aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser
#067: The Nomads– ‘She Pays The Rent’ (Wire Records ’85)
Hello friends,
to Sweden we go today, and why not? I mean it’s still summertime, 19° in Stockholm, which is alright, I’d think. If it’s warmer wherever you are today, well, you shouldn’t miss the trip anyway, because we’re going to visit The Nomads – and they are a) a bloody institution in Swedish garage-rock’n’roll, believe me, and b) they are still going, some 43 years after they got together!
The band plays music influenced by The MC5, The Stooges, Roky Erickson, The Cramps, The Ramones, New York Dolls, and other early garage rock and punk bands. The Nomads have been an influential band in the Scandinavian garage rock and punk scenes, inspiring bands such as The Hives, Hellacopters, “Demons”, Gluecifer, and many others.
Of course there have been numerous garage rock revivalists over the decades, but The Nomads certainly have stood out because of the intensity of their performances and the wide range of their influences, which extend beyond the usual ’60s bands to encompass ’70s punk, heavy metal, rockabilly, and blues. The Nomads have not managed to gain more than rather a small cult following alas; this may be because they have recorded only a limited number of original songs. Nonetheless, they have managed to create some genuinely exciting, if not particularly innovative, music: their first release was a crude remake of the Sonics‘ “Psycho” (500 copies only) in 1981, they followed this with another single, a blistering rendition of “Night Time” by the Strangeloves, and received wider recognition with their first mini-album, “Where The Wolf Bane Blooms”.
Another example of their innovative capacity was using horns on today’s single, their fifth in fact, a recording of Jeff Conolly‘s “She Pays The Rent” – released on Amigo, but also in parallel in the UK by Wire, in the USA by Homestead (as a three song 12”), and in France by Closer: I have the UK version. The flipside “Nitroglycerine Shrieks” is The Nomads’ first self-penned 7” song – an excursion into the center of noise.
The A-Side though caused quite some stir back then, because it’s a version of a song written by Jeff “Monoman” Conolly, allegedly during his time with DMZ. Despite this, “She Pays The Rent“ appeared for the first time officially on Conolly’s subsequent band Lyres’ 12” EP (1985) sometime after The Nomads released their version. Another version is found on Lyres’ second album, “Lyres Lyres”, (1986). However, a rough and unofficial version of “She Pays The Rent” circulated before 1985.
Hans Östlund (second from the left in the picture above) once said about the record:
“before this single we had a very good relationship with Jeff Conolly and The Lyres. We played a few shows together in the Netherlands before the French tour, the Pandora’s Box festival in Rotterdam and a show at Melkweg in Amsterdam, which both went down fantastic. Nix (Vahlberg, founding and current member) knew about “She Pays The Rent” from a live cassette and when Jeff said it wasn’t part of Lyres’ set anymore, we agreed that we would record a version of it. Jeff mailed the lyrics to Ulf Lindqvist and we decided to make it our next single.
Things then turned a bit sour as Jeff wasn’t aware of the fact that there would be a US release and then reacted badly to the fact that certain US fanzines deemed The Nomads’ version superior to Lyres’. Jeff is a sensitive person and this would be a cause of animosity for quite some time – but luckily we’re all friends again now. We got the idea to use a horn section from The Saints’ “Know Your Product“ (1978) – a mix of rhythm’n’blues and punk rock, which we think is a very worthwhile combination. We are not sure if we succeeded to the same extent as The Saints, though. Anyway, it was fun to try something new.”
mp3: The Nomads – She Pays The Rent
As old as this is nowadays, I haven’t gotten tired to listening to it – hope this goes for you as well. And if you haven’t heard it before, well, let me know what your feelings are, will you?
As always: enjoy!
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 