Unsung Heroes 1: The Male Nurse

I’m grateful to Digital Plamf for recommending The Male Nurse to me a while back (he thought there were some similarities between them and some of the stuff I recorded with Swivel Chair).

All I’ve heard is a few songs they recorded for John Peel,  ‘Back On The Pills’, ‘German Sleeps in My Bed’ and ‘The Vestibule Song’. I originally downloaded it from The Perfumed Garden where someone has made some shocking allegations about a gig in Edinburgh by the band in the comments – not for the fainthearted!)  Back On The Pills is now one of my favourite songs of all time, and I played it pretty much everyday for ages. I love the mention of arriving at Waverley Station in Edinburgh, and as for the “chorus”, it can’t get much better than this:

That boy is back on the pills again

Told his mum, it’s for his cueing action

Told his mum, it’s for his cueing action

He used to clean the tables, in Kirkcaldy snooker halls, he used to clean the tables

When I did my first ever ‘I Hear a New World’ radio show on Fresh Air, I made them the “Unsung Heroes” of the week, and Digital Plamf then took over the slot for most of the other shows I did with some brilliantly obscure Scottish bands. 

I was quite excited to see this article about them pop up on Diskant this week, due to the renewed relevance of their track “My Private Patrick Swayze”. I can’t find an mp3 of that but here is a YouTube video. And you can also download the aforementioned Peel session tracks. According to Last.fm they have a bunch of other tunes so if anyone has them please let me know!

 http://mediaplayer.yahoo.com/jsThe Male Nurse – Back On The Pills The Male Nurse – The Vestibule Song The Male Nurse – GErman Sleeps in My Bed