Nervus Rex

Nervus Rex was a new wave pop band whose roots were in the New York City independent music scene, its members frequenting clubs like CBGB's and Max's Kansas City. After Lauren Agnelli answered an ad for a "CBGB type band" in The Village Voice, she and Shaun Brighton met one night at CBGB's and discovered a connection in a mutual appreciation for other new wave bands playing at the time, including Talking Heads, The Cramps, and The Velvet Underground. Agnelli had been working as a rock critic for The Village Voice and Creem magazine under the pen name Trixie A. Balm.

Soon joined by Miriam Linna, drumming for the Cramps at the time and later, Jonathan Gildersleeve, Nervus Rex started to develop an uptempo pop sound focusing on driving surf guitar twang and danceable rhythms. Their initial bass player, Lew Eklund, left the band shortly after Gildersleeve joined. Artist and Ohio transplant, Dianne Athey, took over on the bass after Eklund left, and soon added to the group musically and in terms of image. In 1978 the band released a single on the Cleverly Named Record Company, a 45 RPM "Don't Look" b/w "Love Affair." Two years later, Blondie producer Mike Chapman and his partner, Nicky Chinn (Chinnichap), signed the band to the Dreamland label.

Nervus Rex only released a single album on Dreamland, the 1980s self-titled "Nervus Rex." That release, having been on hold for a year while the dynamic new wave music scene flourished with talented contemporaries like the B-52's booming in much-deserved popularity, the Nervus Rex debut release met with little success and the band continued playing in clubs for several more years before breaking up in the early 80s. Nervus Rex played on double bills with The Pretenders, Squeeze, The Bloodless Pharaohs (Brian Setzer's first band), and Richard Hell and the Voidoids.

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