The trouble with introducing yourself to the public as a novelty act is that no one tends to take your follow-up recordings seriously. One of the best new wave albums I have acquired in recent years is Dangerous Dreams by the Nails; and Allmusic (specifically Whitney Z. Gomes) states the problem well in their review of the album: “Now a new wave novelty, and forever burdened with a ‘one-hit wonder’ albatross because of the monolithic ‘88 Lines About 44 Girls’, the Nails demonstrate on Dangerous Dreams that this Boulder, CO band still held some clever moves in their repertoire. . . . The grandeur of the Doors, the propulsion of Iggy Pop, and the moroseness of the Sisters of Mercy, combine with the Nails’ own talent to create the perfect vessel for riding high on a dark wave of depression.” However, with all of that praise, the album still merited only a 2½-star rating.
I caught their hit on YouTube, and it really is a hoot; but their follow-up “list” song on this album, “Things You Left Behind” is every bit as good. At one point, they even break down the “fourth wall”: “A dozen contraceptive sponges / Anyone here got a rhyme for sponges?”. Other highlights from the album are the opening song, .“Dig Myself a Hole”; and on “Voices”, they come up with a religious-themed song (I seem to have a lot of those in recent Notes) – Moses (among others) insists that “He talked to me!”. The Nails remind me of the Hives in their ability to generate infectious grooves in an offbeat way.
(March 2013)
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After Joey Vain and Scissors broke up, Phil Gammage got another band together called the Corvairs. He and another student Miles Syken agreed to form a rock band; Syken had been the guitarist in a high-energy cover band called the Mutilators, with the remaining members of that band becoming a punk band called Defex. Jon Cormany had just returned from playing in New York City with Boulder’s first punk rock band the Ravers (who by then had become the Nails – they are now one of my favorite New Wave bands since I picked up their album, Dangerous Dreams), and he was in the audience for their first show at the Moose Club as the opening act for the Nightflames. He became the band’s bassist by their next concert. By the spring of 1979, Jimmy Frost joined up as their permanent drummer. Icepick Phil describes their sound in the early years as “a hybrid of a 60’s pop sound, surf, and artsiness”.
(March 2015)
