When was the first time that you heard Blister in the Sun?

This past week I went to see The Violent Femmes here in Valencia at Sala Cormoran. Arab Strap provided an unimpressive opener that was difficult to hear through the talking of the Spanish audience. At several points the lead singer would mutter something inaudibly into the microphone and the rest of the band would laugh, obviously on behalf of the joke being made at the inattentive audience’s expense. I wasn’t particularly interested in what Arab Strap had to say or the songs that they were playing, but I did pay to hear them and not several hundred Spanish people yammer on. I also knew that my patience was going to wear thin if they insisted on talking through the Femmes as well.
From the very moment that Arab Strap stepped off the stage, what I had already perceived to be a packed house doubled. The venue had been packed so tight that the late stragglers had to watch from the doorways of the entrance. The moment The Femmes took the stage all attention went forward. Not only was the applause between songs thunderous, but also the crowd singing along with Gordon Gano’s distinctive twang. The band opened up with “Blister in the Sun”, the crowd went mad clapping to the beat and singing along word for word. I was stunned at the turnout and response, expecting the show to be filled with a few English teachers sipping tea and watching from a ratty sofa.
That night, on the way home, I asked the New Yorker, the two Italians and my wife, the Spanish representative in this equation, if any of them remembered the first time that they had heard “Blister in the Sun”. None of them could. I couldn’t place ever hearing it on the radio and to the best of my knowledge I have never seen a video for it on MTV, which growing up were my only two sources of new music. Somehow we had all come together knowing of the Violent Femmes and all being able to sing the song forwards and back without the accompaniment of the actual tune. I simply chalked it up to generational.
The next day, in order to bring real life events to the novels that we discuss, I had mentioned the Violent Femmes show to my 10th grade class. Understand that this wasn’t a case of the newly anointed 30-something English teacher trying to prove to his students and ultimately to himself that he’s still ‘with it’. In the middle of a free jam during “Black Girls” the bass player, Brian Ritchie, had pulled down from his (Ampeg) bass amp a pink and white conch. He had blown into this conch to signal the end of the free for all jam, which the 8 or 9 ragtag assortment of paid musicians and random guests from the crowd respected and ceased playing. Ritchie, with the moment to himself, broke into a conch solo---which within itself was interesting --- before bringing the song to a close. For anyone who has read The Lord of the Flies, understands that the character of Ralph is able to guide and gather the other characters through the guidance of the conch. It is this that I was trying to convey to my students. I hadn’t actually expected any of them to know who The Violent Femmes were.
Until Isabel raised her hand and asked me, “Don’t they sing “Blister in the Sun”?” I stopped my lecture right here and responded that, “Yes they do.” I immediately followed by asking her how she knew. She just shrugged. Another student leaned in and asked “Que?”, to which I responded, “English only”. Isabel hummed the first few bars of the song and the inquiring student immediately knew what she was talking about. The same thing happened when I taught the next 10th grade class later in the afternoon, there too were two students that knew “Blister in the Sun” and there too were two students who couldn’t tell me where, why or how they had heard it…they just seemed to know it.
These four students had blown my generational theory out of the water. Incidentally all four of them were the eldest children in their families, so that also did away with the older brother/sister used to listen to it theory. All four of them are, however, huge Nirvana/early to mid nineties Northwestern United States music scene aficionados (from which The Violent Femmes are not, having formed in Milwaukee Wisconsin and having released their first album in 1983, but are considered an influence to the grunge genre), which does offer explanation to them having crossed paths with The Violent Femmes at some point.
“Blister in the Sun” was released in 1982 as a lead off single for their debut album The Violent Femmes in 1983. In 2005 the song was voted as the only English speaking song allowed on Ireland’s Irish Language Radio Station, likewise it was voted in Australia as one of the Most Essential Songs of all time.
Unfortunately, like much of everything else that I have been writing lately, there is no conclusion to this, its merely a work in progress (if in progress means “will never be touched again after I post this”). I guess I’m just simply starting a discussion for those of you that remember when you first heard “Blister in the Sun” and those of you who will happily admit to never having heard the song.