Tag Archives: Violent Femmes

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Song of the Day #6,570: ‘Gone Daddy Gone’ – Violent Femmes

Continuing my list of best debut albums (with quite a few caveats)…

Violent Femmes – Violent Femmes (1983)

The debut album by the Milwaukee-based folk-punk trio Violent Femmes is one of the record industry’s greatest slow-burning success stories.

Released in 1983, the album failed to make a splash commercially, but it was a college radio success that picked up steam over the years. Buoyed by a compact disc release, it finally reached the Billboard 200 chart in 1991 and to date has sold more than 3 million copies.

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Song of the Day #4,274: ‘Good Feeling’ – Violent Femmes

Violent Femmes’ self-titled debut is my #14 album of 1983, and a good example of the kind of album for which I have a lot of affection even though I never play it.

I discovered this album, and band, in college almost a decade after they first became popular. The alternative music scene at that point was leaning toward grunge, but the folk-punk aesthetic of this record still felt just right.

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Song of the Day #1,039: ‘Blister in the Sun’ – Violent Femmes

Today’s SOTD is one I’ll always associate with my college years, the early 90s, even though it was released nearly a decade earlier.

For one thing, that’s when I first heard it. But I also just can’t lump Violent Femmes’ ‘Blister in the Sun’ in with more typical 80s fare. It has a punk spirit more in line with the early 90s. I see the band that recorded this song on a double bill with Exile in Guyville-era Liz Phair.

Violent Femmes recorded off and on for 28 years, starting with their 1983 self-titled debut (still their most famous collection) and officially hanging it up in 2009, eight albums later. I briefly owned their second record, Hallowed Ground, but it really starts and stops with this first album.

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