Sunday, December 09, 2007

"Jesus I Love You" and she held out her eyes


Sadly, for all the good done by Christian or Islamic fundamentalists, or Orthodox Jews, or anyone else with a profound faith that makes them give of themselves...there's a Bizarro world of twisted fanatics who perform Devilish acts in the name of their God.
In "Voices," by The Nails, God tells various people what to do. Or are they listening to voices in their own minds?
(The ill-ustration, as with all photo collages on the blog, is an illfolks original, this one a mash of four or five different images.)
The Nails were a challenging, obnoxious band best known for a smug, surly, somewhat self-parodying stud song called "88 lines about 44 women." They also betrayed a dark Lou Reed side with grudging grunge ballads like "Hello Janine." They were at their glinting black vinyl blackest for "Dangerous Dreams," a 1986 effort produced by Pete Solley, who produced the Romantics and was aboard Procol Harum.
Pete still has a soft spot for his production of The Nails: "RCA completely dropped the ball, but the album lives on as my favorite flop."
"RCA didn't have a clue how to market us," a band member agrees, and the label "only pressed approximately 16,000 copies of this record before the bloodless coup where GE Corp. swallowed NBC Corp. (RCA's parent) whole, spitting out RCA (to BMG) and leaving us well, forgotten."
Wait, it gets worse. Their next album, an indie effort called "Corpus Christi," was a worse disaster. The producer "appropriated the rights and commenced to distribute the record and keep all the money. The record is in the catalogs of major national chains. Why don't we stop him. I'd like to but haven't been able to muster the necessary resource to do so." The album does have the great "Jesus Calling Jesus" cut, but don't buy it! The band member figures it would be better to get a free download somewhere. Like...their website, where you can also buy a lot of their stuff and sample much more: http://www.the-nails.com/disco.html.
Here's The Nails, a band that got screwed.
VOICES

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