Nikki Sudden, 1956-2006

Underground rock legend Nikki Sudden passed away on March 26th. He was 49 years old.

Nearly every other news source in the indie-sphere will tell you all about Sudden’s time in the hair-raising, Fall-esque Swell Maps, or of his subsequent bands the Jacobites and the Last Bandits. But I will always remember Nikki Sudden for the one week I spent with him in April of 2003 . . . well, sort of spent with him.

At the time I was slaving away for the local independent record concern in my hometown. Like any small business, we had our fair share of, shall we say, "eccentric" regulars. And one woman, who we’ll call Claire, just took the fuckin’ koo-koo cake. She would visit the shop for hours upon hours and regale the staff with the banalities of her existence. From her subsistence on workman’s compensation checks to her prescription drug dependency to her supposed connections with the indie rock elite, just about anything could and would fall out of this woman’s mouth. Claire would also refer to the staff as her "children." But she also baked us cakes and cookies . . . so it wasn’t all bad.

So when she arrived at the shop one day hoping to book an in-store appearance by Nikki Sudden, we were obviously skeptical. But a quick call to a local club confirmed that Sudden had in fact been booked and confirmed by our very favorite customer/nutbar. So, what the hell did we have to lose? We booked the in-store.

According to Claire, she had met Nikki Sudden at some earlier point and he was so excited to see her that he was going to fly out a week before the show just so they could spend some time together. This is when I got to "meet" Sudden.

I was opening the shop one quiet morning when Claire and Nikki stumbled in, drunk before noon. They were leaning against each other, each attempting to hold the other one up while they shared a riotous laugh about . . . well, something. Both were wearing very large sunglasses despite the fact that it was overcast. The pair stumbled around the store, picking up records and pointing at them and generally making a huge mess.

About 15 minutes into their visit, Sudden pulls out a cigarette and lights it. Like any good born-and-bred West Coaster, I jumped off my stool and said to him, "Hey man, I don’t care who you are, you can’t smoke in here." Sudden pulled down his sunglasses ever so slightly and replied:

"Without cigarettes there’d be no rock and roll."

I let him smoke in the store.

After a solid 4 days of telling that story to anyone and everyone who would listen, I was stoked for a repeat performance at the in-store. But instead I was thrilled in an entirely different way. Sudden (along with a single sideman who looked like he could have been Sudden’s long lost brother) delivered a set of earnest, Stones-inspired ballads that were entirely heartrending. The man very much enjoyed what he did and looked happier on that little stage performing to 50 people than any other performer that I ever saw there.

 

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Nikki kept what you might call a blog, although it was laid out in someone's idea of a message board. Last Thursday, he announced that he would be playing a gig later that night for his deceased brother and former bandmate Epic Soundtracks, on the occasion of what would have been his brother's 47th birthday.

 

Here's what he wrote: