Senior year of high school, and you know I had a copy of the Femmes’ first record, like every other hip teen did, does, and absolutely should. I also had the other albums and me, Scott and Greg were getting downright frothy in our fandom. Adding to the idol worship THAT year (1989, for those keeping score) was that Gano and the boys were flying high with something of a “comeback” album, called 3. It was produced with high gloss, and they looked like high school principles in the sleeve photos, but we didn’t care. “Fool in the Full Moon” and “Mother of a Girl” were just as off-kilter as anything they’d ever done, and Gordon still looked like an absoltue FREAK in concert, where they mixed the new jams with old classics and served them with such perverse glee that they became interchangeable.
On 3, each side closed with a somber track. “See My Ships” closed the second side, and it was one of the first 2-string jams (yes!) I’d ever heard. But it was “Nothing Worth Living For,” the Side One closer, that resonated deeper in my adolescent psyche. It became the plodding soundtrack to whatever over-the-top calamity was happening in my life. Conveniently enough that winter, there was a bonified adult crisis at our high school–our teachers were on strike. There was a foot of snow on the ground, gray skies, ponderous icicles at the corners of all the buildings–and out on the sidewalk, the heavily bundled souls of the picket line, slow as the song itself, became the backdrop for the romantically doomed autobiographical film looping in my head as swiftly as “Nothing Worth Living For” became the score.
Months passed, and the teachers and administration worked out their differences. Me and my nerd-tastic Femmes-loving krew were building sets for the Spring musical on Saturday afternoons. On one of these Saturdays, we were pumping 3 on my box. When “Nothing” came on, this ditzy girl I never cared for rolled her eyes and said something like, “Gee, this is cheerful.” I looked at her sideways, finished with the nail I was hammering, and stepped to the box to turn it up.
