Blister in the Sun, by Violent Femmes

I used to skateboard. I would read Thrasher magazine and imagine other landscapes, the hills of San Francisco, the Embarcadero, Times Square being searched and destroyed by a couple of skateboard trucks, Trocadero in Paris invaded by kids in baggy jeans and airwalk shoes, the Arc of Triumph outlined behind a young man with transparent wings flying against the old European sun. I think it was in Thrasher where I first read their name: the Violent Femmes. The excitement of skateboarding had found another piece for its never-ending soundtrack.

When I finally got the tape, it was quite a discovery. The truth is they were not anything like what I thought they would be. I was amazed. It took me a while to understand what they were all about. There was a complexity there, a violence in their originality, in the way they whispered and yelled songs of happiness and sorrow. I was mesmerized: the album's name asked a fundamental question. They shock me because they were pure emotion.

Some years later I listened to a song that made me rediscover them. The song was called Blister in the Sun.

Gordon Gano had the voice. A tone, an electric current, a flash, a rush to the head. Before "folk" and "indietronica" became the buzz words of this decade, the Violent Femmes had all the style, all the chicness. This was, to me, pure aestheticism. This was the meaning of "Americana": the great highways, route 66, the mountains, the lakes, the big cities, the enormous skies. Una manada de hermosos ponies corriendo por la pradera.

A song of happiness, to listen to in Sunday mornings, staying late in bed, wrapped in the arms of your love. High as a kite with love, in ecstasy, the deferral of pleasure. The color was blue, an intense shade of blue. It pierced the chest's skin.

It's, again, the simplicity of a good pop song. Maybe this was what the Pixies meant with Here Comes Your Man. Maybe this is what Kurt wanted to do when he wrote Dumb. Maybe he hadn't in him. The true teen spirit, though, was somewhere else. Gordon had expressed it better before. A song to cry with joy, not even knowing why. The ecstasy of love; the simple emotion of ecstasy.

At the end, you just want it to go on. And on.

The acoustics of the heart. The body singing, electric.


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