Music from the yesterdays and today!

Nikki Sudden is one of the great songwriters of our era.  A prolific storyteller in the Bob Dylan/Neil Young vein, he recorded at least twenty albums from his early Swell Maps work with his brother, the late Epic Soundtracks, to his final album “The Truth Doesn’t Matter,” released posthumously after his death on March 26, 2006.

Born in London on July, 19, 1956, much of his early work hit the top of the independent music charts in England and Germany.  Although he had limited commercial success, he has been cited as a major influence by such modern icons as Wilco and Sonic Youth.

“The Swell Maps had a lot to do with my upbringing,” according to Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore.

Sudden’s music ran the gamut from his early feedback-laced, experimental, avant-garde punk, to folky ballads and his later “Treasure Island”-era traditional rock ‘n’ roll.

Besides releasing a flurry of albums in the ‘80s and ‘90s with his bands the Jacobites, and the French Revolution, he went to Atlanta, Georgia to cut “The Jewel Thief” with R.E.M. (later re-released as Liquor, Guns, and Ammo).

The sheer volume of Sudden’s work is staggering, and nearly impossible to count considering bootlegs and re-releases.  His list of collaborators is equally impressive, including Dave Kusworth, Darrell Bath, Roland S. Howard, Johan Asherton, Captain Sensible of the Damned, Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, Rudy Protrudi of the Fuzztones, Mick Taylor of the Stones, and Ian McLagan of the Faces.

In later years Sudden lived in Berlin, Germany.  It was reported that he died of heart failure after performing a show with Evan Dando of the Lemonheads at the Knitting Factory in New York City.  He was forty-nine.  Ronnie Wood sent a dozen roses to his funeral in Leamington Spa, England, where his parents reside.

by: Joey Skidmore