A millennial in a sea of nostalgia with the Violent Femmes at the Greek

If you’re like me and first heard the Violent Femmes’ self-titled debut as a preteen, you probably enjoyed the singsong folksy sound and felt drawn to the anxious paranoia and melancholy in Gordon Gano’s lyrics.

But if you were at the Greek Theatre on Tuesday night to hear the now 50-something Gano and bassist Brian Ritchie, with new drummer Brian Viglione (formerly of Dresden Dolls), you were probably one of the many Violent Femmes fans who basically grew up with the band and made up the bulk of the audience.

But I wasn’t at the Greek Theatre to reminisce about hearing the folk punksters when I was 21.

I am 21.

My demographic wasn’t the target at Tuesday’s show, a Los Angeles stop on the Last Summer on Earth Tour 2015, with Colin Hay from Men at Work opening and Barenaked Ladies headlining.

I’ve wanted to see the Violent Femmes since I was 12, but by the time I started going to shows, the band was on hiatus. So I was hesitant when the band took the stage, having to abandon my view of Gano as the id to my teenage ego, helping provide the cacophonous soundtrack of my high school existence.

Gano and Ritchie were wearing khakis, not jeans, and the fans who cheered as they sped through “Blister in the Sun” were old enough to be my parents. Some fans even brought their children, plugging their ears when Gano sang about overdosing on pills and craving sexual favors on the finale “Add it Up.”

I didn’t feel nostalgia because I was never there. But songs such as “Kiss Off,” with its humbling declaration of disregard, and “American Music,” with its cheery chorus and harrowingly yearning verses, packed an even greater punch than any record that was played in 1983 or 2013.

The instrumentation that accompanied the trio brought a renewed sense to these songs that Gano and Ritchie have been banging out for some four decades. No, there were no mosh pits. But the band’s quirky nature, exemplified on a near 10-minute jam around “Black Girls” added a hilarious energy to the band’s set.

And when an older man suddenly appeared on the opposite side of the stage, playing a darbuka-like percussion instrument while Gano sang, “Give it to me harder, harder, harder, just say harder,” you couldn’t help but laugh and enjoy the musical mayhem that ensued.

So when it came time for Ritchie to pick up his xylophone mallets (handing the bass off to Jim Creeggan of Barenaked Ladies) to perform “Gone Daddy Gone,” and touring musician Blaise Garza started playing his giant contrabass saxophone, the set devolved into a glorified hilarity that proved the Violent Femmes’ ability to entertain a few millennials as well as the scores of nostalgia hunters in the audience.

While I never got to see Gano and Ritchie in their heyday, I got to hear the two — after all the records, all the breakups and the march of time — continue to impress with a musicality that still elicits the loneliness of high school anxiety and the frustrations that can transcend the age gap.

And even if Gano and I have both matured, visibly and emotionally, he still sounds like an honest id for any generation.