The Smiley Smile Message Board

Yes folks, it's time...expound on all your favorite new wave bands. They can be of the synth pop variety (thank you Suicide) or of the new romanticism that Roxy Music pioneered.

Sorry to crash the thread, but can anyone recommend some good headphones? I'm presuming I'd have to spend a bit to get the quality..

It made it all of one post...

Whoops, now I'm doubly sorry - I meant to post the headphones question in the 'stereo components' thread.  ::)

While I'm here - can I mention Talking Heads for the New Wave theme?

Talking Heads kick ass.

I love This Must be the Place.

New Wave is p*ssy punk. And no way is Roxy Music "New Wave."

This is the new wave "appreciation" thread, if you have nothing nice to say, why bother posting in here?

You got a better term for Roxy Music? If you say "glam"...

I thought defending Roxy Music was pretty nice.

And Suicide is no more New Wave than the Velvet Underground.

New Wave? Try:

The Waitresses
"Armed Forces"
The Police
Post-"Indiscreet" Sparks
Pearl Harbor & the Explosions
The Go-Gos
Adam Ant


sh*t like that is "New Wave."

Let's see....Roxy Music influenced virtually every new wave band, and Suicide influenced all the synth pop. If they influenced, then they must be the first of something, are they not?

I suppose Talking Heads are merda too, eh?

Talking Heads = second-generation CBGBs band. They were there at the beginning, or close enough for me. And they're wonderful. "New Wave" is strictly coattails-riding sh*t, man, like the stuff I named above, although it has its merits. I mean, groundbreakers: Roxy Music, Bowie's Berlin stuff with Eno and Iggy, Suicide, Television -- ostensibly that is the BEGINNING of something, and that something was diluted into what was termed "New Wave." I mean, if you wanna denigrate great music with a label that was applied to an inferior offshoot (as opposed to, say, "punk"), I guess that's your business.

You mean like calling The Velvet Underground punk, even when they influenced a lot of the punk bands?

Huh?

The Velvet Underground, according to most people who know them, influenced a goodly number of the old-school punk bands. Calling them the first punk band isn't a far-out conclusion to some people. Is that considered denigrating the Velvets?

Well, yeah, but the Velvet Underground as an influence on punk or calling them "punk" in the sense that the Stooges or Suicide were "punk" -- I don't have any problem with that. But "New Wave" was never a positive label in the sense that "punk" was. That's my point.

I dunno, there's some new wave out there that's of a cerebral type, stuff that makes you think. Gary Numan comes to mind. He may be a synth pop giant, but there's just something intangible about his music and his lyrics that makes him stand out in his own respect from the rest of the synth pop crowd. Same with Soft Cell.

See, I'll accept that stuff as New Wave -- and I'm not trying to say all New Wave is bad as I happen to like a bit of it -- I just never would consider Roxy or Suicide new wave per se.

Sorry if I've derailed, but I think some clarification was necessary.

We had a Roxy Music thread in here, I mentioned the same thing about them beating Talking Heads to the punch as the first new wave group....at least one other person was in agreement with me. I dunno, maybe him and I were the minority.

Yeah, well, I ain't him.  :P

New Wave is a bad tag generally, but if you accept it as a valid genre, as I do, then yes, Roxy qualifies, as they also do in the Glam and Art-Rock genres. Heads as well, as they and Bowie directly produced the first progressive post-Punk albums.

Wow! I never thought I'd say this, but YOU'RE WRONG, IAN. No way is Roxy New Wave, any more than Elvis is Wayne Newton.

If a band invents the template for a style, they are it. And Roxy are THE template for New Wave. Period.

Wayne ain't a style, he's a performer, but if you are saying the style that Wayne does is one shared by Elvis, that would be true.

My point re: Elvis/Wayne is you can't blame Elvis for Wayne Newton or Tom Jones or whoever, anymore than Roxy can be blamed -- yes, BLAMED -- for less-inspired crap that drew from them. And this is where we diverge, primarily -- New Wave was never a "valid genre," man, it was a blanket label applied to a whole buncha music as opposed to a single movement, like the New Romantics or something. Now, Roxy Music inspiring the latter -- THAT's something I can appreciate. But -- and you're the same age as me, dude -- remember what New Wave meant in the early '80s? It was, like, Scandal and sh*t like that! That's what New Wave remains to me. It was never a genre, more of a catch-all label.

I dig what you're saying, man. BUT No Wave was certainly a genre, as was post-punk. To me New Wave was a music that incorporated more pop influence and incorprated synthesizers, was fashion-conscious and an ironic detachment.
Aut, again, I know what you're saying because morons at the time called EVERYTHING New Wave. And, worse that that were the people who called Devo and The B-52's Punk!
I guess post-punk could be used as a cacth-all to describe the post-Pistols era, and Roxy was  the biggest influence on that time, but calling Roxy post-punk when they predated punk itself is pretty damn silly. But it does give a measure of how ahead of their time Roxy was.
Aww hell, the whole thing's foda silly. Forget I said anything. It's all foda rock and roll.

