People worry, what are they worrying about today?

The thing with the Violent Femmes is that they're never violent enough for me. If I'm in the audience and I hear the music, I can close my eyes and imagine the jittery twentysomething on stage, pulled tight like a live wire, but when I open them it's only sweet-faced Godon Gano playing like it's easy. I want them so badly to be more, I want them to light the crowd until we're all angsty firecrackers set to goo off in...

...I took one, one, one 'cause you left me and two, two, two for my family and three, three.....

At the same time, I have this very large amount of person-to-person respect for any man who can still act gracious as the sweaty fair-going masses go happy nuts for the five hundreth version of "Blister In The Sun." If I were him, I would have long since turned petty and recalcitrant and just plain unwilling to appease the radio friendlies.

Word on the street, which I'm very thrilled about, is that Gordon Gano is a, as they say, "devout Christian." Which rocks my socks off, to know that when they cover the Byrds "Christian Life", with the lyrics:

My buddies tell me that I should've waited
They say I'm missing a whole world of fun
But I still love them and I sing with pride
I like the Christian life...

...it's not nearly as ironic as one would think. What's even more interesting and notable is that the other guitarist, Brian Ritchie, is a devout atheist, with his side projects having names like "No Resistin' a Christian" and "Religion Ruined My Life". Yet somehow, in a display of tolerance that, if concentrated, could perhaps bring new ways of conflict resolution to the Middle East, they've played together in a band for the last twenty odd years. Trust me on this one when I tell you that bands have enough issues after only a few months, not including any large idealogical gaps .

I've decided that I really like the Violent Femmes, and that's really something to consider, since I haven't devoted any time in this whatsoever to the Decemberists, who opened the stage for the Femmes last night. Rest assured that they were great, and I died a little inside every time I had to come to grips with the realization that I could not get anywhere close to the stage because I gave my roommates a ride and we left too late.