“I don’t want to criticize the dead and all,” Lloyd Boisdore says, with just a trace of exasperation, “but it pisses me off.”
Boisdore, bassist, vocalist and visionary for Evil Nurse Sheila!, sits at a table in his band’s ad hoc war room, a rustic shell of an apartment above a CBD diner, as he zeroes in on a source of recent irritation.
“Nirvana doesn’t have a clue, man. What’s that line? He meets the man who sold the world, and he says, ‘I thought you were dead,’ or whatever. And he goes, ‘Oh no, not me. I never lost control.’ But then you got your boy going, ‘No, we never lost control,’ and it doesn’t make any sense. It changes the whole point of such great lyrics.”
Hermeneutic analysis of the late Kurt Cobain’s take on David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold the World” isn’t what you’d expect from most rock bands, but in this case it’s a telling detail: playing gadfly to the hegemony is a founding doctrine in the world of Evil Nurse Sheila! Like a punk rock amalgam of Socrates, Ignatius Reilly, George Orwell and William Gibson, with perhaps a dash of Don Quixote mixed in for good measure, Boisdore is an appropriately commanding figure to lead the three-year-old trio on a religious-philosophicc music crusade. First New Orleans, then the world.
Since their first gig in May 1992, the band, which also includes drummer Andrew Smith and guitarist Laurie Shefsky, has matured into a tight, confident and unconventional mainstay on the scene. Late last year they issued a self-titled debut CD on their own Spinning Toe- Hold Records. Recorded by Ryan Dufrene at the Demo House, the record charts a stylistic path that veers from avant noise to jazzy improvisation to almost retro new wave—David Bowie here, King Crimson there, the Police here, Frank Zappa there. Boisdore’s terse lyrics, meanwhile, echo like parables in cyberspace.
“A lot of the bands here in New Orleans have been looking at other bands and end up being two years late,” says Mark Bingham, who pre-mastered the CD at his Boiler Room studio. “But Evil Nurse Sheila!, for whatever it’s worth, sounds like Evil Nurse Sheila!
“And Laurie is a great guitar player. Laurie kicks ass.”
The seeds of Evil Nurse Sheila! were sown on the grounds of Benjamin Franklin High School in the mid-’80s, where Boisdore cut his teeth with the fondly remembered Pig’s Head on a Stick. “It was just four guitars, everybody doing a solo, and that’s about it,” Boisdore recalls. “We’d get out in the yard at Franklin and piss off the math teacher. You know.”
In 1986, Boisdore hooked up with high school friend Shefsky, who’d been playing guitar since she was 10, and drummer Michelle Degrande to form Saturnalia, a punk band interested more in ideology than style. “Everybody thought we were trying to be spacey,” Boisdore says of the moniker, taken from the ancient Roman festival marked by orgiastic revelry and a reversal of societal roles. “Who were the other people around back then? The Fucked Up Kids? There were all these punk bands that were like, ‘kill the cops’ and whatever. But I think we were calling for something even more anarchistic than what they were doing.”
After disbanding Saturnalia in 1988, Boisdore and Shefsky reformed the group for a short time in 1990 with future Lump drummer A.P. Gonzalez. Smith, who had played in a number of bands since graduating from McMain High School, saw them perform at Popp’s Fountain in City Park in 1990 and was blown away. “The authority of Lloyd and the atmosphere of the guitar struck me,” Smith recalls. “And at the time, I thought that I was the only one who knew about and worshipped Gary Numan. And then they did a Gary Numan cover and somebody was giving them shit about it and Lloyd hollers out something like, ‘Fuck you! I still say he’s king!’”
A couple of years later, Shefsky and Smith started to play together, switching off on guitar and drums. “I had a couple of things that I had written and I wanted to record them,” Shefsky recalls. “And Andrew had a four-track and a drum machine. I went over there and we jammed and after a few times I said, ‘Hey, let’s call Lloyd.’”
In Smith’s mind, it was almost a foregone conclusion that Boisdore was the missing component.
All three echo an egalitarian stance and collaborate on all aspects of the band; Evil Nurse Sheila!, they boast, is their primary occupation. “Laurie and I have grown up as musicians,” Boisdore says. “I’m at the point where I don’t think I could work with another guitar player because we’ve been doing it together for so long. But what we come out with is a physical manifestation of our emotional link. ”
If Boisdore proclaims his lyrics with evangelical fervor, it’s not entirely coincidental. In 1991, following the second coming of Saturnalia and prior to the formation of Evil Nurse Sheila!, Boisdore sold his bass, dropped out of music and moved to San Antonio to join a seminary.
Was it a spiritual quest that sent him on his way? “No, I wanted power,” Boisdore explains. “I wanted power because I felt like my convictions were so perfect that if I were in a higher position of authority, then I could get things done. But I couldn’t be true to myself and go through with the reality that I could serve 40 or 50 years as a monsignor somewhere in some parish and still not make a difference in the world. Life would still suck.”
And on top of that realization, Boisdore learned that life in a religious order is not exactly conducive to free thought or honesty. “What it came down to was I told the rector of the seminary, ‘Yo, man, I can’t deal with this vow of chastity.’ And he said, ‘The vows of chastity, poverty and obedience are there to remind us of how un-Christlike we are. They are not a realistic goal, but they’re a goal that we strive for. The fact that we can never attain them reminds us of our sinfulness and keeps us humble.’ Which I interpreted as, ‘Do what you want, just don’t tell us about it.’”
Despite leaving the seminary, Boisdore has never abandoned his faith. “I think Christ is the man,” he says, without irony. “I totally believe in the church. I believe in all of its doctrines. I don’t believe in the execution on much of it.
“Maybe I’m just some kind of demagogue-to-be,” he continues, “and maybe Evil Nurse Sheila! is just my new vehicle. I hope not—I don’t feel that way. I always worry that my lyrics, as indecipherable as they are live, are a little too preachy at times, but I think my preaching is really just a matter of tolerance.”
For the time being, Evil Nurse Sheila! has taken a hiatus from performing and holed up to concentrate on new material. Smith says the band hopes to record another CD in the next 12 months.
“That’s the short-term goal,” Boisdore interjects. “In the long-term, people’s attitudes about everything gotta change. If you wanna believe the National Opinion Research Center in Chicago, more people believe in angels than believe in God, which is kind of silly. If you can find me one person on the planet right now who says, ‘I have a good life, I’m happy,’ then maybe I’d shut my mouth. But I think that everybody wants something to be different. Suffice to say, I consider this to be a vehicle for change.”
Says Bingham, “If New Orleans rock bands have lacked anything ever, it’s been intelligence and Evil Nurse Sheila! is making up for it.”
