Recalling The Nerve Promos
iccycool said:
As for the Nerve, a once creative and entertaining Alt/New Rocker (back when they were giving WCMF fits) has nothing left but it's name.
mike radknowski said:
Ninety Five One, Ninety Five Five. Yes, the original Nerve was quite the station that generated a lot of passion and fire. It was a good time for a station that played Alternative, but alas, that era is gone and what was once Alternative quickly became mainstreamed rock as the major labels cornered the market and arguably ruined it as any group that had a lead singer with at least three piercing was fair game to be signed to a record deal. The original Nerve had great imaging too.
iccycool said:
Then please do me a great big favor and give me a sample of that imaging. You have no idea how much I am dying to hear it. Really.
Sorry, bro... wish I could, but I don't have 'em on file anymore.
For the uninitiated, the promos and bumpers were way ahead of the curve for a number of reasons. First, they were WRITTEN very well, in the words of the core audience, Men 16-35. Although the promos utilized lazer slashes and zaps, they didn't rely heavily on such effects. Rather, they used jump-cuts, character voices, TV sound bites, EQ, attitude music and sound effects.
Second, the Nerve promos weren't voiced by the prototypical Bobby Bigvoice promo guy, but by young men (and occasionally women) who sounded like they were part of the core demo: Young, hip, cool, funny, sarcastic, smart and sometimes with a detached attitude.
The promos were witty and they poked WCMF and conventional CHR and album rock and classic rock radio in the eye, the ass and the nose, ever so subtly but cuttingly. Rather than using a butcher knife to slice and cut, the promos carved with a scalpel and even like a paper cut... and we all know how annoying paper cuts can be.
The promos served a multitude of purposes: To let Nerve listeners know what the station was all about and what it WASN'T about; to let WCMF know that there was another station lurking in the dark, in an alley, in the bushes, on a rooftop, just waiting to steal their wallets, and they were often subtly humorous (kind of like my posts... bwah-hahhh) and entertaining in their own right.
It can be argued that WCMF prevailed, as it has ever so successfully. But for a while there, a band of radio guys (and ladies) made the competition fun and arguably, made WCMF sit up, take notice and and get better at what they did. And that's one of the many reasons why people remember the Nerve as it was, in it's glory days... "Ninety Five One, Ninety Five Five."
I know it's not the audio you'd hoped for, but maybe this brief written summary gives you an idea of what made the promos worth asking about and writing about. And if nothing more, it gives me another paper to hand in for my on-line creative writing class.
