Wednesday 12 November 2008

The Nymphs - self-titled

Before the world was given Courtney Love and Hole we had Inger Lorre and The Nymphs. The story of Lorre and her band is pretty screwed-up, and although loaded with many of the usual tales of excess (such as the infamous story where, after constant frustration with their label, Geffen, Lorre urinated over A&R man Tom Zutaut's desk), it has more than its fair share of personal disasters, such as the death of Lorre's boyfriend Chris Schlosshardt, bassist in the Sea Hags, her subsequent time spent in rehab and the ill-feted friendship and musical dabblings with Jeff Buckley. Even now the problems continue - Inger Lorre was planning to perform live on November 13th but that's been cancelled due to hospitalisation.

There's an excellent write-up on the Nymphs over on Sleazegrinder.

For anyone who missed them (and I feel fortunate to have caught them at the Marquee on their 1992 tour), they were for a short while one of the most talked about bands on the circuit. Their one album, The Nymphs, eventually came out after much wrangling and, most significantly, their record label taking away the producer, Mike Clink, to work on GnR's 'Use Your Illusion' albums (hence the desk incident). At times very dark, almost gothic, its mix of glam, punk and grunge makes it one of the more interesting albums of the early 90s. Samples can be heard at http://www.myspace.com/thenymphsrock.


3 comments:

Michael said...

Pretty unique band. I wish I'd seen them perform, but I didn't even discover them until probably 10 years later. I hope Ms. Lorre gets it together for a proper comeback.

Have you heard her solo album?

DGW said...

I've not heard that, no - any good? Worth tracking down?

Michael said...

I haven't heard it, either. I was hoping you had. It can be had used fairly easily - I just haven't gotten around to it yet.