The Nervebreakers
US musical group
Nervebreakers are a Dallas-area punk rock band that formed in 1973. The band became known for melodic, rocking punk with liberal doses of George Jones and psychedelia, and has the distinction of being one of the few bands to open for The Sex Pistols.
Background
Nervebreakers started as a cover band playing songs from the 1960s. As the Ramones and The Sex Pistols became big in America, the band was able to find a sustaining audience. The band's first big break came when they opened for the Ramones on July 24, 1977 at The Electric Ballroom, a dance hall in the industrial district of Dallas. In January 1978, Nervebreakers opened for The Sex Pistols at The Longhorn Ballroom, and a photo of guitarist Barry Kooda appeared in the March 1978 issue of Rolling Stone Magazine. Later that year, the band recorded their debut EP, Politics. The song "My Girlfriend is A Rock" became a runaway hit in San Francisco, Sacramento, and Boston, and was later covered by the Angry Samoans and Wool, among others. The band also opened for The Clash, John Cale, The Police and Johnny Thunders.
The band contacted legendary psychedelic rock pioneer and Texas native Roky Erickson and wound up doing double duty by opening several shows as Nervebreakers, as well as being Erickson's backing band.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 18, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7753421. VIAF identifies the subject as 278869098. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1973, 1977 and 1978.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Nervebreakers” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.