Monday, April 11, 2011

New Wave for the New Week #119

This week's NW4NW entry may take the prize for Most Obscure Entry.  Here, in handy bullet-point format, is the totality of everything I know and was able to discover about The Nelsons:
  • They were from Lubbock, TX.
  • They entered and won one of the earliest rounds of MTV's Basement Tapes, a competition for unsigned bands, with their homemade video for the song "I Don't Mind."
  • They released an EP, Bag Your Face, in 1983, which contained "I Don't Mind."
  • They also released a single circa 1986 for a song called "Nuke The Prom;" the flipside of the single featured an even more obscure band, Rambo Bambi, performing an odd composition called "Eating Out Is Fun."
  • After discovering that Ozzie and Harriet Nelson's sons were using the name "Nelson" and were about to break big, Lubbock's Nelsons changed their name briefly to Unexplained Cattle Mutilations (source).
  • The Nelsons most high-profile gigs saw them opening for Culture Club and performing at Farm Aid.
  • They also performed as a straight blues band, calling themselves The Texas Blues Butchers (source).
That's it.  That's all I can tell you, other than the fact that "I Don't Mind" is one of the greatest cartoon-y New Wave songs of its time, and thank heavens someone had the foresight to post the long-forgotten video on YouTube!

So enjoy a rare slice of early 80s New Wave goofiness, "I Don't Mind" by The Nelsons.  And if you can add any more info about the band, whatever happened to them, or where they are now, by all means speak up!