The Wikiness

Finks is a second-floor music club on Normal’s Front Street, where they have Augsberger (Light and Dark) on tap. I am 22, a grad student at ISU, and the unappointed taste maker and music critic of my Central Illinois metropolis. I am qualified, having read books by Griel Marcus, listened to old blues recordings, subscribed to Rolling Stone, studied Joni Mitchell, and memorized Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde. I feel certain that music changes the world, for it has changed mine, exploding horizons and acquainting me with humans who barely resemble me but boldly express truths that I recognize.  

I embark on a mission to enlighten my benighted neighbors, for great music is happening in 1983–both among us and farther afield, and they should know about it. I adopt the pseudonym “Red Newton” and become music critic of the local underground newspaper, the Bloomington-Normal Post-Amerikan. I write about the twin-cities local bands–Toxic Shock, Nameless Dread, Diatribe–and when national acts I consider praiseworthy came through our town, I scrape up the dollars for their shows and review them, too. 

The Finks stage is no stage, just the far end of the room with a PA and lights set up. The whole place could pack maybe 200 people in it, but tonight’s attraction has only pulled a few dozen cognoscenti.

Once the band begins, I stand 2-3 feet from a the lead singer and guitarist, whose scrawny body and scratchy voice can’t be older than 19. He’s not exactly a singer–he sort of half speaks his lyrics as if he’s an actor on stage. The songs he plays on his Strat are musically quite simple, but the bodacious stories his adenoidal voice shouts, the outrageous statements expressing human truth I could not imagine admitting out loud, they mesmerize me: “Why can’t I get just one kiss?/ Why can’t I get just one kiss?/ Believe me there’d be some things that I wouldn’t miss/But I look at your pants and I need a kiss.”

Behind him, a drummer propels the song with brushes on a galvanized steel washtub placed atop a snare. A tall bass player with a shoulder-slung acoustic-electric bass weaves sinuous harmonic lines around the short singer’s songs. 

The personae in his songs are dark, and desperate young men, which appeals mightily to me. I can relate a bit too closely with the lyrics:

I take one, one, one cause you left me and

Two, two, two for my family, and

Three, three, three for my heartache and

Four, four, four for my headaches, and 

Five, five, five for my lonely, and

Six, six, six for my sorrow, and

Seven, seven–n-n-no tomorrow, and

Eight, eight, I forget what eight was for, but

Nine, nine, nine for the lost god, and

Ten, ten, ten, ten, ten, everything, everything, everything, everything!

Red Newton felt sure that owing to their unique sound, the Violent Femmes were bound for greatness. 

And he was right!