News

Violent Femmes have announced a 40th anniversary reissue of their self-titled debut to accompany an ongoing tour (get tickets here) celebrating the album. The deluxe 2xCD and digital formats will be out on December 1st via Craft Recordings, with a 4xLP box set limited to 5,000 copies following on February 9th, 2024.

In addition to remastered audio of the original album — which features classics like “Blister in the Sun,” “Kiss Off,” “Add It Up,” and “Prove My Love” — the deluxe edition of Violent Femmes includes rare demos, B-sides, and recordings of live performances in New York City and their hometown of Milwaukee. Both the CD and LP editions will feature new liner notes by journalist and Rolling Stone senior editor David Fricke featuring interviews with Violent Femmes members Gordon Gano, Brian Ritchie, and Victor DeLorenzo.

Pre-orders are ongoing. See the CD and vinyl packages below, followed by the complete tracklist.

To accompany the announcement,...

Dropkick Murphys team up with Violent Femmes to fight the Ku Klux Klan on the new collaborative track “Gotta Get to Peekskill.” It’s the latest single from Dropkick’s upcoming album, Okemah Rising.

As previously reported, Okemah Rising (due May 12th) is the second Dropkick album to interpret the words of late folk legend Woody Guthrie, following last year’s This Machine Still Kills Fascists.

The song features the distinctive voices of Violent Femmes frontman Gordon Gano and Dropkick Murphys singer Ken Casey, as they trade verses on the track, singing Guthrie’s lyrics about confronting the Ku Klux Klan.

“We had the privilege of collaborating with the Violent Femmes on this feisty track,” said Casey in a press release. “Acoustic Dropkicks sounds a lot like the Violent Femmes in my opinion, so the collaboration is musically and symbolically fitting. And singing a song about fighting the Ku Klux Klan is always extra fun.

Violent Femmes have unveiled 2023 US tour dates to celebrate their 1983 self-titled debut’s 40th anniversary with “cover-to-cover” performances of the album’s entire tracklist.

The tour launches in Ventura, California on May 6th and hits Los Angeles, Dallas, Austin, and more before wrapping at Denver’s Levitt Pavilion on May 21st. The early summer trek also includes a performance in San Diego with the San Diego Symphony on May 10th. Elsewhere, they will be supported by Jesse Ahern.

Tickets to select shows are available now via StubHub — where orders are 100% guaranteed through StubHub’s FanProtect program.

Violent Femmes, the slow-brewing seminal indie-rock success, contained the band’s definitive sing-along single and one of the 50 best punk songs ever, “Blister in the Sun,” as well as classic cuts like “Add It Up,” “Please Do Not Go,” and “Gone Daddy Gone,” one of the greatest debut singles of all time. Impressively, the...

The Violent Femmes have released a new HD version of the music video for their 1991 song, “American Music.” The clip arrives as the band preps a 40th-anniversary reissue of their 1993 compilation, Add It Up (1981-1993), out May 21st via Craft Recordings.

The clip, directed by Adam Bernstein, pairs the Violent Femmes’ song with a surreal blast of Americana, mashing together square dances, disco balls, and psychedelia. In an email to Rolling Stone, Violent Femmes bassist Brian Ritchie said Bernstein “got certain elements of the Violent Femmes” that separated them from other groups.

Some filmmakers can take years finding the right subject for their documentary, but in the case of Diane Sara Bouzgarrou and Thomas Jenkoe, the directors of “The Last Hillbilly” – which plays Friday in IDFA’s Competition for First Appearance – theirs just walked up and introduced himself. The French director couple from Lille were eating in a fast-food restaurant in 2013 while on vacation in Kentucky when they were approached by a local man named Brian Ritchie. “He came up to us because he heard us speaking French,” recalls Jenkoe. “He said he wanted to take us to ‘the true Kentucky,’ as he called it—the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky.”

“It was a friendship relationship first,” says Bouzgarrou. “Then we got really passionate about finding out what being a hillbilly means. We found his poems. He’s a bit shy about it, but he was very generous with us. All his words,...

Everyone remembers the scene in My So Called Life where Angela celebrates getting over Jordan Catalano by dancing to the Violent Femmes’ “Blister in the Sun” in her bedroom, or when the song was prominently featured in Gross Pointe Blank. (The band even made a new video for the film that starred a puppet version of Bill Clinton’s cat, Socks.)

