The Nuns - Personnel

Personnel

The band has undergone numerous changes in lineup over the years, however, Jennifer Miro has been a constant member for all of the Nuns live performances and recordings, and Jeff Olener is present on most as well. The earliest version of the band, prior to The Nuns performing live or recording, was centered on Alejandro Escovedo (guitar) and Jeff Olener (vocals), and included a bass player and a drummer, in later recollections referred to only as "Nola" and "Kenny". Jennifer Miro, who was practicing with another band in the same warehouse, was invited to join as vocalist and electric piano player soon after. A more stable lineup formed later around Miro, Olener, and Escovedo, with Richie Detrick added as a third lead singer, Jeffery Raphael as drummer through several lineups, and a series of bassists – Leslie Q, Mike Varney (1978–1979), and Pat Ryan (1979–1980). After Escovedo departed, Ryan also performed on guitar on The Nuns recorded material. Escovedo and Olener were the main songwriters of the more aggressive punk material, and Miro contributed the more pop-oriented material featuring her blase vocals.

Later lineups were centered around Miro (vocals and keyboards) and Olener (vocals), with a series of shifting personnel making up the rest of the band. In their late 80s incarnation through Pat Ryan, the band asked Michael Belfer guitarist from The Sleepers and Tuxedomoon to join up.That line-up did some recordings (now lost) and a short West-Coast tour that ended at a very memorable show opening for the British Punk band "The Damned" at "The Stone" on Broadway in San Francisco. Later on Leslie Spring was their guitarist and Delphine Neid was their bassist, however, Neid died of a drug overdose in 1990, days after recording the Desperate Children album. In the early 1990s, the lineup included Brett Domrose (guitar), Tommy King (bass), and Jeff Rosen (drums). Baron Rubenbauer played guitar for The Nuns in the mid to late 1990s; it was also during this period that a few recordings were made without Olener.

On January 4, 2012, it was reported that Jennifer Anderson aka Jennifer Miro died on December 16, 2011, at Bellevue Hospital Center, New York of a combination of liver and breast cancer. She had borne the ravages of her illness as a secret from the world at large for more than a year. In September 2011, her health suffered a precipitous decline and she withdrew from the world, cutting off contact with all but a handful of friends without revealing her ill health. She spent the last several weeks of her life in hospice care at Bellevue. She was 54 and had most recently worked as a receptionist for a law firm in New York City.