Peter Case

Early career[edit]

Case was born in Buffalo, New York and lived in nearby Hamburg, New York. He wrote his first song "Stay Away," in 1965, at the age of eleven. A veteran of several rock bands and the local bar scene as a teenager, Case dropped out of high school when he was fifteen (he would later earn a GED), and after several years of traveling arrived in 1973 in San Francisco, where he performed as a street musician. During this period a documentary about the local music scene, Nightshift, directed by Bert Deivert, captured the young Case on film. In 1976, he teamed up with Jack Lee and Paul Collins to form the early punk-era band The Nerves in San Francisco. The group's 1976 EP track, "Hanging on the Telephone", was later recorded by Blondie.


The Nerves moved to Los Angeles on January 1, 1977, and played and promoted some of the first punk-era shows in that city, performing at The Masque, and the Whisky a Go Go, among other venues. They toured nationally in 1977, the first independent band of their era to do a national tour, as they opened shows for the Ramones, and Mink DeVille, and performed on co-bills with The Nuns, Devo, and Pere Ubu.


After the Nerves broke up in 1978, Case formed the rock n' roll band The Plimsouls in 1979. The Plimsouls became one of the top drawing live bands in California soon after the release of their debut EP "Zero Hour" on the Beat Records label in 1979. They grew in popularity and had two major label albums, the first on Planet/Elektra in 1981, and the next on Geffen Records, in 1983. In 1982, "A Million Miles Away" was released as a 12" single, on the Shaky City/Bomp! label, and became the band's signature song. It was a radio hit in California, and some other regions of the U.S. It eventually charted at number 82 on the Billboard Hot 100. Their songs "A Million Miles Away," "The Oldest Story in the World," and "Everywhere At Once" were included in the movie Valley Girl (1983), but by the time that movie had become a cult favorite, the group had broken up.


Case briefly performed with Gurf Morlix, Victoria Williams (Case's first wife), and Warren Tornado Klein as the Incredibly Strung Out Band, but their collaboration never resulted in a record. ^[2]