There was just something about it.  When the Violent Femmes' first album appeared in 1983, it went straight to the heart of alternative types.  They seemed to come out of nowhere, this quirky three-piece band, grinding and thrashing acoustic instruments, with a weird name and a raft of songs about not getting laid and not being liked or even understood.  It seemed that everywhere that summer was something approaching a collective nod -- a sense that, yes, we understand this.  Lines like "Why can't I get just one kiss" and "They hurt me bad but I don't mind -- they do it all the time" said something real to a whole lot of people back then.

Apparently they still do.  Violent Femmes was recently certified as a million seller, without the benefit of ever hitting the Billboard Top 200.  Which means that at a certain point in life, some people, of a certain age, background, and temperament, continue to find something that relates to their lives in the music of the Violent Femmes.

Having set such a high standard with its debut, the band has always had to compete with that album on each succeeding release -- no easy task.  Is it hard having people constantly ask about and refer to something you did almost a decade ago?  Says bassist Brian Ritchie, "Well, it happens to every band that comes out with a great first album.  I mean, Lou Reed still has to live up to the Velvet Underground's first album 25 years later."

But he acknowledges that the record affects people.  "I think it's the album that really struck a raw nerve among a lot of kids that felt like the songs really spoke to their point of view.  Our other albums were more diverse, and maybe artistically more varied and more interesting, but the first album had a lot of songs that, grouped together, reflected a certain point of view.  That's why people can latch onto that one easier."

The band (who plays the Universal Amphitheatre on August 2) is now back among us with its most consistent album in years.  With the accent on fun and simplicity, Why Do Birds Sing? will undoubtedly be seen by some as a throwback to the sound of the first L.P.  Some will criticize the Femmes for this, some will praise them.   "Some people think that we should progress and not sound like that anymore, but I don't think so," Ritchie says to the critics.  "Because nobody else has done it, nobody else has followed up on the doors we've opened with our first album -- so we're left with it ourselves."

This album has been a long time in coming.  The band -- Ritchie, vocalist/guitarist Gordon Gano, and bare bones drummer Victor DeLorenzo -- has been working for two years on the follow-up to its fourth album, ironically entitled 3.   The record was delayed, Ritchie says, because "we wanted to make sure that we got it right.  We could have put out something much sooner, but it would have been half-assed."

Though the songs were recorded live and quickly, most on first or second takes, the band spent much time writing and arranging.  They went on a mini-tour to try the songs out in front of people, changing arrangements and finding what works.  They re-recorded songs, making them simpler, more natural.  "It wasn't a matter of frustrating trial and error," Ritchie insists, "it was more a matter of just playing again so we would have all of the advantages from taking the time with it.   We don't know for sure what's going to be best until we try it a few different ways.  But the best comes real naturally."

A distinctive new element to the band's sound is the large serving of background vocals by Ritchie and DeLorenzo on the album.  This was a result of a conscious effort by the band to correct what they saw as one problem with 3, and it was brought on by interesting reasoning.

Ritchie says that background harmonies are "a good way to personify the band to the listener because most people don't really differentiate between instruments.   They can't tell the difference between a bass and a keyboard.  Those kinds of things generally blend together in a person's mind.  But they do hear the difference between three different guys' singing voices.  So we thought it would be a nice way to create a group feeling in the record by having us all singing a lot.  Also, our audience does sing along with the songs a lot, so the more things that we give them to sing along with, the more fun they can have."

The album contains three songs that are among the oldest in the band's repertoire.   "Life Is a Scream", "Flamingo Baby", and "Girl Trouble" date back to the same period as the material on the debut album.   "Girl Trouble" has been a crowd favorite from early on;  its inclusion, and the marvelously spirited performance here, should please longtime fans.

The obvious question is, why record them now?  "It wasn't that we didn't think that they were as good or that they weren't valid or something like that, or that we lacked new material this time around," the bassist explains.  "We were trying to create sort of a fun feel with this record compared with the other records, and the old songs that we used are all really upbeat, kind of humorous tunes.  So we just thought that it would help us create the kind of mood we were looking for."

There are also tunes on Birds that might well spark some controversy for the band.   Most notable is "Out the Window", which deals with the sensitive subject of suicide with a noticeable lack of cautious restraint.  Lines like "The pavement knocked her head around/ When she hit the solid concrete ground" might be seen as harsh by some.

To Ritchie, though, such criticism represents a double standard.  "People tend to hold music to a much more conservative standard of so-called morality and subject matter than they do the other art forms.  I don't think it would be really shocking if Gordon was a novelist and he wrote something about that.  I think it's just a matter of people aren't used to hearing any kind of alternative subject matter in rock 'n' roll.  And for that reason I stand behind the song, because it talks about something different from what you usually hear."

It's fair to say that that is what the Femmes have always been about:  making something different.

Surprisingly, the story of their formation is unremarkble.  "It was just boring, people just introduced us to each other", Ritchie says, but the story gets better.  "The interesting thing is we started playing shows before we ever did any rehearsals.  Victor and I just showed up when Gordon had a solo gig.  I brought down an instrument and Victor brought down a snare or something and we just started playing with him and it sounded great.  We'd done about 20 gigs before we'd ever had a rehearsal, but by then we didn't need the rehearsal."

After those initial club dates, things began to slide.  Soon the band was unable to get any gigs at clubs in its native Milwaukee.  According to Ritchie, the lean times were due to the fact that they were different.  "People in rock music are really conservative and boring and we weren't.  They didn't understand why we were using acoustic instruments.  'Why does the drummer stand up, and why don't they have a big, gigantic, 20-foot skull onstage?'"

