Something 4 The Weekend # 160

Pretenders: Pretenders II: "Message Of Love" [mp3]

"Now the reason we're here..."

Speaking of righteous babes, here's Chrissie Hynde, along with her three other Pretenders, laying down one of Chrissie's more earnest songs, a song about a man and woman in love, a song about a city full of other lovers, and pretty soon it's a song about all of us, about life...

"We are all of us in the gutter...Some of us are looking at the stars..."

And then it comes back around to Chrissie and her man, the music shifting from a somewhat awkward shuffle to a more urgent, confident stride. It all adds up to one of the true gems in Ms. Hynde's songbook, one that is sometimes overlooked, perhaps...

"Talk to me, darling..."

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 156

Violent Femmes: Violent Femmes: "To The Kill" [mp3]

One hundred and fifty-six editions of S4TW, and this is the first time I've streamed the Femmes...amazing...

Now, I don't know how it was/is by you, but in Milwaukee, we always simply called 'em "The Femmes" and never "Violent Femmes" or even "The Violent Femmes". We called 'em "The Femmes" because they were a Milwaukee band, homegrown, familiar...

I don't know how it was/is by you, but in Milwaukee the Violent Femmes were pretty much legendary, at least among the hipper kids and the college crowds...Going from coffee house gigs and streetcorner busking to opening for The Pretenders at The Oriental on one fateful night in 1981, and from there they pretty much ruled the city for the next two to three years...

At least that's how I remembered it - I was a year or three too young to catch a full, first-hand account of the Femmes...By the time my friends and I were travelling into the city from the suburbs, the Femmes weren't busking anymore, and they were certainly too mighty for coffee houses and the smaller clubs around town...By the time I was old enough to see the Femmes, they were headlining the Oriental themselves, riling up 1000+ of the faithful, and that's a pretty impressive number for a band like Violent Femmes in a city the size and temperment of Milwaukee...By the time me and my friends started going to shows in Milwaukee, the Femmes were hanging out and recording in NYC, and starting to tour internationally...I seem to recall they "conquered" New Zealand and/or Australia on one short tour, and later on, from 85 to 87 when I was living on the east side of Milwaukee, I "ran into" bassist Brian Ritchie from time to time (well, four times, by my reckoning), including once at Lisa's Pizzaria where he recognized me enough to say "hello".

I sound like such a fucking fanboy!

But I don't know how it was by you...I don't know how much the Femmes meant to the typical youth in places that aren't Milwaukee, but considering the kind of raw, wild and literate kind of music the three of 'em made, they were loved enough, by enough, to get requested with regularity at our high school dances...And I also seem to recall RP The DJ getting his ass chewed out after spinning "Add It Up", during which he cut the PA as Gordon Gano sang "Why can't I get just one fuck?", leaving a cafeteria of 200-300 kids singing the line by themselves.

"Add It Up" never got played at a dance again, but there was still "Blister In The Sun" and "Kiss Off", "Prove My Love", "Gone Daddy Gone" and even "Good Feeling" during the slow dance romance segments of RP The DJ's 3 hour set. What I'm trying to say is that the Femmes debut album is really fucking good and solid from start to finish, because here we are with "To The Kill", which is perhaps my favorite song on this album. So now I've mentioned seven of the album's ten songs, which I think is a pretty good indication of just how undeniably great and huge this album is, to me, and a few others like me that I know or knew...

Like I said, I don't know how it was or is by you...The critics generally adore Violent Femmes, at least in those early years, those first two or three albums. I tend to respect the field of criticism, but your opinion may vary. I happen to like their weirder, more difficult second album, Hallowed Ground, a bit more, but this debut is certainly the better album, a true object of art, imbued with the magic of the time and place from which it came to be, pretty much perfect in it's completeness of tone and flow from beginning to end. Every song a slayer, and the whole thing still sounds good, like it hasn't aged a day, much less 28 years!

28 years!

I guess "timeless" is just a nicer way of saying "Holy fuck, I'm getting old! The Femmes are getting old!"

Hotcha! Hank

On The Fourth Day Of Christmas

I give to thee...FOUR FANTASTIC MILFS*...

HPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHP

Cate Blanchett

Jennifer Connelly

Chrissie Hynde

Helen Mirren

*Technically, Helen Mirren isn't a MILF, but I'm not a technician, so whatever.

Hotcha! Hank

The Pretenders: Brass In Pocket

So, it's 1979, I'm 13 years old, and MTV is still 2 years away...

8th Grade, and Cory McC____ , John C___, and me would ride our bikes home from John Long Middle School, NO HANDS style, and yeah, it was a contest, every day after school, who could ride the longest with no hands...The three of us were all capable of making it all the way back to Cory's house, where we'd sit around the living room, chewing Copenhagen and watching Speed Racer...At 4, a half-hour music video program would air, a precursor to MTV, but damn if I can remember the program's name...Anyways, The Pretenders had three or four video off their debut album, this one, which is definitely one of the early conceptual music videos, and a live in studio video for "Tattoed Love Boys" which I can't seem to find on the YouTubes...They also had videos for "Precious" and "Talk Of The Town", so yeah, video definitely didn't kill The Pretenders, it actually made 'em stars...

Of course, heroin killed half the band by 1983, and if ya wanna read a bit about that, head to the Wiki, right?

1979, and The Pretenders were already on our television, three, four times a week...So were Quarterflash, who were bigger stars than they ever, ever, ever should have been...There were also videos by the likes of Alice Cooper and Black Sabbath...Hell yeah...

4:30 and I'd walk down the block to my house, mom making dinner for 5:15, when my dad got home...I'd sit in the dining room, where my mom had her stereo, spinning stuff like The Supremes, Carole King, Linda Ronstadt, Tammy Wynette...And yeah, Elvis, Sinatra, Beatles, Beach Boys...She liked Hendrix and The Doors, but hated The Rolling Stones...She thought Marc Bolan was cute, but she also thought Kenny Rogers and Mac Davis were hot...Her undying crush on Kris Kristofferson is definitely understandable...

I'd sit there at the dining room table, listening to her records while she worked the stove, five feet away in the kitchen...I'd draw, or read the liner notes and lyrics of the album being played, and my mom and I would go through the "how was school today" routine...My sister Stacy was often involved in all of this...

So innocent, you'd think, but I was thirteen, and when Chrissie sang about knowing what her mouth was for, I understood...I wonder if my mom knew that I knew...She probably did...

Hotcha! Hank