I recently had a birthday, and because mine is so close to the holidays, I had the luxury of celebrating with my hometown friends since I left California for a week to spend Christmas with my family.
I decided to have the party at one of my favorite North Carolina bars. When the the band I wanted to play couldn’t make it (some members were out of town), the owner of the bar very kindly offered to let me play my iPod over their loudspeakers, so of course I made the world’s greatest playlist to wash over everyone all night long.
I was wearing our insanely amazing Esmerelda Bracelet, which I always wear. I’m going to cry when we sell it.
As I said before, I had made a giant playlist of my favorite songs for the night, and one of the highlights of my birthday night was the dancing that came along when the Violent Femmes began playing.
Ah, the Violent Femmes. One of the greatest things about the 1980s. Possibly the only undisputedly cool band from that time. My Lord, I adore them. I think it was my friend Justin who first played them for me, and I must have been about thirteen. After I first heard them, I immediately wanted to have their music at my command, so the next time my family and I went out shopping, I grabbed their 1983 self-titled album.
I’ll never forget that right after buying it, we went out to eat and the waitress saw me reading the back of the CD cover. She looked at my mother and said, “You’re letting your daughter listen to that?”
I wanted to murder that waitress.
Fortunately, my mother is so cool that she didn’t give a snap what the waitress said. I brought the album home and immersed myself in it, and to this day, I really, really, really love the songs on that album. Gordon Gano was always so hot (something’s twisted in those eyes), but I wouldn’t advise looking him up today. Just never forget: he wrote the band’s brilliant songs.
Here you go: a couple videos.
“Gone Daddy Gone” is awesome/absolutely dumb, which basically means super awesome. When I watch this video, I feel like I’m watching something between David Lynch and Ingmar Bergman. And yes, I 200% wish that I was stripey strobe girl.
Annnnnnnd then there’s my favorite song by them, “Add It Up”. Usually, the dorks in the front row pumping their fists, worshipping, and singing the words would make me roll my eyes, but I just have to love them in this video. Because I get why they love this.
Or maybe it’s just because everyone danced to it at my birthday party.
This post was written by Tori.
