You can accomplish a lot in three decades, and Nervous Records, the pioneering New York label that’s marking 30 years in the dance music business, has an exceedingly long list of achievements to its name. There’s a rundown of Nervous successes on its website and various social media accounts: the untouchable run of early house music singles, the hugely brief yet hugely successful foray into hip-hop, the hits, the sub-labels, the corporate tie-ins, the parties and the sheer longevity, among other things.
But scroll through the label’s Facebook page, and you’ll find one accomplishment that, through its sheer implausibility, stands out. There’s a post that claims that Nervous has pumped out over 5,000 releases — even for a label that sprang to life in 1991 and has been going strong ever since without interruption, that’s a mind-boggling amount of music. According to Michael Weiss, who founded the label with his father Sam and has been running it all these years, that number is no exaggeration.
“I know, it sounds crazy,” he admits. He’s sitting in his office, a cluttered desk behind him and a cap adorned with the Nervous logo on his head. “Even in the vinyl days, it was maybe one a week. But Strictly was doing two or three releases a week, and you had to keep up as much as you could.”
Weiss is referring to Strictly Rhythm, another of the great NYC house labels that sprang up in the early ’90s. Nervous and Strictly, along with a handful of other labels — Emotive, Maxi, Nu Groove, Eightball and the rest — came to define the kind of house, raw yet brimming with soul, that was coming out of the city at the time. Most of them closed up shop years ago; others had their catalogues bought out by larger labels. Nervous is the last one standing as an independent entity — seemingly as successful as ever, with its releases regularly sitting atop the various download charts.
The latest No.1 hit is the label’s new compilation, the celebratory ‘Nervous Records - 30 Years’. The collection features a galaxy of foundational Nervous cuts, including ‘Unspeakable Joy’ from Kim English, ‘Stop This Hate’ from Todd Edwards (released under his alias, The Messenger), ‘The Anthem’ from Deep Creed (aka Armand Van Helden) and Willie Ninja’s ‘Hot’, produced in 1994 by Louie Vega. Vega himself, along with Blaze’s Josh Milan, provides two new versions of ‘Hot’ for the comp; other remixers include Nervous veterans such as David Morales, DJ Pierre and Felix Da Housecat, along with relative newcomers to the Nervous cause like Radio Slave, Gerd Janson and Tensnake. With 30 tracks in all, it’s a massive release, as you’d expect from a label with a sprawling discography.