The parallels between Violent Femmes and The Modern Lovers

Friendless and sexually frustrated, famous in their hometown and nowhere else (kind of).

Violent Femmes by George Lange and Jonathan Richman by Ian Dickson

Almost a decade apart in their debut and more than 1.8km in distance, Violent Femmes and The Modern Lovers are surprisingly similar. My knowledge of The Modern Lovers is thanks to the cinematic masterpiece that is School of Rock (whose wise words have been referenced by me before).

I spent a decade looking for the song that turned out to be Roadrunner, but because all I had to go off of was the cloudy memory from watching the movie as a child, this search was somewhat ineffective. Eventually I found it through an Interview with Mac Demarco where he shared his love for the group and for Jonathan Richman, and my life felt complete.

Yet my story with Violent Femmes is somewhat less exciting. Like most people, I knew Blister In The Sun and heard Good Feeling because of Marshall and Lily in How I Met Your Mother. But it wasn’t until 2020 that something (what could it be?) made me feel miserable and lonely enough to gravitate to the agonised moans of Gordon Gano.

I started noticing similarities between the two. Parallels, maybe. The Modern Lovers’ proto-punk and Violent Femmes’ folk-punk sound aren’t just similar because both genres sound like something you say when trying to impress someone.

Their timelines are also interesting to me: The Modern Lovers greatly influenced the punk movement, and Violent Femmes debuted when it was fading from popularity. The Modern Lovers had record companies begging to sign them. But Violent Femmes were being boo’d offstage and fighting for a record deal.

But at their core, they are the same. Here’s why.

First, a general introduction to each band. The Modern Lovers existed from 1970 to 1974, but their recordings weren’t released until 1976.

Yet in their 4 years of activity, their 2-chord and stream-of-consciousness, half-sung lyrics influenced punk’s roots in their 1974 self-titled album. As described by SPIN Magazine, “Jonathan (Richman) didn’t have a standard voice. He just wanted to show the world that anyone could do it. All you had to have was feeling”.

Johnathan Richman was a massive fan of The Velvet Underground, so he moved to New York, became their acquaintance, slept on their manager Steve Sesnick’s sofa, and modelled a band after them.

Everything moved very quickly from that. The group consisted of Johnathan Richman, bassist Ernie Brooks, drummer David Robinson, who later went on to join The Cars; and keyboardist Jerry Harrison, who became part of a little-known, underground, super niche band called Talking Heads. To top it all off, their producer was John Cale of The Velvet Underground.

Yet this was the very reason for their breakup. While Cale wanted angst in the music, Richman was getting influenced by laid-back approach of Californian musicians and wanted to head in that direction.

When moving to Bermuda, he “saw how stiff (he) was and (he) changed it just because”. This led to fights between Cale and Richman, and eventually led to their end before they even begun.

Johnathan Richman is still active under the name Johnathan Richman & The Modern Lovers, gathering several backing bands to make the music he always wanted.

“The Modern Lovers greatly influenced the punk movement, and Violent Femmes debuted when it was fading from popularity.”

Violent Femmes have a different story. For all their active years, Gordon Gano and Brian Ritchie have played together, with Victor DeLorenzo also there for most of the time (he left between 1993 and 2002, then again in 2008, coming back one last time for a reunion in 2013).

In his absent years, DeLorenzo has been replaced by Guy Hoffman, Brian Viglione, John Sparrow, and Blaise Garza. Yet despite all these switches, Violent Femmes never stopped existing. Since their original first performance in their high school assembly where they played Gimme That Car much to the dismay of their teachers, they have played together.

Their debut album sold a million copies without radio promo, label support, and nothing other than word of mouth. Despite their lack of a record deal, they were huge in the punk scene in the earth 80s. They had very little airplay but were the poster child for college radio. So unlike The Modern Lovers, critics didn’t love them. But normal college kids did.

And that was the appeal of both groups. They were the everyman, accessible, down to earth. In the case of The Modern Lovers, they “bent over backwards to be normal”.

The Modern Lovers wore T-shirts, sneakers, and short hair while others did everything to be outrageous. They sang about not doing drugs to an audience that idolised cocaine and Quaaludes. Everyone was obsessed with the next thing, and they made music to honour the old world. Violent Femmes were somewhat less “normal” in some ways and more “normal” in others.

