The Nerves

The Nerves
Origin	Los Angeles, California, United States
Genres	Power pop, new wave, alternative rock
Years active	1974–1978
Labels	Alive Naturalsound, Bomp!, Good Vibrations, Nerves
Associated acts	The Plimsouls, The Beat, Peter Case, Jack Lee, Paul Collins, The Breakaways
Past members	Peter Case Paul Collins Jack Lee

The Nerves were a mid-1970s American power pop trio, based in Los Angeles, featuring guitarist Jack Lee, bassist Peter Case, and drummer Paul Collins. All three members composed songs and sang. They managed an international tour in the U.S. and Canada, including dates with The Ramones, and performances for the troops as part of the United Services Organization (USO).

The Nerves lasted a short time and self-released one self-titled four-song EP in 1976, featuring the songs "Hanging on the Telephone" (Lee), "When You Find Out" (Case), "Give Me Some Time" (Lee), and "Working Too Hard" (Collins). In addition to being the drummer, Paul Collins was also the trio's manager and did most of the bookings and promotion. The Nerves' EP was distributed by independent Bomp! Records and officially re-released on CD and vinyl by Alive Records in 2008, followed by a second release of The Breakaways, an album of post-Nerves recordings made by Collins and Case prior to the formation of Collins' group The Beat.

Despite their limited lifespan and discography, The Nerves remain notable for many reasons. They were the founding vanguard of the Los Angeles punk and pop scenes that eventually produced The Knack, The Beat and The Plimsouls. After The Nerves' break-up, Case and Collins formed The Breakaways with Pat Stengl, a group that would have an even shorter lifespan than The Nerves. Thereafter, however, Case and Collins went on to front more notable groups, The Plimsouls (who had a Billboard Top 100 hit with "A Million Miles Away") and The Beat, respectively. But perhaps the most notable legacy of the group is the song "Hanging on the Telephone": Blondie later covered the song on their album Parallel Lines and turned it into a UK top 5 hit, and thanks to Blondie's success, the song has become something of a standard, later re-done by groups as diverse as L7, Def Leppard, Cat Power (whose version was featured in Cingular commercials in 2006), and Hep Alien, Lane Kim's fictional band on dramedy The Gilmore Girls. While it is likely some of these artists are unaware of the original Nerves version, others were also from Los Angeles and what was, at the time, its small underground music scene and would be able to reference the original. Blondie included a second Lee composition on Parallel Lines, "Will Anything Happen?" Lee also went on to write a hit for Paul Young, "Come Back and Stay".

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