From the desk of Herb Fenstein
Ok so let’s get this straight.
When Big Beat had the great good taste to put out the legendary Naz Nomad & the Nightmares recordings in 1984 (an appropriate year!) and Naz and Sphinx featured on the front cover of your British Sounds magazine, there were rumors going around that it was actually members of the English Punk Rock Group The Damned playing on the record. Well forgive me for having been there at the time, but these were authentic American period recordings … period.
Maybe the confusion came about as Naz and the guys came over in 1984 to promote the LP release and played some shows with the Punk Rockers, who were all huge fans.
Contrary to what the “experts” will tell you I actually started the ‘Love Vibrations’ label in 1965 as ‘Surf Vibrations’. We cut the house bands at The Hang Ten Inn, Rapid City, South Dakota, The Woodeez & The Way-Vees on the album ‘KOMA, Surf Battle of the Bands’. Soon the two bands spilt and Buddy Lee Jnr and Nick Detroit got together with Sphinx Svenson and brought in Hang Ten Go-Go dancer Ulla on organ to form The Nightmares. They regularly featured at the Purple Pit and at the time Naz was this weird guy in town with long blond hair and permanent shades, but he had ‘Star Quality’ and I recognized that. He was an obvious fit with The Nightmares if only for alliterative reasons.
The band worked up their set of covers and I can confirm that copies of the Naz Nomad & the Nightmares debut waxing ‘The Now Hits, Psychedelic Hits’ were made and sold at the Purple Pit. However, most were returned due to an error that meant that the album was mis-pressed with a side of Al Martino recordings. Now I got to put the record straight here. Love Vibrations didn’t run into financial difficulties as the Big Beat biography claims, we got screwed by the pressing plant who refused to give us back our money as they reckoned we had a better product with the Al Martino sides on the flip.
The two tracks that appeared in Quarry Richards ‘Give Daddy the Knife Cindy’ movie were recorded for 45 release and slated for release on Donny Katchirian’s ‘Sound of Young Dakota’ imprint, but it never really came out – I think Donny might have pressed some promos. Hey let’s be honest Donny was flakey – he died some time back. So anyway I knew Quarry back when he was hustling tit flicks and he had got some serious money behind him for the ‘Cindy’ movie. The press had problems with it, but the money was good and the movie was OK. Anyway I had the earlier tracks and headlining them with the Soundtrack worked. Well it would have if I hadn’t had a lot of returns on the Sunshine People’s second album and the plant stopped my line of credit. That whole thing with Naz and his attorneys was just bullshit.
I also take issue with the biography’s claim that I was an opportunist – sure I took my opportunities when they presented themselves, but hell who doesn’t. But those opportunities opened the door for the Great Star Naz Nomad to walk through and I am so glad he did. So Big Beat Records once more make available the Naz Nomad & the Nightmares LP, this time with a terrific inner bag that includes more of the great fun fair photos.