Violent Femmes arguably made less of an effort, their normality came from a lack of attempt. Unlike Cale’s insistence of angst and anger in their music, Violent Femmes spoke about this angst in an organic way with a dose of humour as a coping mechanism.

While both appealed to the mundane, lonely everyman, Violent Femmes did so through just writing to fuck around. Gano chose to write songs about his misery to try and dig himself out of it. As described by John Kruth for Please Kill Me, “Gano did some of his best work as a virgin. (His songs were) stark, personal confessions of sexual frustration, filled with bitter contempt for authority, along with grim deliberations on back-stabbing friends”. Yet this was often paired with a certain snakiness, a comedic relief.

And that is much of the appeal of the Femmes: their songs are largely about loneliness, sexual frustration, and agony. But they do this with a hint of humour. Writing an entire song about a wet dream (Blister In The Sun) and forgetting his own lyrics on purpose in Kiss Off were Gano’s intentional attempts at laughing at his own misery.

This attitude is visible in their interviews today, with Brian Ritchie describing their reception at their first gig as “like when the vikings came to North America and then they looked at it and then they sailed off”. Their self-deprecation is relatable not only because of feeling like the world will end at any painful occasion when you’re a teenager, but also because of how we use humour as a way to downplay our pain.

They walk the tightrope between being so unhappy so as to demand pity, and eventually throwing in a joke to show that they do still have a sense of humour. The name itself started as a joke by Brian Ritchie. They were meant to be a temporary band, so they didn’t pay much mind to their name. Their debut album turned 40 years old this year.

Their inability to get a record deal was largely because of their lack of a bass drum. All they had was a voice, a bass, a guitar, and a snare drum. They would play folk and jazz clubs, and were not considered rock by the public in the start of their career. Blister In The Sun wasn’t even originally written for them and labels didn’t want to put it out. The first album’s master tape was put into a landfill because the studio shut down.

Clearly, they were not very lucky at their start of their journey. But what stood out to me most when going down a rabbit hole of Violent Femmes lore was that they were friends with Maureen Tucker of The Velvet Underground.

“The Modern Lovers seem almost more controlled in their loneliness, while Violent Femmes seem like they are holding on by a thread.”

So the similarities, the potential crossing of paths between Violent Femmes and The Modern Lovers, begun taking shape in my head. Maybe the Femmes were indirectly influenced by the Lovers (Richman drew inspiration from folk-rock genres long before Violent Femmes even formed). Hell, maybe they’ve even been in the same room once. That would be very exciting. But one thing is for sure: they both adopt very similar styles to present very similar battles in very different ways.

Both were loners in high school. Both started making music in high school. Both did not have the interest of girls. Both vocalists lack a technically “good” voice when they sing their stream-of-consciousness, quirky lyrics. They were both youthful in their view of the world, with humour as an intrinsic part to their work. They both were locally popular and grew through word of mouth.

A particular Rolling Stone review of The Modern Lovers’ debut album claims it to be “a wonderfully peculiar record that I think will be remembered for its oddity and charm”. It states the album is “full of tension, humour and self-examination”.

Although this review is for The Modern Lovers, the same words can be used to describe Violent Femmes.

Both capture this sense of youth, fleshing out specific feelings – not even situations, but feelings – and saying it in a down-to-earth way. Although Violent Femmes is angry, this anger can also be heard in The Modern Lovers in songs such as Someone I Care About.

Lyrically, humour is quite intrinsic to both, and a big part of experiencing things at the age at which the bands were making this music: as a teenager, everything is a caricature of itself. Every emotion is more intense, every experience is life or death, and humour becomes a crutch to downplay the often overwhelming feelings.

Yet musically, Violent Femmes feels more menacing, more evil, more miserable. If nothing else, in the vocal delivery. Gano’s moaning and groaning sounds more like he’s on the brink of a destructive emotional outburst, whereas Richman’s delivery fluctuates between enthusiasm and exhaustion.

The Modern Lovers seem almost more controlled in their loneliness, while Violent Femmes seem like they are holding on by a thread.

It’s almost like the bands are distant cousins, not identical but quite similar in their core. Both dealing with the same emotions and finding slightly different ways to express them. With their incomparable performance, the care given to their music, they let me into their world and gave me company when I needed some. As corny as it sounds, that is why I love these albums. Both debuts, both self-titled, both made at similar stages in life. Almost a decade apart.