Platinum-selling, iconic alt band Violent Femmes performs their trailblazing, self-titled, debut album from cover to cover as part of the record’s 40th-anniversary tour. Joining Violent Femmes as support for the tour is critically acclaimed Americana, folk rocker Jesse Ahern.
Once hailed as the “soundtrack to male puberty,” Violent Femmes’s first record amplified teenage angst and alienation in the 1980s with such songs as “Kiss Off,” “Add It Up,” and “Gone Daddy Gone,” written by lead vocalist and guitarist Gordon Gano before he’d even gotten his driver’s license.
The album has now sold three million copies worldwide and is still in rotation on today’s top rock stations, substantiating it as more than a simple battle cry for a misunderstood youth.
Today, it stands as a pillar of an American underground movement, and one of the best early examples of alternative rock.