Beats me why I haven’t posted the Nuns debut until now. The site is called Killed By Death Records and this is included on the first vol of the KBD series. The Nuns released a couple of good 7inches but to me the highlight is their LP. It was literally every where in the beginning of the 80s. Every decent cut out bin had a Nuns LP for a dollar or two. The 2 song a-side is stellar but the b-side makes me want to carve my arms and jump of a roof. Nuns is familiar to most of you and there’s loads of info to be found. I leave it up to you to google it you lazy jews.
Country: USA
Year: 1978
Label: 415
Format: 7″
Songs:
Decadent Jew.mp3
Savage.mp3
Suicide Child.mp3
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One of my faves man.
Hahaha, this was next in my line too! Killer record, though I’d like to know the lyrics of “Decadent Jew” ……
The Nazis gassed me
Burnt me too
Sterilized me
Beat me black and blue
‘Cause I’m a –
Decadent Jew! Decadent Jew!
Own all the project on 101st Avenue
I hate the niggers and the Puerto Ricans too
‘Cause I’m a –
Hey you, Israelites,
This fuckin’ Jew ain’t about to fight
Screw you!
‘Cause I’m a –
The Nazis gassed me
Burnt me too
Crucified me
Beat me black and blue
‘Cause I’m a –
Hey…its the Nuns!!!
There are a coupla live boots floating around and one of them has the full show from the same gig as this 45.
I’m all confused on the other 45, is it Los Nuns? Is that the one that has the killer studio versions of Media Control & Walkin’ the Beat? I never quite figured that out.
I love the LP, one of the best productions that Posh Boy pulled off. And that was recorded after they broke up!
The LP is great and I plan to post it soon as I can rip it.
Cheers!
One more thing, there is at least one more good Nuns lp, the other Posh Boy lp, Four Days in a Hotel Room which has some great stuff like “Elvis Said” and even better “Do You Want Me On Your Knees?”. One of the Nuns was brothers with one of the Zeros, but you all know that, right?
Alejandro Escovedo played with them and then Rank and File with those Dils brothers…
Looking forward to the LP rip hdvns!
I think that officially their 2nd album was called “Rumania” from 1986.
Wihtout digging it out to look, I think it’s on PVC?
It’s brilliant!!
If you like their first LP, you’ll love this!!!
The first LP is ripped and ready for your listening pleasure, cheers!
the nazis
gassed me
burnt me too
stared at me
beat me black and blue
’cause i’m a
DECADENT JEW!!
great song
http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/nuns/video/decadent-jew_-1227066884.html
Surprisingly high quality. Note this is from July 1977.
I chose not to re-record “Decadent Jew” although I enjoyed watching it performed live as much as anyone. It was electrifying. Anyway, their debut 415 Records “recording” had a wide release. I was disappointed that 415 could not be bothered making even a decent live recording. You can hear the tape machine malfunctioning. Fortunately, “Suicide Child” proved to be a more popular song.
We took all the songs from the 1980 first album and included those 1980 recordings on the 1994 4th album “4 Days In A Motel Room : Their Greatest Sins”.
The second album, Rumania has long been out of print but I hope to have a digital download available through the usual “pay” sites within the next 2 weeks.
Today I have re-issued the 3rd album “Desperate Children” as a digital download only release. The story behind the production credit of “Adolf Honecker” is as follows : I employed Brett Gurewitz to produce … neither the band nor I was entirely happy with the initial results. The band insisted I come out of retirement and work 1 weekend with them in the studio, together with Brett. I did so and I thought we accomplished something but the mixing had to wait so I left it in Brett’s hands. He took weeks to get back to it and when he did, he left nearly all of my input OUT. I think he ended up crediting me for the utterly wasted sessions. But by this time, Brett’s band Bad Religion were taking off.
The principal failing with The Nuns was that it was actually 2 distinct bands co-existing. The “punk” group and the “pop” group. Unless the producer took action to meld these disparate elements, their records would end up as a battleground! Complicating matters still further was the brilliant Jeff Olener’s need for a writing partner, something he had found gloriously in Alejandro but struggled to find common ground with Jennifer.
