Violent Femmes' Blister in the Sun introduced me to something dark, bitter and adult
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Version 0 of 1. June 2014, the Troxy, east London. My brother grins at me. We have a combined age of 67, as well as partners, children, cats, mortgages and other trappings of adulthood. However, we also have a plastic pint of beer and a shot of whisky apiece. I grin back. We do the shots as the band takes to the stage. They play my favourite song first and we go wild. Everyone goes wild. It’s 1991 and I have a pastel-pink Walkman, which spools to me the sounds of Kate Ceberano, who is currently my favourite artist after New Kids on the Block. I can’t play New Kids on my Walkman, however, as all I have is a vinyl copy of their Hangin’ Tough album. Vinyl is not a mobile medium. Nobody will be asking the 1991 version of me to DJ any time soon. At 13, my music collection is as confused as the soup of hormones waiting to engulf my body. We are living in Sydney, Australia: an expat British family who have also had stints in the bright lights of New York and the slightly dimmer lights of Kent. Perhaps reflecting this cultural confusion, my musical tastes are muddled, yearning, incomplete. I own four records: one by George Formby, Hangin’ Tough, the Dick Tracy soundtrack and the best of Sha Na Na. My cassette collection majors on the Everly Brothers, Kate Ceberano, Bon Jovi and Club Tropicana by Wham! (I am on my second copy, having played the first until the tape snapped). And then at a summer camp disco, I hear it. We’ve been stepping from side-to-side in a desultory manner to Jimmy Barnes, Bon Jovi and the Chantoozies, when the first twanging notes, followed by emphatic drumbeats, come from the speakers. My ears prick up as the vocals start. It’s nasal, sneering, possibly out of tune. The words make no sense. But it’s loud, unhinged, hormonal. It plays with us, whispering then shouting. It switches from joy to teenage angst filtered through something bitter, dark and adult. By the time we get to the chorus I’m dancing like a loon. No one else is fussed. They go back to stepping from side-to-side to John Farnham and Simply Red. It was Blister in the Sun by the Violent Femmes, and when I heard it it was already nearly a decade old. But it took me at least another year to find out what it was. We had no interwebs in those days, children, and the man in the local music shop looked at me like I was speaking Swahili standing on my head when I tried to explain the song without the title or band name. I left with a copy of New Kids’ Step by Step, though, which seemed like a victory of sorts. It sounded thin and fake in comparison. It was thin and fake in comparison. We moved back to England at the end of 1992. I still didn’t know the name of my song. But in January, wandering around Camden market trying to acclimatise, I heard it. A guy with a CD stall was playing it and dealt pretty well with my slightly incoherent demand to know what it was (I was still working on my new London accent). I bought the CD. It cost all of my Christmas money. The CD guy said to come back if I liked it – he had more stuff I might be into. I liked it. I loved it. I mainlined the whole album, and the Violent Femmes and their aggressive, whinging, humorous post-punk, outsider rock became my gateway drug for punk and indie. I went back to that stall time and time again and was introduced to Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Buzzcocks, the Undertones, Rufus Wainwright and more. With the help of the Violent Femmes I sidestepped Take That, the Spice Girls and all manner of R Kelly 90s chart-toppers and came out smiling on the other side. My brother, a dedicated thief of books and music, had the good sense to leave the NKOTB albums where they lay, dusty and now unloved under my stereo. He went straight for the good stuff, and as a result we had common ground through all those inevitable, difficult times in our teens, 20s and now 30s. So here we are, together, listening to the Violent Femmes live at last. Blister in the Sun changed my outlook on music, life, the universe, everything. Yup, changed my life. |