The Nuns

The band formed in 1975 in Marin County, California when Alejandro Escovedo and Jeff Olener, who were film students at College of Marin, wanted to make a low-budget film about a strung-out rock singer and a band that could not play its instruments, and decided to play the part themselves. This project evolved into The Nuns. While the band was in its formative phase, they practiced in a warehouse in Terra Linda. Jennifer Miro, who was in a Mill Valley-based band that covered Doobie Brothers songs, practiced at the same warehouse. Olener soon invited Miro to join his band; Miro, who was unhappy with the band she was in, jumped at the opportunity. The Nuns began performing around various venues in the San Francisco area in January 1976. They were among the first punk bands in California and had difficulty finding regular venues. They played the first punk show at the Mabuhay Gardens in December 1976, and quickly became regulars. At their peak of popularity, they were playing two sold-out shows on consecutive weekend nights at the Mabuhay.

The Nuns original manager was Edwin Heaven. In 1977, Heaven discovered them when they opened at The Mabuhay Gardens for The Ramones. Within half a year, he had created a worldwide buzz for the band, designed most of their now-classic posters and, basically, took them from playing at San Francisco's Fab Mab to playing such larger venues as Bill Graham's Winterland and LA's The Whisky.

In January 1978, together with The Avengers they opened for the Sex Pistols at their final concert at San Francisco's Winterland.[2] Even though The Nuns were the bigger draw in San Francisco at this time, they were the first band to go on, ahead of The Avengers.

The band's strong popularity in the San Francisco music scene later led to offers by Bill Graham to manage the band, but the relationship soon turned to animosity touched off by Graham's offense at the song "Decadent Jew". And while the band also received overtures from CBS Records to release a major label album, by the time of the band's initial breakup, they had only managed to produce a few poorly-recorded demo tapes for the label and failed to secure a record deal. The band ultimately released several singles in 1978–1979, as well as the self-titled 1979 7" EP (not to be confused with their self-titled LP a year later).

The Nuns split in 1979 soon after the band was on tour in New York City.[3] Escovedo had decided to stay behind in New York, living at the Chelsea Hotel, while the rest of the band decided to return to San Francisco. Escovedo soon teamed up with Chip and Tony Kinman from The Dils, which had also recently split, forming cowpunk band Rank and File and relocating to Austin, Texas. The remaining members of the band soon split as well, with Olener and new Bay Area cohorts Brett Valory, with drummer jeff Raphael Danny Machine and Jackson Weir III relocating to Los Angeles to form the rock band 391, and Miro remaining in San Francisco to form The VIP's with Pat Ryan in 1979-1981. Miro later relocated to Los Angeles as well, having a solo career under her own name in 1981-1982. After his first successful experience at Leon Russell's Paradise studio, successful in that master tapes were actually produced, Olener had no trouble persuading Posh Boy Records's Robbie Fields to finance the recording of an album by a group that no longer existed based upon Jennifer Miro's participation. Fields had greater difficulty persuading studio owner Brian Elliot of the merits of recording the band. The band reunited but for a single week in late April 1980 (albeit without Escovedo) and recorded their first LP, using only half of the blocked studio time, despite the replacement of the tracking engineer following Miro's walk out on discovering that second-hand multi-track recording tape was being used. The self-titled The Nuns album was released in late 1980[3] (albeit on BOMP! Records, who licensed it from Posh Boy for the US).

In 1986, after several years of inactivity, Miro, Olener, and Raphael reformed The Nuns. The Nuns during this period tilted more towards Miro's new wave-influenced rock sound as Olener's previous writing partner had departed. In 1986, they released their second album Rumania, though its release on the soon-bankrupted PVC Records, an imprint of Jem Records, meant that the album received very little exposure. By 1989, they added a new bassist/cellist, a young Marin County musician Delphine Volino (aka Delphine Neid), and returned to Los Angeles to record Desperate Children for the Posh Boy label, with a distracted Brett Gurewitz at the helm. Volino died of a heroin overdose in mid 1989 soon after the album was recorded. A fourth album, 4 Days In A Motel Room: Their Greatest Sins, was released in 1994, with half the album being a re-release of older material, and the other half consisting of newly recorded material. Miro and Baron Rubenbauer recorded the track Sex Dream under The Nuns moniker without Olener that same year for the Live 105 compilation album, issuing it as a self-released single several years later.

The Nuns were inactive for much of the 1990s, though Miro contributed to several of Narada Michael Walden's recordings during this time.

Miro and Olener began performing together again in late 1997, soon relocating to New York City. They added east village musicians Brian Knotts on guitar, Alex Havoc on Bass and Walter Atkinson on drums. In this manifestation, The Nuns took on a distinctly gothic rock look and sound, an image aided by Miro's increased visibility as a fetish model (under the name Maitresse Jennifer). The Nuns released a series of singles for the German MT Records label, followed by the Naked Save for Boots CD in 2001 and New York Vampires in 2003. A DVD release of The Nuns: New York Vampires followed in 2005, consisting of several short vampire/fetish movies performed by members of The Nuns, recordings of live performances, and material about the history of The Nuns. Other than Miro and Olener, the members of The Nuns were an entirely new grouping that included several fetish performers. A prominent member of this lineup, Mistress Kris, was murdered in a Times Square hotel in 2007.[4]

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