Check out this photo of Jennifer’s post Nuns band, The VIPS
http://www.flickr.com/photos/astrovinni/2932541631/page2/
Now who has that record to upload?
I should comment here, since I was the person who made that recording (under my “punk name” Joey D’Kaye). It’s an interesting story…
It was never intended to be a record. I was the band’s sound engineer at the time and all we wanted was a live reference tape. The recordings of ‘Decadent Jew’ and ‘Suicide Child’ were made, contrary to some comments I’ve seen around the Net, not at the Mabuhay but at the Keystone Palo Alto, when The Nuns played with Blondie (so this would have put it around the first week of March 1977.) There was a terrific thunderstorm going on outside and the club only had about 20 people in it.
It was recorded on a Nakamichi 550 portable cassette deck, which at the time was the highest quality cassette recorder on the market. The only microphone was a Sony stereo mic positioned about 10 feet from the front of the stage. Since the crowd was so small and “mosh pits” weren’t seen outside of clubs like the Mab (yet), the mic stand was pretty much undisturbed. So what you’re hearing is as close to the actual, unvarnished live sound of the early Nuns as was ever recorded.
Some months later, Howie Klein came to me, the band having told him that the recording existed, and he wanted The Nuns to premiere his new 415 record label. So he and I went to the production suite at radio station KSAN-FM and produced copies of the two songs on 1/4″ reel-to-reel tape, with the only processing being a bit of EQ. Howie left with those production masters and that was the last involvement I had with the record, although I finagled getting the producer’s credit (even though it said “…and the Nuns” the band had nothing to do with the production) in exchange for letting Howie use the recordings (I got no money for it.)
The “tape malfunction” in ‘Decadent Jew’ was not in the original recording. In fact, I don’t know how it happened, but I suspect it was a matter of bad disc mastering. I have no idea who mastered the disc, but Howie might remember. I’m sure he went with the cheapest he could find.
I had nothing to do with the recording of “My Savage”, it was from a demo tape made (I think) at the studio His Master’s Wheels in SF and recorded by Elliot Mazer. The blending together of the songs was done later, probably at the mastering stage.
I gave the original tape to Alejandro and Jeff, so I don’t know what happened to it after that.
Just wanted to set the record on this record straight!
Thank you Joey for taking the time to set all this down. It’s interesting alright … and damn informative.
So much of this kind of information is lost (apparently). Nobody can remember the details, or they think they don’t matter. But they do.
You’ve done a superior act. Thank you.
Thanks, Stephen… I wish the rest of those recordings had survived!
More interesting stuff about that gig: I drove there with Alejandro’s girlfriend Bobbie (RIP) though that monster thunderstorm. We got lost several times on the way.
For the first show (the one on the record) there were 20 people there, and that’s counting friends of the band. Hell, I wouldn’t have gone out on a night like that if I didn’t have to! They were booked to play two sets. At the end of the first set, the club *emptied*. There was none, I’m not exaggerating, NO paying customers for the second show. We went to the club manager and said, hey there’s no one here, do we have to play the second show? He insisted we did. So in between shows, both bands sat around a big table and got absolutely shitfaced drunk. (Except Jennifer, who didn’t drink.) Debbie and Clement were fucking plowed, I remember, but we all were. Then both bands went on stage and played sloppy, drunken, horrible sets to an empty club. And laughed about it.
But they first sets were great! Imagine, seeing Blondie and The Nuns in 1977 playing to a crowd of 20 friends.
Thanks for sharing you stories and shedding some light around this recording. Highly appreciated! Tell us more more :).
HEY U FUKR! i already did, over at the 7inchpunk.com! i don’t mind, i’m too lazy. thanks for posting again, the best west-coast record i think. also i didn’t know the JEW lyrics, thanks Panek, now i can be one.
OH FUCKYEAH I LOVE THE NUNS!!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAH
This 7″ rules. The first Nuns LP (especially side B) is the best shit ever. Don’t be afraid of the Blondie-esque cover.
