The Nerves
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The Nerves were a mid-'70s power pop trio based in Los Angeles, California, featuring guitarist Jack Lee, bassist Peter Case, and drummer Paul Collins. All three members composed songs and sang. They managed a national tour, including a few dates with The Ramones, but they lasted just a short time and self-released only one self-titled four-song EP in 1976, featuring the songs "Hanging on the Telephone" (Lee), "When You Find Out" (Case), "Give Me Some Time" (Lee), and "Working Too Hard" (Collins). The EP was distributed by independent Bomp! Records. According to his website, Paul Collins is presently re-releasing The Nerves on vinyl and compact disc through Alive Records/Bomp Records in 2006.
Despite their limited lifespan and discography, The Nerves remain notable for many reasons. They were the founding vanguard of the LA pop scene that eventually produced The Knack and The Plimsouls. After The Nerves' break-up, Case and Collins formed The Breakaways with Pat Stengl, a group that would have an even shorter lifespan than The Nerves. Thereafter, however, Case and Collins went on to front more famous groups, The Plimsouls (who had a Billboard Top 100 hit with "A Million Miles Away") and The Beat, respectively. But perhaps the most notable legacy of the group is the song "Hanging on the Telephone": popular group Blondie later covered the song on their smash album Parallel Lines and turned it into a UK top 5 hit, and thanks to Blondie's success, the song has become something of a standard, later re-done by groups as diverse as L7, Def Leppard, Cat Power (whose version was featured in Cingular commercials in 2006), and the band that the character Lane drummed for on the sitcom The Gilmore Girls. While it is likely some of these artists are unaware of the original Nerves version, others were also from Los Angeles and what was, at the time, its terribly small underground music scene and would most certainly be able to reference the original. (According to some sources, Blondie decided to cover the song after a trip to Japan. Someone slipped in a tape of The Nerves in their car's cassette deck and their Japanese driver, who didn't speak a word of English, started tapping along to the song on the steering wheel.) Blondie included a second Lee composition on Parallel Lines, "Will Anything Happen?" Lee also went on to write a hit for Paul Young, "Come Back and Stay".
"Hanging on the Telephone" and "When You Find Out" were later released on a 1993 Rhino Records power-pop compilation, DIY: Come Out and Play - American Power Pop I (1975-1978), which the All Music Guide gave the full five stars (review). The Nerves also had the honor of appearing on the album's cover. More recently, Rhino included an unreleased Nerves track, Case's "One-Way Ticket", on the 2005 compilation Children of Nuggets (AllMusic Review), a sequel to their popular Nuggets compilations. Today, Paul Collins performs songs from both The Nerves and The Beat in his band Paul Collins' Beat, and continues to tour and record new material.
