It’s Not a Very Pretty Job, But Someone’s Got to Do It: Killer Pussy's "Teenage Enema Nurses in Bondage"

After almost two weeks of using highfalutin adjectives like “mournful,” “impressionistic” and “Gershwinesque” in the historic RT/R.E.M. countdown, it’s time to change gears to music that brings to mind words like “disgusting,” “tasteless,” “idiotic,” “immature” and “scatological.”

This week friend and fellow rock-blogger Douglas Donelan fired over an mp3 of a long-forgotten 80s new wave novelty called “Teenage Enema Nurses in Bondage” by the tastefully named group Killer Pussy.

“TENIB” received heavy airplay on the legendary Long Island new wave station WLIR in the early 80s. It was an important part of my musical diet growing up across the Long Island Sound in Connecticut, but it fell off my radar in 1984 or so.

Musically, “Teenage Enema Nurses in Bondage” recalls the B-52’s and Lene Lovich, but thematically, it’s all Springsteen. The Bard of the Boardwalk has touched millions with his sympathetic portraits of blue-collar Joes, who toil in a factory to support their high-school-sweetheart-wife with two kids and a baby on the way, and have a few beers with the old gang on the weekends in the hopes of forgetting their crushed hopes and dreams.

Compared to the plight of a teenage enema nurse, however, Joe Six-pack has it pretty damn good:

They must have left a chapter out
In student nursing classes
They never taught me all about
Those tubes and lubes and asses

They told us, “Put the nozzle in -
There’s really nothing to it.
It’s not a very pretty job
But someone’s got to do it."

The work is sh*t, the pay is low
I labor night and day
I’d quit but I’m so broke I know
I’ll never find a way

Remarkably, Killer Pussy has yet to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, despite having more good songs (one) than Patti Smith and the Dave Clark Five combined. Herewith, for your listening and downloading pleasure:

mp3: Killer Pussy, “Teenage Enema Nurses in Bondage”