I trust your taste with this band Peter.
there’s more lyrics to “decadent jew”
own all the projects on 101st avenue
hate the niggers and the puerto ricans too
cause i’m a decadent jew
so, what’s the point of the song? is it one of those “let’s be offensive” songs? or did the band members view jewish people as snobby and greedy?
The Nuns had 3 clearly Jewish members and each one from a different sub ethnic classification :
Jeff Olener – Ashkenazi
Jeff Raphael – Sephardic
Richie Detrick – Mizrahi
I think the song was meant to provoke and deal with the very real neurosis affecting adolescent Jews, growing up after the Holocaust : why do people want to burn me?
Howie Klein – Ashkenazi
released the record.
Bill Graham – Ashkenazi
was uncomfortable with it. By the time (1980) they recorded for me, nobody wanted to record it (again).
It was a very theatrical piece of music that was apt for 1977 but not necessarily later on, just as “Gary Gilmore’s Eyes” was brilliant for its time, but “Belsen Was A Gas” seems like a music hall joke told too late. “White Nigger” was released 2 years too late, as well.
I think if someone were making a biopic about 1977 San Francisco, “Decadent Jew” should be included. If someone makes a biopic that features the last concert of the Sex Pistols at Winterland with the Nuns opening, I doubt they would use the Nuns’ song as it would upstage The Pistols.
Thanks for all your info Robbie! It’s invaluable to have you around here.
Thanks ‘The Flakes/Drummer’ – here’s some more…
The recording of The Nuns I’d really like to see surface again was made in the summer of 1977 at Columbia Records studio in SF (in the SOMA district, on Folsom St. I think – across the street from the original Studio Instrument Rentals shop). The Clash recorded the “Give ‘Em Enough Rope” album there. I’ll have to ask Edwin Heaven, who was their manager at the time, if he knows what happened to those recordings.
The session was set up like a live gig, in the BIG room they had there. Edwin got about 50 people invited so it would have the “live before a studio audience” vibe. A great idea, actually, because The Nuns were always better in front of an audience playing all together than recording tracks separately in a studio – I don’t think any of their studio recordings ever captured their sound (sorry, Robbie, I know you tried.) Studio producers always seemed to be trapped between their raunchy live sound and trying to make them more “pop” and marketable, a la Blondie (who were also pretty raw live, compared to their records.) They always tried to have it both ways and ended up with neither.
But that day, the band essentially ran through their live set while the tape rolled. No stops, no re-takes. The rough playback I heard afterward was pretty good, but I never heard any of it again after that. If I get a response from Edwin I’ll post it here.
And I met a tall, lovely punkette named Magnolia there that day and went home with her… but that’s not a story for public consumption… ;)
I forgot to follow up on this!
Edwin Heaven tells me that the CBS Studios recording was turned over to Jerry Pompelli of Wolfgang Records (Bill Graham’s people, who paid for the session) who were considering signing the Nuns. Supposedly they were not happy with it and no one knows what ever happened to the tapes after that.
What a bummer. Would’ve loved to lend an ear to those tapes. But please tell the story about Magnolia ;).
On January 4, 2012, it was reported that Jennifer Anderson aka Jennifer Miro died on December 16, 2011, at Bellevue Hospital Center, New York of a combination of liver and breast cancer. She had borne the ravages of her illness as a secret from the world at large for more than a year. In September 2011, her health suffered a precipitous decline and she withdrew from the world, cutting off contact with all but a handful of friends without revealing her ill health. She spent the last several weeks of her life in hospice care at Bellevue. She was 54 and had most recently worked as a receptionist for a law firm in New York City.
That sucks!
I found this post (although I was already a fan of the blog) when trying to find more info about the CBS demo. I’m pretty sure the song I’m going to post the link for is from that session–I taped it off the radio on WTBS (later WMBR), the MIT radio station, in late summer 1978 and it’s a different version of “Gettin’ Straight” than appeared on the album.
Enjoy!
http://www.sonicoverload.net/Nuns_GS_demo.mp3
Another sad postscript: Jeff Olener died on December 11, 2014 in New Jersey, after many years of seclusion.
I guess most of you know that the CBS demo has been released…
https://www.discogs.com/it/The-Nuns-CBS-Demo-1977/master/1236170