Violent Chix Striving To Entertain Us
Another very special night of music - I'm almost too lucky
The first time I went to real summer camp - I’d gone the year before, but it was only for a week and they treated us like babies - I was almost nine years old. August of 1984. We slept in a teepee for two weeks, we stunk of campfire and an absence of showers, and we got to do archery with real arrows. It was heaven. My two counsellors, Marty and Sean, were, in retrospect, truly bad at their jobs. Young. Wildly irresponsible. Lazy. More interested in chasing girls and seeing how many burger patties they could jam in their mouths at once than anything to do with me or the other impressionable young boys in our group. But I was in awe of them. Coolest guys I had ever met up to that point. They had a giant ghetto blaster that they carried with them whenever we went on hikes. I know how little I got paid to do their jobs a decade later, so I have to imagine that they were spending their entire wage on D batteries to fuel that beast. They were clearly as committed to rock and roll as they were uncommitted to high achievement in their work lives. They didn’t have a wide range of music with them, and only one song remains burned into my memory. Probably because they played it constantly. Loud. It was from the new debut album from a band from Milwaukee, and it featured, more than once, the question ‘Why can’t I get just one fuck?’. I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but I knew I shouldn’t be listening to it. I loved that. It was the first time I learned that music could be both amazing and dangerous. I went home at the end of the summer feeling like I was keeping a glorious secret from the world. I was hooked on that feeling.
It took me several years to find out that the song was called Add It Up, and that album was the self-titled Violent Femmes by Violent Femmes. It’s a spectacular and important album - Pitchfork called it the 36th best album of the 1980s. Add It Up is one of at least five songs on the album I’d call an all-timer. That album is, depressingly, 42 years old now. But two of the three members of the band who recorded it are still going all these years later. And on Sunday night at the Wildhorse Saloon they asked me in person the same question they had asked me over and over way back then. I still didn’t have a good answer. But I definitely know what the words mean now.
Violent Femmes and their folk punk masterpieces were one half of an incredibly impressive lineup for a Sunday night. The openers were probably the biggest band that has ever come from Calgary and not left - pop punk gems Chixdiggit! (The exclamation point is theirs. I don’t disagree, and add one in my mind when I use the same phrase to justify to myself why I am doing anything, but I didn’t add it here.) These guys are about my age, and have the best origin story ever - they started selling t-shirts that said Chixdiggit! in high school because they thought it was funny. Eventually, after they made enough money, they decided it would make a good band name. They didn’t play instruments, but in punk fashion they just bought some with their t-shirt cash and figured it out. They were fast learners - they formed in 1992, and in 1996 they were signed by Sub Pop records, the same label that had signed some band named Nirvana seven years earlier. They never had anything close to Nirvana success, and were ditched by the label after one album. But they have kept trucking, and have four really good albums and a bunch of other work to their name. They’ve never really gone away, and though I don’t see them on bills now nearly as much as I did back when I was much closer to 20 than I am now and you almost couldn’t avoid seeing them play regularly, I am still happy to see them whenever given the chance. They make me proud to be a Calgarian.
They were let down somewhat by the lousy sound system when it comes to the talking voices of the musicians - they are very funny, but it was hard to catch what they were saying most of the time. But they put on a fun spectacle of a show despite that issue. I was there with a group of four, and was the only one of us who had seen them once - never mind 15 times. I want a do-over for the other three because they didn’t get the entire experience. It was good, and very good fun, but they can be really, really good.
Any discussion of Violent Femmes with someone who doesn’t know them well has to start with the explanation that they are not nearly as scary as their name would suggest. They aren’t terrifying monsters, or satanists, or hardcore punks. They are pretty normal dudes from Milwaukee who write catchy, smart, funny, unexpected, unique, brilliant songs. They aren’t at all what you think of when you think of punk legends, either. They were dressed in simple matching outfits of black pants and plain black t-shirts - though lead singer Gordon Gano wore a paisley dressing gown over top for good measure. Four of the five of them could leave the stage, head directly to the RE/MAX Stampede party, and pass themselves off as the commercial real estate division without a second glance from anyone. But man, were they ever born to be on that stage.
The second thing you have to know to understand this band is that they are incredibly, stunningly, inspiringly unique. They sound like only them - and they are very committed to doing that. Gano sang lead on all but one song, and is also the only guitarist - except for when he plays banjo or fiddle, which he plays both with a bow and like a guitar. Bassist Brian Ritchie, the other founding member along with Gano, plays his instrument as well as it can be played. And he spent much of the night playing a bizarre monstrosity of a contraption that looked like something out of Star Wars.
Drummer John Sparrow - who would absolutely be played by Stellan Skarsgard in the movie of the band - plays like no one else. He stands up the whole time, which means that he uses no pedals. He has just two drums - a smaller snare drum he plays 90 percent of the time, and a big floor tom that he has set up like a second snare drum. Aside from that all he has is a single cymbal - which he rarely uses - and a BBQ. Yes, he uses a Webber BBQ as a drum. It’s absolutely insane. But it’s not like the limited drum set means a limited role for the drums. They drive so much of the sound of the band. It’s magical.
The other two members on stage include a saxophonist who also plays an autoharp, and a booster boxx player who also played trombone. What is a booster boxx, you ask? It’s a big wooden box that you sit on, and then bang on with your palms between your legs. It’s as bizarre as the other choices the band makes, but works just as well. The last instrument on stage is a huge xylorimba - think a xylophone on steroids - that Ritchie plays for one song, leaving the guitar tech to step in on bass. All of that plus Gano’s distinctive voice and unique delivery, and Ritchie often frantic backup vocals all leads to a sound that could only be one band.
A band that has been around this long, and has songs that work a crowd into as much of a singing, dancing frenzy as this band has, could very easily just be mailing it in at this point in their careers. But not these guys. This was a masterclass of a performance. They said little, and instead just threw song after song after song at us in relentless fashion. They were incredibly tight. They were clearly having fun. And they seem to take as much pride in putting on a great show now as they ever have. It was a true joy to see.
The details: Violent Femmes with Chixdiggit!, Wildhorse Saloon, Calgary, Sunday, July 6, 2025, 8 pm.
Up next: Back at the Wildhorse - my second home this week - again on Tuesday to see the best band that has ever existed in concert for my 49th time. Nothing better than that.