Inside my head there are two Violent Femmes. The first one I heard thanks to the soundtrack for The Crow. Dark, moody, gothy. Perfect for my teenage years!

Years later, I caught John Cusack’s classic Grosse Pointe Blank for two reasons: I loved John Cusack and Minnie Driver was a massive crush. I didn’t expect Violent Femmes to have a song as breezy and shiny as Blister in the Sun, even if the lyrical content is as gloomy as color me once (from The Crow’s OST).

For the longest of time I believed that Blister in the sun was the embodiment of “College Radio”. Quirky enough not to be a major hit on radio stations, but fantastic enough to catch the attention of the “cynic in the making” college student phase we all went through. Sadly, some people get stuck there.

Once you hear Blister in the Sun you fall in love with that riff. It’s a song that embraces silence. Like a quick meditation, the quiet part explodes as if our main character had a moment of clarity. Sometimes you gotta hit that bottom to rise up before you drown.

This song was a staple of my mixCDs, as we all switched formats and it was the time to embrace Nero and all those burning programs we had. Never ask about how legal were those songs, though, you might get a gibberish reply. The ones I kinda my nasty.

-Sam J. Valdés López