Now, in the latest installment of Rolling Stone‘s “The Breakdown” series, Femmes frontman Gordan Gano and bassist Brian Ritchie discuss the making of their 1983 hit — and its long misinterpreted meaning.

25 years after releasing “I’m Nothing” off their sixth LP New Times, the Violent Femmes have rerecorded the track for their upcoming album Hotel Last Resort, out July 26th via Pias.

Featuring pro skateboarder and artist Stefan Janoski, the track is a much more fervent take on the original, complete with frontman Gordon Gano’s raucous strums and jarring vocals. “Are you a republican or a democrat/A liberal fascist full of crap/I’m nothin,'” he sings. “‘I’m Nothing’ explores the modern conundrum of people needing to...

Violent Femmes recruited iconic Television guitarist Tom Verlaine for their surreal new song “Hotel Last Resort.” The five-minute track appears on the folk-punk band’s 10th LP of the same name, out July 26th via Pias.

Throughout the winding cut, guitarist Gordon Gano unfurls a series of intriguing lyrical vignettes (“I don’t change the chords anymore/The chords change themselves”; “I’ve become invisible because one is not divisible”) over droning acoustic strums and Verlaine’s textural lead lines.

Bassist Brian Ritchie — who first met Verlaine while working as...

Alex Garland’s Dredd resonated so strongly that fans have in the years following its release, rallied for a sequel. Now firmly entrenched in the realm of cult classic – a feat aided by the lengthy attempts to make said sequel – it might be time to admit defeat and simply enjoy the rollicking adventure Garland created. However, at least 136,000 diehard fans certainly don’t feel that way, as they’ve signed their names to a new petition entitled Bring Back Dredd.

Among its supporters is 2000 Ad – the comics publisher who created the titular cop character. In fact, they haven’t just punched their fists in the air in agreement, they’ve joined the effort started by Dredd fans Frank Palmer and Brian Ritchie. The publisher’s one caveat? Dredd should be brought back in his own dedicated TV series on a streaming platform such as Netflix or Hulu.

Here’s the...

Hip-hip-hooray for "Dredd." It seems the cult-classic character does indeed have a loyal army supporting him, as a petition has been erected to help get the fictitious "police' officer a home on Netflix, or Amazon. This is a change from the petition's original beginning, where it was trying to get a second "Dredd" film fast-balled. As those hopes are clearly dead and gone, a high-end television show is the next big thing, right? Well, maybe yes, maybe no. Whose to say.

The petition already has 100,000 signatures, so this may end up being a reality instead of an incredibly detailed dream. Soon, we may have a new comic book show on Netflix trying to steal the title for "Most Gritty and Realistic Netflix Show Ever," a category that Marvel has been winning every single time. A television show for the series would also be far better than a film opportunity, because,...

This is the story of an eccentric multi-millionaire, erotic art, Damien Hirst, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and the bassist of the Violent Femmes. Oh, and the country's efforts to increase its population, too.

Tasmania is looking to boost its immigrant population and is putting itself on the map for avant-garde art in its latest efforts to lure travelers and settlers alike. The Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) opens this week and aims to be Australia's first "subversive adult Disneyland," complete with erotic art installations, intersecting with themes of life and death.

The museum will showcase the collection of resident multi-millionaire David Walsh in a three-story building designed by architect Nonda Katsalidis and is Australia's largest private museum open to the public. The collection is appraised at $100 million and includes work from artists Damien Hirst and Jean-Michel Basquiat, among dozens of others.

"Mona is an unmuseum, a counterpoint to museums," curator Mark Fraser tells Fast Company.

Vanessa Redgrave accepts the lifetime achievement award. (Photo: BAFTA/Brian Ritchie)

By Lee Pfeiffer

Just because the BAFTA awards was the social event of the season in London doesn't mean British ex-pats were willing to let their countrymen have a monopoly on partying. On Sunday night, members of BAFTA's American east coast contingency gathered to watch a simulcast of the awards show. The venue was a strange one for people from a nation that is generally immune to the joys of baseball: Mickey Mantle's restaurant on Central Park South, founded by the late New York Yankees legend. Indeed, it was not a love of baseball that led BAFTA officials to rent the venue for the second year in a row. Rather, it was the abundance of TV screens strategically placed around the restaurant that affords virtually every diner a prime viewing spot. I was the guest of Lisa Harrison of BBC America,...