"American Music" (Violent Femmes)

I was in high school the first time I heard Violent Femmes.
A bunch of us were on a school trip to Boone, NC, for some sort of music workshop at Appalachian State University.  Somewhere along the way, one of the guys in our group popped a copy of Add It Up (1981-1993), the band's 1993 retrospective compilation, into the boombox* we brought with us.  (*For those born after 1990, a boombox [n. bōōm•bäks] was a clunky plastic box powered by D batteries that played cassette tapes.  We'll have to save our discussion about cassettes for another day, though.)  
As we cycled through a few quirky songs about tossing children down wells and racial stereotypes, a bunch of us began to wonder what the hell we were listening to.  After ten minutes, the grumbles and jeers began to grow louder.  After twenty, people started shouting for him to play something else, and our normally unflappable director/bus driver finally ordered him to turn it off and put on the rehearsal tape for that afternoon's workshop.
It was strictly Brahms and Handel for the rest of the trip.
Hate to admit it, but I was one of the people making snide comments.  At the time, I guess I just didn't know what to make of Gordon Gano's adenoidal warbling and the angular, acoustic punk-fury of Gano's then-cohorts, Victor DeLorenzo and Brian Ritchie.
So a couple of weeks later, the same classmate and a buddy of his were noodling around on their acoustic guitars after lunch, when they fell into this rocking little song.  The lyrics were witty, poking fun at pop clichés (e.g. musicians taking too many drugs), and the hook, which kept inquiring if we liked American music, was insanely catchy.  Although it got cut short by the bell, it was a great impromptu performance, and I commented on how good I thought the song was, thinking it was something new they had written for their band.
Without missing a beat, he said, "It's Violent Femmes.  It's the stuff you were making fun of on the bus."
It was just an offhand comment, but it really made me stop and think about how much interesting music I might be missing.  It made me wonder what else I'd written off as "weird" that might be really creative and unusual.  Even worse, whom had I written off?
Might sound hokey, but it was kind of a turning point for how I listened to music and looked at the world from that point forward.
So I credit not only "American Music" and that entire Add It Up album by Violent Femmes for opening me up to stuff like Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, The Velvet Underground, and Ornette Coleman, but also I credit my classmate for the needed reality check.  Thanks, Dylan.