violent femmes - hallowed ground

There are just as many actual punks in this world as there are accidental punks.  Some work their asses off to be worthy of that lofty descriptor.  Some just luck into it.  Gordon Gano is definitely a punk.  I'm just not really sure which kind of punk he is.

He's a great songwriter. He's a horrible singer. He's ugly as sin. He's cool as fuck. He writes songs about date rape and genuinely loving Jesus Christ. And if it weren't for his band-mates' objections, they would've ended up on one neat little CD for your listening pleasure. Quite possibly side-by-side.

If you were to create a Venn-diagram of Gano's punk/not-punk attributes (which I was dangerously close to doing), that fucker would've been split right even down the middle.

If it weren't for Gano's atheist backing band, the Violent Femmes' debut would've been the greatest punk album ever recorded. “Blister in the Sun,” “Add It Up,” “Kiss Off,” and “Gimme the Car” (as long as we're fantasizing here), paired up with “Jesus Walking on the Water” and “It's Gonna Rain”—any half-assed punk band can combine violent rhetoric with religious imagery (*COUGH*crass*COUGH*), but to legitimately and passionately combine such disparate topics into a true artistic statement...that's punk, my friends.

It's impossible to fight the real truth, however: “Jesus Walking on the Water” works a thousand times better as a work of pure irony than a real description of Gano's religious beliefs. As a song shitting on Christianity in ridiculously over-the-top fashion, it's an absolutely tremendous work of art. As a song about Jesus, it's just plain stupid. Baptists are supposed to be known for their passion, but it sure doesn't seem to translate to folk punk. (Not that Andrew Jackson Jihad stuff, the REAL deal. At least AJJ has the brains to reject the label.)

Any man who can write “Blister in the Sun” and “Add It Up” clearly isn't faking his shtick, but it's hard to reconcile his disturbingly accurate portrayals of teen angst with his downright pretty love songs and (somehow) truthful religious hymns. But I guess that's who he is. And as much as I hate it, and as much as I try to project my own punk icon pipe dreams on the guy, he's just going to be Gordon Gano, as opposed to the Darby-Crash-starring-in-Jesus-Christ-Superstar figure I want him to be.

Which pretty much sums up my reaction to Hallowed Ground as a whole. I want it to be another Violent Femmes, and I don't mind the religious songs—I really don't—but they're just not the same albums. And I suppose it's easier to dream of an alternate universe where Gano put his faith in basic physics instead of ancient religious texts and realized the only thing he's ever gonna see walk on the water is a goddamn lizard.

Incidentally, if he wanted to write songs about Jesus lizards in this alternate universe, I'm totally okay with that. As long as he doesn't start taking himself too seriously this time around.