Being from Milwaukee, there are certain things that were unavoidable in my youth: snow, Dahmer drama, da Packers, and the Violent Femmes. When I was in junior high, I even babysat a couple of times for Victor DeLorenzo’s kids, as his son was my little sister’s boyfriend. We Milwaukeeans don’t have a whole lot of musical standouts to claim, so along with the Promise Ring, the Femmes bear the brunt of our “we produce indie stuff too!” assertions. While the former went with the “it’s better to burn out than fade away” conclusion to their career, the Femmes are still plodding along. Much to the delight of suburban festivals everywhere, you can still catch the 50-something folk punks staggering through “Blister In The Sun.”

Apparently, the nostalgia that the crowd may feel isn’t coming from the band members themselves. The recent inclusion of “Blister” in a Wendy’s commercial opened up old wounds between band leader Gordon Gano and his two compatriots, as Gano’s sole publishing rights allow him to license the group’s music however he sees fit and without the consent of DeLorenzo and bass player Brian Ritchie. A local Milwaukee scribe posted about the Femmes’ burger-shilling inclusion in the ad and received a response from Ritchie, who chalked the whole situation up to Gano’s “greed, insensitivity, and poor taste.” It’s clear that Ritchie holds little regard for his bandmate and business partner, also slipping in jabs like “it is his karma that he lost his songwriting ability many years ago, probably due to his lack of self-respect as his willingness to prostitute our songs demonstrates.”

Now, the whole “sell out” angle on using music to sell corporate products and services has been done to death [but in case you’re interested, I stand on the side of artists being free to use their art (and to be compensated appropriately for that usage) in the way that they see fit], but in this case I understand Ritchie’s ire. The band as a whole is being held accountable for, in the critical eye, diluting the importance of their music when it’s only one member making the decision to do so. What I don’t understand, however, is why Ritchie continues to participate in something he’s so obviously “over.”

In a way, isn’t he also “prostituting” if he doesn’t believe in the validity of the music anymore?

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