To compensate for a lack of exposure, they took their act to the streets.  That is where the band really honed its sound.  Were they a hit?  "No, we were broke all the time.  But then the Pretenders saw us on the street and they offered us a gig opening up for them.  And that was great."  That gig led to their signing with L.A.'s alternative indie Slash Records.

What they do hasn't changed much at all from their street-playing days.  DeLorenzo still beats a minimalist rhythm, with brushed snare prominent.  Gano has become more proficient on his acoustic guitar, but still basically just strums rudimentary chords.

With this stark backing, Ritchie's bass playing becomes the real linchpin of the band's sound.  Unlike most groups, the Femmes have a gaping hole in their sound that the bassist must fill.  He does this by taking the main responsibility for melody lines in the music, while maintaining a considerable rhythmic punch.

It's a style that took a good deal of forethought and great technical ability to achieve.  Ritchie is obviously proud of his work.  "It was an interesting situation when we started that Victor was playing one snare and Gordon had never been in a band before and had never played a solo in his life.  In the beginning we were lucky if he could even play for a little bit by himself without bogging down in confusion.

"So, I had to pick up the slack there and also because there weren't all those tomtoms, cymbals, kick drum and all that stuff that every band has, I had to really pick up a lot of the slack on the rhythmic end of things too.  So actually it was a perfect format for me because I had the technique to fill up a lot of the space musically, but I couldn't play that way in most bands.  Most bands I'd have to play much simpler because the drums and guitar would be doing a lot more work.  I think that's the key to the band's sound, that everybody has an unusual style in the band, but if you put it all together we have a very full sound, even though, if you analyze it, nobody is really doing the traditional thing with their instrument."

The instantly recognizable tone he produces -- a sort of slap and rattle note -- is a result of his instrument choice, the acoustic bass guitar.  He knew this was the instrument he wanted, and built his own before discovering a model made by Ernie Ball.   Ritchie went with this unusual axe out of the most basic of impulses:  "I just wanted to play acoustically, but I didn't want to play the upright because I don't know how to drive, so I wouldn't be able to get it around very easily."

Now the instrument is becoming widely used and is the staple of MTV Unplugged.  But as yet, Ritchie hasn't received any recognition for his pioneering work.  "There's never been any articles on me in the guitar magazines or anything like that", he says somewhat testily.  "I mean, I've done more for that instrument than anybody else has, but I never get any recognition for it because they just write about heavy metal musicians.  But that's just the music business.  Nobody else will ever play it as well as I do, so I have that consolation."

All three members of the band write material and have done solo projects.  Within the last year, DeLorenzo has released his first solo album and Ritchie his third.  Yet within the Femmes framework, Gano is the only writer.  This seems a bit strange, but Ritchie says it was decided early on as a way of maintaining a consistent vision.

"Gordon is really a fine songwriter and capable of writing an entire album's worth of material every time that we go out there.  We like his songs so we don't mind backing him up on that.  It's not that much of an ego problem.  It would be nice to have things equal, but sometimes that's not good either.  The Beatles, towards the end of their thing, it didn't even sound like a band anymore, it just sounded like a bunch of solo projects on the same album.  I think that's the problem we would fall into if we all did songs on the albums."

But the way the songs end up is the result of total collaboration.  "There's a lot of songs that we completely changed the feel around", Ritchie points out, "to the point where Gordon's mind was blown, because it was totally different from what he had in mind.  But the nice thing about being in a band is that even if we're not writing the tunes, we still have the ability to really change around the way the songs go or add sections that Gordon didn't have in mind in the first place that is there in the final product.  That's real satisfying."

Gano's writing, though, has created some misconceptions about the band.  For instance, many have thought -- and a number of articles have said -- that the Violent Femmes are a "Christian band".  The label was a result of generalizations stemming from a few religious numbers Gano has written ("Jesus Walking on the Water" off Hallowed Ground being the classic example) and from the fact that the singer is a devoted churchgoer.  But Ritchie and DeLorenzo don't share Gano's religious enthusiasm.  Actually, a featured track on Ritchie's new solo album is entitled "Religion Ruined My Life".

Ritchie thinks the whole religion tag on the band is overblown.  "There's a few religious songs that we've done and they were good songs", he says, "otherwise we wouldn't have put them on the record.   I think people get confused and they think that once religion is mentioned or Christianity is put into a song, that means that the band is trying to proselytize or trying to brainwash the audience.  People take offense at that.  But I think it's been blown out of proportion with us.  First off, because two guys aren't Christian and even the guy who is doesn't sing about it constantly.  So I think it's been sort of overrated."

But it was Gano's writing that caught us all up in this Femmes world in the first place.  From the teen alienation he captured so well on the debut album, to the problems and frustrations of life that he continues to describe so vividly today, his words keep us enthralled.  Ritchie once again attributes the success to being different.  "He doesn't sing about just the things that conform to rock 'n' roll stereotypes.  He sings about other things that are uncomfortable.  That's what makes him interesting, and that's also what makes him irritating."

What always comes through strongest in the band's music, however, is joy.  The way that Gano wails and flails like a man possessed, over the infectious snapping beat of his cohorts, can be seen as nothing but joyful.  The exuberance in their performances makes it all seem uplifting, even when the subjects are grave.  Sort of like life -- a little joy and a little pain.

It's the key to what the band does, a kind of group catharsis that's made their live shows some of the finest around.   "We're not singing about depressing things to make other people depressed", Ritchie says.  "We sing about 'em and then people see we're the same as they are.  And then we feel better and they feel better too and everybody enjoys it.  You can sing about sad things, but leave people feeling good at the end of the night."