Nuns, The

Formed in San Francisco in 1977, The Nuns were one of the city’s leading punk/new wave groups. Their insubstantial progress was made even worse by continual line-up problems, but such frustrations coalesced in their EP Savage.

Their work appeared on several compilations, including Rodney on the ROQ and Experiments In Destiny, but having split up in 1979 they reformed the following year to complete their self-titled debut album, only to disband again.

In 1986, after several years of inactivity, Jennifer Miro, Jeff Olener and Jeff Raphael reformed The Nuns and in 1986, they released their second album Rumania, though its release on the soon-bankrupted PVC Records meant that the album received very little exposure.

By 1989, they added a new bassist/cellist called 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.

The Nuns were inactive for much of the 1990s until Miro and Olener began performing together again in late 1997, 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 goth look and sound, an image aided by Miro’s increased visibility as a fetish model (under the name Maitresse Jennifer). They released a series of singles for the German MT Records label, followed by Naked Save for Boots in 2001 and New York Vampires in 2003.

Ritchie Detrick
Vocals
Jeff Olener
Vocals
Alejandro Escovedo
Guitar
Jennifer Miro
Keyboards
Mike Varney
Bass
Jeff Raphael
Drums