Doctor Nerve was an American avant-rock band from NYC that released the 1984 album Out to Bomb Fresh Kings on Punos Music, followed by five discs between 1987 and 2000 on Cuneiform.
Members: Nick Didkovsky (guitar), Greg Anderson (bass), Leo Ciesa (drums), Yves Duboin (soprano saxophone), Rob Henke (trumpet), Michael Lytle (bass clarinet, contrabass clarinet), Kathleen Supové (keyboards), Dave Douglas (trumpet)
Background
Doctor Nerve formed in 1983 in New York when guitarist-composer Nick Didkovsky joined drummer Jim Mussen and vibraphonist Marc Wagnon for regular sessions, then brought soprano saxophonist Yves Duboin and bass clarinetist Michael Lytle into the group.
Didkovsky attended Dartmouth College from 1976 to 1978, then transferred to Brown University, where he earned a BA in mathematics and studied electronic music with Gerald Shapiro. He also studied with Christian Wolff at Dartmouth and took composition classes with Baikida Carroll and Dave Holland at Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, N.Y. Didkovsky wrote “Spy Boy” there as his first full Doctor Nerve composition and played the piece at weekly student concerts.
Didkovsky and Duboin next played in the Woodstock group Defense Spending, renamed Crow. Didkovsky taped the group on a Scully four-track in drummer Brian Farmer’s living room, and four pieces from those sessions appeared on Out to Bomb Fresh Kings. Mussen invited Didkovsky to New York sessions with Wagnon after the dissolution of Crow. Didkovsky brought Duboin into the sessions and contacted Lytle, who joined on bass clarinet. The musicians first called the group Lethal Injection, then adopted Doctor Nerve from the title of a Didkovsky composition.
Doctor Nerve played several gigs at The Dive. CW Vrtacek urged Didkovsky to compile existing tapes on cassette and ask distributors for projected orders. Wayside Music responded enthusiastically to the cassette. Didkovsky assembled a two-track Creative Music Studio performance of “Spy Boy,” four-track Crow tapes from Farmer’s living room, and eight-track recordings by the New York lineup for Out to Bomb Fresh Kings on Punos Music.
Discography:
- Out to Bomb Fresh Kings (1984)
- Armed Observation (1987)
- Did Sprinting Die? (1990)
- Beta 14 ok (1991)
- Skin (1995)
- Every Screaming Ear (1997)
- Ereia (2000 • Doctor Nerve With The Sirius String Quartet)
- The Monkey Farm (live, 2009)
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