There are a number of quasi-obscure artists who fascinate me. These are musicians and bands who the average music fan (whatever that is) hasn’t ever heard of, and would probably hate, but which have a certain canonical place in the fringes where they dwell.
Sometimes this makes me worry I’m being unconsciously pretentious, or perhaps professing my interest as a way of signaling in that IYKYK kind of way. I hope that’s not the case, but I also don’t believe we can always understand our own unconscious motivations. So… maybe I’m just being affected or vainglorious. Though to be fair it’s not like I actively look for ways to inject Nurse With Wound into general conversation. I’m not even sure how one would go about doing that. But I can certainly imagine the confused looks it would generate.
NWW was one of the first really out-there artists I found myself attracted to, one of my first tastes of the avantgarde and experimentalism. Over the years I’ve picked up a handful of albums, all of which have twisted my brain in their own ways. So when I ran across a vinyl copy of Second Pirate Sessions at Vancouver, Washington’s Everybody’s Music (which, to be fair, when I walked in struck me as a place in which I’d be very unlikely to find a NWW record…), I felt sort of compelled to buy it. If I’m being honest, though, I had a moment of doubt, especially given the $75 price tag – do I really need to spend that much on a record that I’ll probably only play a couple of times? And if so, isn’t that… pretentious? Maybe. I don’t know. So I bought it anyway. It’s cheaper than therapy.
Second Pirate Session is comprised of unused and/or alternate versions of tracks from the Rock’n Roll Station (1994) sessions. Originally released in 1998, it came out as a 15-track 2xCD and this 7-song record, the former limited to 1,500 copies, the later a mere 500. I haven’t heard Rock’n Roll Station, so I don’t know how representative these recordings are of the album itself, but I can say this has been my favorite NWW listening experience.1 The bass and hypnotic vocal cadence of “Rock’n Roll Station” straight-up put me into a trance-like state, while the razor-sharp, metallic edges of “R&B Through Collis Browne” minced my brain into thousands of tiny little pieces. This is what I think of when I think of “industrial” music, pounding coming out of some darkened, dank factory churning out… well… nightmares.
One of the intriguing aspects of NWW is the infamous Nurse With Wound List. Included with the debut album, 1979s Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella, it is comprised of 291 sonic reference points that influenced NWW. Some, like Amon Düül and Crass, are well-known and canonical in their own rights. Others are incredibly obscure, and member Steven Stapleton has even indicated that some were fabricated, though this has been refuted by his partner John Fothergill. All of which, of course, adds to the mystery. Regardless, it’s a list that has been dissected and used as a research tool by lots of other crazy people like yours truly, and has even been used to put together some compilation records, something I just learned today (and now may need to buy…).
Is NWW for you? I… don’t know. The only way to figure that out is to give them a listen and see for yourself, which I do encourage you to do – if nothing else NWW will expand your mind.
- My dog, however, was very, very unimpressed. ↩︎