FEW songs can have brought a band as much joy and pain as “Blister In The Sun”. Written by teenage singer and guitarist Gordon Gano before he joined Violent Femmes, it became the band’s biggest and best-known track, taking the Midwestern acoustic punk trio from indie outsiders to platinum success via film soundtracks and sports fanfares. But from such licensing arrangements, conflict arose. When Gano licensed “Blister In The Sun” for use in an advert for the Wendy’s burger chain, bassist Brian Ritchie sued him.
It all seemed a far cry from the band’s origins in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where Gano, a preacher’s son, first hooked up with Ritchie and drummer Victor DeLorenzo. They were an unorthodox trio: Ritchie played revved-up acoustic bass, DeLorenzo had a self-made drumkit, while Gano sang in a bratty whine his songs that balanced antiheroics with bright-eyed wisdom.
At first they played anywhere that would have them, from jazz clubs to laundromats – even street corners, which is where The Pretenders’ James Honeyman-Scott stumbled across them, inviting them to open for his band during a performance at Milwaukee’s Oriental Theatre.
Recorded in 1982 with producer Mark Van Hecke, “Blister In The Sun” – where Gano sings cheerfully about being “” and “”, before talking about “” and stained sheets like a chirpier version of Lou Reed – was not originally selected as a single for the band’s self-titled debut. But over time the song wormed its way into the public consciousness, so that by the early ’90s its ramshackle arrangements and and .
