The Love Me Nots
The Love Me Nots were an Independent - garage rock - band from Phoenix (Arizona, USA). Band members were Nicole Laurenne (vocals, organ), Michael Johnny Walker (guitars, backing vocals), Christina Nunez (bass, backing vocals) and Jay Lien (drums).
2006 foundation
Strong influences are bands like The Animals , The Ventures , The Sonics , Dick Dale , The Yardbirds , Nancy Sinatra , The Hives , The Mysterians , The Gun Club , Dead Kennedys , The Seeds , The Detroit Cobras , April March and The White Stripes as well sixties R&B . The Love Me Nots themselves call their sound spy-surf-fuzz-gogo .
The Love Me Nots were founded in the summer of 2006 by Nicole Laurenne and Michael Johnny Walker in Phoenix. Walker played in The Sonic Thrills, which were one of Laurenne's local favorite bands at the time. Walker decided to start a side project and discovered Laurenne's band Blue Fur on Myspace. After a Blue Fur concert, Walker asked Laurenne if she wanted to be the front woman on his new project. They spent some time listening to garage records and wrote their first twelve songs together.
Walker recruited Jay Lien (The Sonic Thrills, White Demons) and Christina Nunez (The Madcaps) for the band. In June 2006 they released test recordings on Myspace. Within a few weeks, her first pieces were being played on independent radio stations in the US and the UK. The Love Me Nots then recorded their first album in September 2006 within five days in Detroit and released the twelve tracks again on Myspace. The pieces were played more than a thousand times on the first day. Soon after, the band was booked to perform all over the southwestern United States.
2007 In Black & White
The debut album In Black & White produced by Jim Diamond (The White Stripes, The Romantics, Dirtbombs) was released in January 2007 under the band's own label (Atomic A Go Go Records). Within a week, the album hit the CMJ Top 100 charts and stayed there for ten weeks. The pieces have been regularly played on satellite radio (including Sirius's Underground Garage channel and XM Radio's XMU station), college radio, European and UK garage rock radio broadcasts, podcasts and internet stations.
The band played live on radio stations in Phoenix, New Jersey, Seattle, San Francisco and several other cities on their tour. The single "Move in Tight" was on Spin magazine's "Songs You Need to Download Now" list. A number of Billboard publishers selected the Love Me Nots to play in the 2007 Independent Music World Series competition in San Francisco. At the end of 2007, the band's debut album was on XM Radio's Top 25 list, as well as on the leaderboards of rock magazines and broadcasters in the US, Europe and South America.
2008 Detroit
In May 2008, bassist Kyle Rose Stokes (The Dames) and drummer Vince Ramirez (Grave Danger, Flathead) became members of the band. The second album, Detroit , - also produced by Jim Diamond on Atomic A Go Go Records - was released in August 2008 and was on various best lists in the USA that year (e.g. Village Voice, Austin Chronicle, BreakThru Radio and the Phoenix New Times). The French edition of Rolling Stone named it Record of the Month for May 2009 and the single Give 'Em What They Want was voted Coolest Song in The World by Sirius Radio Underground Garage .
2009 Upsidedown Insideout
The video for the single You're Really Something was released in November 2008. The band went on a busy tour along the west coast of the USA. Even in 2009 the band stayed busy, including a. went on tour through France, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands for the first time in Europe. The band signed a deal with Bad Reputation Records to re-release the first two albums in France. A track from the band's first record, Break My Heart , was featured on the soundtrack of Rescue Me that summer .
After Ramirez left the band and was replaced in time by the Phoenix-based record producer and drummer Bob Hoag (The Go Reflex, Pollen), the third album, Upsidedown Insideout (Atomic A Go Go), was released in September 2009 , also produced by Jim Diamond, but this time in Phoenix.
2010/2011 The Demon and the Devotee
In 2010 the band toured France and Spain. The French Rolling Stone did a longer article on the band, as did Rock & Folk and several other important magazines. The video for Do What You Do was released in January 2010. In the summer of 2010, the current tour was canceled after singer Nicole Laurenne was diagnosed with breast cancer. Since she has now been treated successfully, a new album was planned for the end of 2010, but was not released until the beginning of May 2011 (on the Bad Reputation label). Much of the material for The Demon and the Devotee had been written and recorded before Laurenne's illness. The album was in turn produced by Jim Diamond in Detroit. The original drummer Jay Lien has returned to the band.
In 2011, 2012 and 2013 The Love Me Nots give numerous concerts, especially in the USA and France.
August 2013 Nicole Laurenne participates in the Arizona Storytellers Project and tells mainly about the difficult beginnings of the band.
2014 Sucker
In November 2014, Sucker (Atomic A Go Go) was released, the fifth studio album by the band, which had returned to the original line-up with Jay Lien and Christina Nunez. The album was produced at Bob Hoag's Flying Blanket Studios in Mesa and mastered by Jim Diamond in Detroit.
In 2013 Laurenne and Walker founded the band Motobunny together with Christa Collins (vocals, synthesizer) and Rik Collins (bass) .
Laurenne's other music projects are Zero Zero and The Darts .
Studio albums
- 2007: Black & White
- 2008: Detroit
- 2009: Upsidedown Insideout
- 2011: The Demon and the Devotee
- 2014: Sucker
Individual evidence
- ↑ "The Love Me Nots" ( Memento of the original from May 14, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Fender Musical Instruments Corporation (FMIC) website. Retrieved March 12, 2011.
- ↑ Martin Cizmar: Interview: Update on Love Me Nots Singer Nicole Laurenne's Battle with Cancer . In: w: en: Phoenix New Times , September 9, 2010. Retrieved March 12, 2011.
- ↑ Megan Finnerty: http://www.azcentral.com/thingstodo/events/articles/20130821az-storytellers-music-nicole-laurenne-of-the-love-me-nots.html with a ten-minute video of Nicole Laurenne's performance , August 21, 2013. Retrieved August 21, 2013.
- ↑ http://www.azcentral.com/story/entertainment/music/2014/11/04/love-nots-return-sucker-interview/18456215/ . Retrieved December 13, 2014.
- ↑ https://www.philthymag.com/life-is-so-short-you-kind-of-have-to-try-to-do-it-all-the-story-of-motobunny/ . Retrieved December 26, 2019.
- ↑ https://alternativetentacles.com/2019/03/28/interview-with-the-darts-front-woman-nicole-laurenne/ . Retrieved December 26, 2019.
