, and
"violent" is added asa dadaist paradox
- or in other words, it sounds neat.
The "new folk" pigeonhole for the
Femmes is there mainly because of the
instruments they play and the volume
they play them at; there isn't a whole
lot of folk attitude present. Besides
those connotations of folk, the Femmes
have also got some jazzy lines in both
percussion and bass, a sometimes blues
sensibility, and then a tremendously
hook-laden out and out pop personality.
They can also, of course, rock.
The late Pretender James Honeyman
Scott is the official discoverer of the
two-year-old band in Femmes-lore. The
group was playing on the streets as a
"guerilla tactic" in front of the Oriental
Theatre in Milwaukee where the
Pretenders were going to play and
Honeyman-Scott happened by, liked
INDIVIDUALTHEATRES
$2.00 SHOWS BEFORE 6 p.m.
NIGHT ALL SEATS $2.25
"TWT iNT 1P_1AT 1 "10n m
The Violent Femmes bring their folk/punk music, that is neither played by women nor violent, to Joe's Sunday night.
them, rounded up the rest of the
Pretenders, and Chrissie Hynde offered
them a chance to be that night's warm-
up band.
More infamy than fame followed; the
Femmes' accoustic ensemble was for-
ced off the stage after 3 songs - but it
does make a great story of beginnings.
The Violent Femmes first ablum,
self-titled and recorded over a year
ago, came out on Slash last April, and
received much critical acclaim. Now
various major labels are talking to the
Femmes after shows.
Comparisons have been made, as
they have been about the Dream Syn-
dicate, between the Femmes and the
Velvet Underground, and more ac-
curately, between the Femmes and
Jonathon Richman. Singer/guitarist
Gano has gotten tired of that, and
recently in one interview answered a
question about those influences with
"Lou Reed was my babysitter" and
that his songs he wrote as a child were
"influenced by Jonathon Richman
doing all those children's songs." But
the Femmes actually are reminiscent
of the Richman sound at times, in the
musical style of the Modern Lovers and
especially the tonal qualities of Gano's
voice.
The Violent Femmes have a lot more
to say than Jonathon Richman's
puritannical Modern world conscience
would ever let him, though. While
Richman learns to be happy in his
lonelines, the Femmes get snarly and
end up buying a gun. Where Richman
only wants a girl to care about, the
Femmes ask "why can't I get just one
screw?" Somehow they still have some
kind of freshness and innocence;
perhaps because of a musical line
without any pretentions. The "femme"
in the name might be a little ap-
propriate here, if one wants to compare
their simple music with some macho-
rock posturings.
Our ladies of violent disposition will
be singing songs of frustration and love
gone wrong from their album, a long-
awaited psuedo-reggae song that goes
to show how silly white boys from the
midwest playing Jah's music can really
be, happy melodies of how many pills
one needs to take to get through it all, a
tragic tale of a farmerwho loves his
daughter so much that he throws her in-
to a bottomless pit, and a message for
everyone to kiss off (and many
more...).
So dance to the beat of the tran-
ceaphone, from the streets of
Milwaukee to your town.
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DAIL Y- (PG)
1:00 3:00 5:00 7:00 9:00
He's hot
on the frck..
a. ancdoff
Palmer puts on mediocre show
By Leizer Goldsmith
R OBERT PALMER PLAYED the
Second Chance Thursday night
under difficult circumstances, and per-
formed admirably. The veteran rocker
arrived with a six-piece band, which
played enthusiastically through a
generous 23-song set, as well as a two-
song encore. By the show's conclusion,
Palmer had won over most of the
audience which, understandably, had
booed the announcement earlier in the
evening that Nona Hendryx would not
be appearing.
Although he has, like most pop stars,
periodically attempted to "re-invent"
himself, Robert Palmer has never
forgotten his interest in assorted inter-
national rhythms, particularly those of
the Carribean. Long before The Police
even existed, Palmer was toying with
"Blue-eyed Reggae," on both his
Pressure Drop and Some People Can
Do What They Like albums. It was no
surprise, therefore, that Palmer's show
Thursday night was particularly
satisfying for fans of good and varied
percussion.
Palmer's band worked well, and they
were cordial and jovial throughout. The
singer himself, however, was quite
stiff, only rarely cracking smiles
throughout the entire evening. Palmer
never said a word to the audience until
he was introducing the band, and his
movements on stage seemed very un-
comfortable for a performer of his ex-
perience. Nevertheless, he was in fine
voice, and the sounds which emanated
from the stage were strong and
pleasing, only occasionally dragging
down the energetic feeling which essen-
tially pervaded the show.
Robert Palmer's latest record is, like
everyone else's, very synthesized, and
this updated sound was reflected in the
stage show as well. But although the
music was synthesized, and the songs
were pop, the results rarely sounded
like the "synth-pop" songs which are
now so all-pervading on Top-40 radio.
To Robert Palmer's credit, he seems
able to mesh the synthesizer easily with
sounds other than funk, and to combine
in his concert the newer sounding music
with more traditional AOR rock, thus
making both styles more viable.
Palmer worked rapidly through old
favorites like "Sneakin' Sally Through
The Alley," "Double Fun," "Give Me
See NO NONA, Page 11
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BURT REYNOLDS is
DAILY- (PG)
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