Some Songs Considered

“Kiss Off” - Violent Femmes
(Words/music: Gordon Gano, available on Violent Femmes, Slash / Rhino 1983)

When I was in college, “Kiss Off” became one of my favorite sign-off songs on my college radio show.  The seeds for this idea probably go back to two sources – the first being a solid live version on MTV’s 120 Minutes Live compilation that I played to death in high school, and the second being Ethan Hawke’s cover of the Femmes’ “Add It Up” in Reality Bites.  I only offer that Reality Bites suggestion because I once erroneously swapped out “Add It Up” for “Kiss Off.”  “Add It Up,” particularly through Hawke’s character, wielded a more focused anger.  On a more general level, I identified more with the scattershot frustration in “Kiss Off” – the anger without a clear target.  This plus a near flawless bridge – the part where Gano counts up to ten, letting his anger build with each step – made it one of my favorites. 

It always felt right as an ending to a set of songs – not just because of the idea of a “kiss off,” but because it felt like a strange sort of relic from my past.  Maybe I’m inclined to immediately tie it to the past because it literally came out at the beginning of my life, but I suspect an easier explanation.  This song represents a feeling I could only recognize after the fact, one that “Hollywood” Steve Huey of the Allmusic guide captures in his track review:

The starry-eyed longing for popularity that’s nearly universal in teen flicks then and now is nowhere to be found here; there’s tremendous pain in rejection, of course, but the adversarial relationship between “in” and “out” is by no means one-sided. There’s sort of a justified paranoia here, in that the singer expects to be treated with undisguised contempt, and often is. Yet in the midst of all this pain and confusion, he draws a curious strength from his acceptance of (or, perhaps, resignation to) the torment. There’s a real certainty to his place in the social structure, and it provides a clear identity that can be defiantly accepted (if not quite embraced).

Looking back, that certainly captures a period of time in high school, and everything about the narrator – the raw tone, lucid articulation foiled with clumsy slips of the tongue, and the spinning of spurning as a badge of honor – brought me back to those periods of time where it was easier to demonize everyone else rather than try to fit in.  Thankfully, “Kiss Off” is more than just raw emotion – Gano had a knack for melody and composition, making it possible to enjoy this from a comfortable distance without having to get back into my fourteen year-old mindset.

More on Violent Femmes: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“American Music” – Violent Femmes
(Words/music: Gordon Gano, available on Why Do Birds Sing?, Reprise 1991)

In celebration of Mother’s Day tomorrow, I wanted to repost the one I wrote for Mother’s Day last year (May 10, 2009).  Originally shared with a live version of “American Music,” tonight I will post the album version instead.

My brother and I were born about 20 months apart and according to my mom I rarely slept from my birth until my brother arrived.  My eye for revisionist history loves to spin stories out of this childhood fact, specifically honing in on the fact that when my brother arrived, I moved from a crib to a bed.  Whether using this story as justification for my nocturnal habits in high school or joking that my aversion to my crib was a statement about being “caged in,” I’ll joke about this with my mom when I should probably have more sympathy for her spending late nights with her restless child.  I was born a few months after MTV came on the air, so my mom tells me that she would sit up in the rocking chair with me and watch MTV until I fell asleep.  Again, I’m sure I barely paid attention to the videos, instead pondering the meaning of life or whatever else keeps a baby up late at night.  Still, part of me points to this moment as the groundwork for my musical obsession twelve years later, so to a small degree, I owe my mom for this decision.  I know cable was limited in 1983, but if my mom decided to watch HBO or Johnny Carson whatever else was on late at night, this blog might be about movies or comedy instead of music.

In addition to exposing me to the strange videos on MTV in 1983 (perhaps part of the reason I love VH-1 Classic), my mom always encouraged my musical pursuits, whether it meant sitting through grating middle school band concerts or reading my record reviews in my college newspaper.  When I went back to school to get my masters’ degree and picked up a Saturday morning timeslot on the college’s radio station, my mom would occasionally listen to the station’s internet feed.  On the days she’d listen, she’d tell me the songs that she liked and would occasionally ask me to put some of the songs on her iPod shuffle.  Her favorite, at least gauged by the number of times she would mention it, was “American Music.”  Needless to say, it’s a bit stranger than the Neil Diamond songs I helped her download off of iTunes.  While Gordon Gano writes it from the same slightly askew perspective that made his early songs cult classics, “American Music” bounds like a classic pop song and continues in the tradition of songs that celebrate music.  Even if the songs Gano wrote about those that aren’t quite in step with everyone else (and the ones that “remind me of me” in the song), they still capture an essential part of the human experience – the phase where we don’t quite fit in, mired in awkwardness – the kind of phase where only our mothers could love us.  Even if “American Music” came out in 1991, I’d like to think that somewhere in our late nights together we heard a few Violent Femmes videos on MTV and it made those nights a little less frustrating for her.  I suppose the least I could do to thank her is put a couple songs on her iPod for her and walk her through plugging it in every time the battery runs out, even though she knows how to do it.  After all, she introduced me to American music in the first place.

More on Violent Femmes: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“American Music (Live)” – Violent Femmes
(Words/music: Gordon Gano, available on Viva Wisconsin, Beyond 1999)

My brother and I were born about 20 months apart and according to my mom I rarely slept from my birth until my brother arrived.  My eye for revisionist history loves to spin stories out of this childhood fact, specifically honing in on the fact that when my brother arrived, I moved from a crib to a bed.  Whether using this story as justification for my nocturnal habits in high school or joking that my aversion to my crib was a statement about being “caged in,” I’ll joke about this with my mom when I should probably have more sympathy for her spending late nights with her restless child.  I was born a few months after MTV came on the air, so my mom tells me that she would sit up in the rocking chair with me and watch MTV until I fell asleep.  Again, I’m sure I barely paid attention to the videos, instead pondering the meaning of life or whatever else keeps a baby up late at night.  Still, part of me points to this moment as the groundwork for my musical obsession twelve years later, so to a small degree, I owe my mom for this decision.  I know cable was limited in 1983, but if my mom decided to watch HBO or Johnny Carson whatever else was on late at night, this blog might be about movies or comedy instead of music.

In addition to exposing me to the strange videos on MTV in 1983 (perhaps part of the reason I love VH-1 Classic), my mom always encouraged my musical pursuits, whether it meant sitting through grating middle school band concerts or reading my record reviews in my college newspaper.  When I went back to school to get my masters’ degree and picked up a Saturday morning timeslot on the college’s radio station, my mom would occasionally listen to the station’s internet feed.  On the days she’d listen, she’d tell me the songs that she liked and would occasionally ask me to put some of the songs on her iPod shuffle.  Her favorite, at least gauged by the number of times she would mention it, was “American Music.”  Needless to say, it’s a bit stranger than the Neil Diamond songs I helped her download off of iTunes.  While Gordon Gano writes it from the same slightly askew perspective that made his early songs cult classics, “American Music” bounds like a classic pop song and continues in the tradition of songs that celebrate music.  Even if the songs Gano wrote about those that aren’t quite in step with everyone else (and the ones that “remind me of me” in the song), they still capture an essential part of the human experience – the phase where we don’t quite fit in, mired in awkwardness – the kind of phase where only our mothers could love us.  Even if “American Music” came out in 1991, I’d like to think that somewhere in our late nights together we heard a few Violent Femmes videos on MTV and it made those nights a little less frustrating for her.  I suppose the least I could do to thank her is put a couple songs on her iPod for her and walk her through plugging it in every time the battery runs out, even though she knows how to do it.  After all, she introduced me to American music in the first place.

More on Violent Femmes: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm