Nick NB: Selected Discography

Nick NB’s debut album, Engaged to Be Merely’d, had nine tracks:

Side One

Skin Gift (Enby) 3:44/Stumbling Rider on a Sure-Footed Horse (Enby) 6:07/Untangle That Noodle, Young Man (Enby/Fitzhugh) 2:51/Gravitas Ave. (Enby) 13:12

Side Two

A Satellite Dish of a Girl (Rubin/De los Santos) 1:51/Ankle Deep (Enby) 5:00/Hesitant Lover (Delkins/Enby) 3:47/Powder Blue Episode (Enby) 18:18/Had (Enby) 1:17

The album didn’t chart, but Nick’s friend Sheila  Garland sent a laudatory review to the op-ed of her hometown newspaper. The editor titled it “Nota Bene, Mr. Enby” and cut it to size a little. Excerpt: “Who wouldn’t love to be that Satellite Dish of a Girl, on a horseback ride with her stumbly Hesitant Lover boyfriend, headed for that Powder Blue Episode?”

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Five albums later, Nick Enby was famous, touring, and breaking hearts. Dirt in the Sugar peaked at #7 and stayed in the Hot 200 for eleven weeks.

Side One

Toll Boot (Enby) 3:35/Grab My Clothes for Me, Willya, Babe? (Enby) 3:56/That Flea Has Dogs (Enby) 1:19/Certificate of Shame (Enby) 7:29/Half Falcon, Half Baked (Enby) 12:22/Dribble Me This (Enby) 8:40

Side Two

Journey to Aintville (Enby) 22:52/Dirt in the Sugar (Enby/Ribble) 5:00

Excerpt from “That Flea Has Dogs”;

Hop to it, says the Devil/Step lively, says the Queen/You’re a bubble off the level/With your walker turning green…

Excerpt from “Journey to Aintville,” seen by some critics as a cautionary tale Enby was telling himself:

When you awaken and you don’t know what you’ve done/But the crawling guilt says you must have had some truly nasty fun/In your nakedness you stumble/And through dresser drawers you fumble/And your heart stops at the cold touch of a gun…

***”

Ten years later, Nick Enby had fallen from grace twice, bounced back four and a half times, almost gotten married, and had almost fathered a child. He still had some creative fuel in the tank, though, and in a series of sessions in recording studios in three countries he mined the ore that became V(aled)ictory.

Side One

Genny Wouldn’t Know (Enby) 4:16/I’d Give My Left “Eye” to Go Back (Davidson/Enby) 5:09/Sure-Footed Rider on a Stumbling Horse (Enby/Ribble) 6:15/It Only Aches When It Beats (Enby et al) 15:02

Side Two

Wicky Stick-It (Enby) 3:58/Genny Told Me So (Enby) 4:16/Footcuffs & Earmuffs (Edge/Vortex) 2:01/Genny Fades Anew (Enby) 4:16/Time to Go Unhome (Enby) 6:42/Genny, It’s Always Been You (Enby) 11:11

Nine of Nick’s friends contributed to “It Only Aches When It Beats.” His friend Beth Svensdottir wrote this one:

Your ardor lasted twenty days/And brought me to a love-stunned haze/And then I’m high and dry and jilted/I guess your ardor must have wilted.

To the end of his life, Nick Enby refused to discuss the mysterious Genny.