I'm up late on Eater Monday and I've got The Violent Femmes eponymous debut on as my bath runs. I bought it the year it came out, way back in 1983 when I was on the cusp of the grown, because The NME told me to , It's always a good idea to do what the NME tells you what t do I find. Listening to it now ut sounds like pretty much the most teenage album ever made. There are other contenders; The Undertones, The Modern Lovers . Let's not bring Morrissey into it. Morrissey is pretty much a teenage state all of his own.
But Violent Femmes pick at that scab to the degree that you wonder whether it will ever heal. Sure it's fun. Poetic. Restless, Profound/ The other big American underground album of 1983 was R.E,M.'s Murmur and I attached myself to that rather than Violent Femmes, though I loved both just as I attached myself to R.E.M. rather than The Smiths initially. This position changed. Their's was a centrifugal tug for my kind and disposition.
But I was essentially a happy teen just as now I feel I'm essentially a 'Happy Sixty'. I like a good mope but I also long for the state to pass and allow me to exit the valley of doom and enter the sunlit glade. . Life's a matter of choice essentially. We may forget it but I consider myself very fortunate and try never to forget that we have an almost unlimited range of choices should we but choose to access them. Right I'll exercise that choice now. I'll turn over Violent Femmes to Side B bathe and breakfast and make my way properly into the new day. 'What have I got to do. To prove my love to you...'
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