Skip to main content

Bloomsbury Home

Violent Femmes' Violent Femmes

Violent Femmes' Violent Femmes cover

Violent Femmes' Violent Femmes

Quantity
Pre-order. Available May 14 2026
$19.75 RRP $21.95 Website price saving $2.20 (10%)

Payment for this pre-order will be taken when the item becomes available

Description

Through rare access to the Violent Femmes and their archives, this book investigates the creation of such iconic songs as "Blister in the Sun", "Kiss Off", "Add it Up" and "Prove My Love", as well as the album's recording process.

The self-titled debut from Milwaukee post-punk acoustic trio the Violent Femmes is one of those rare albums that seems to have altered the course of popular music and influenced just about everyone who heard it while also managing to operate almost entirely outside of the mainstream. Released in 1983 to little sales or attention, the band was so iconoclastic that it couldn't even engender support from Milwaukee's anti-establishment punk scene. Over the ensuing years, though, Violent Femmes managed to exert itself as an unstoppable cultural force, ascending the college radio charts and spreading through word-of-mouth.

Violent Femmes didn't sound like anything else when it was made, and it still doesn't sound like anything else. The album somehow exists both outside of time and as one of the most evocative and enduring artifacts of the alternative '80's.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Prologue: The Organist
1: Formation
2: The Instruments
3: The Studio
4: The Songs
5: Release and Success
Epilogue: In Dreams Begin Responsibilities

Product details

Bloomsbury Academic Test
Published May 14 2026
Format Paperback
Edition 1st
Extent 128
ISBN 9798765133514
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Dimensions 165 x 121 mm
Series 33 1/3
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Author

Nic Brown

Nic Brown is a writer, musician, and professor at…

Related Titles

Environment: Staging