That's the sort of thread that gets me crucified, bombarded with this or that.

I pretty much exactly agree almost completely with the majority of all of that.

And the Most Carefully Worded Reserved Praise Award goes to ANDY MONKEY!  ;D

In some aspects, I sort of understand the general concepts of your praise for what appears to be that earlier post, Ian.

OK, you're second place, Luther.
That is, if you accept the concept of theoretical competition as valid.  :-*

I'm all about theoretical competition. It beats the alternative.

Theoretically or literally?
Sexually or financially?

Literally. Real competition isn't for me. Too fvcking intimidating. I'm a 'fraidy-cat.

So I guess I can't expect your presence at the  "Over The Top" 20th Anniversary arm-wrestling Faire I'm organising, eh?

Faire though I may be called, arm-wrestling won't happen.

I'll be there with my commemorative Lincoln Hawk leather mug!

Sample dialogue from "Over the Top":

"Ungh!"

"Ungghh!"

"Ergh!"

"Ergghh!"

"Vrrrrrgghhh!!"

"Vmmrrrrrgghhhhahhhhhhhhh .... !"

Flying Lizards  ~  Money   8)

Well, speaking of Punk . . .

The roots of Punk can be traced to Jan & Dean . . . Check out these references, excerpts from an essay written 35 years ago, as Dave Marsh explains the Bonzo Dog Band, Iggy Stooge, Alice Cooper, and Frank Zappa as an extension of Jan & Dean's public persona in the early and mid-'60s.

The analysis is one-sided (not focusing on the music itself) . . . but it's a very important statement . . . especially since it was written so soon (relatively) after Jan & Dean's heyday.

Jan & Dean: The Original Punks (http://jananddean.proboards29.com/index.cgi?board=comedy&action=display&thread=1136255128)

M.

Absolutely true, in every way, shape and form. J&D INVENTED surf-skate-punk culture, PERIOD!

Awesome!  ;D

You want to know what 'new wave' was? New Wave descibed everyone with a skinny tie and an attempt at a short haircut in the period following the brief rise and fall of punk. It was a way for record companies to sell acts that had cottoned onto the fact that flares and long hair were now passe and that songs should not be 12 minutes long or part of a concept LP. It was Joe Jackson and The Police. The USA quickly realised that this was punk they could package and sell, so you got The Cars and The Knack. If you could play more than 3 chords you were new wave. For the record, Roxy Music were Glam, and follow in a direct line from Lou Reed, David Bowie and King Crimson. Ironically, when they reformed at this time you could barely tell the difference between them and the bands they had influenced. Manifesto is a new wave album right down to Gary Tibbs' skinny tie, but that was just Ferry's postmodernist impulse at work. I STILL don't know where The Teardop Expoldes fit in though, but they were wonderful, and as barmy as Jonathan Richman on a tricycle.

The Knack was power-pop, as was the entire skinny-tie arsenal.

I think a good deal of latter-day power pop, from the Knack to the Shoes to 20/20 would fall under the great and terrible aegis of New Wave, skinny ties and all. (For me, skinny ties themslves are a hallmark of New Wave. And "everybody's cut their hair short/ everybody's got tight pants on.") That's the problem with "New Wave'' as a label, and what I was trying to get at yesterday: "New Wave" didn't really signify anything beyond what Alan says. It was pretty much everything that was Day-Glo rock in popular culture from 1979-82.

You're right, I just remember the big Power-Pop movement spearheaded by Greg Shaw in Bomp magazine in the late 70's. Dwight Twilley, Shoes, Cheap Trick etc. Then The foda Knack came in from nowhere and ruined the whole thing by pigeonholing it.
That bled into the Paisley Revival thing in LA, as a lot of movers in the Power-Pop thing went straight into The Plimsouls, Rain Parade etc.

'New Wave' was, to my mind, more of an American term reflecting the US musical establishment's horror and incomprehension at punk, particularly of the UK variety.  They seemed to be referring to things like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.  'New Wave' was the term that they applied to those 'new' acts deemed musically worthy enough for Rolling Stone magazine to take notice of them.  Even now to me, that paper seems horribly staid and old fashioned.  Roxy Music were definitely not 'new wave'.  They were part of the early 70s UK glam/art rock scene along with people like Bowie which influenced punk, not necessarily in a musical sense - more just because the individuals concerned preferred Bowie, Roxy Music, T Rex et al to prog rockers like Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd etc.

??? ??? ???

New Wave: Missing Persons. Gary Numan. Not Tom Petty.

I can assure you that in 1977 Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers were what the moribund old hippies at Rolling Stone considered 'new wave'.  I admit that the term does seem to have a rather flexible meaning.

the Best new wave single goes to Bram Tchaikovsky for the song 'Girl of my Dreams "

I hope nobody was actually knocking Joe Jackson's two "New Wave-ish" albums, Look Sharp! and I'm the Man. Both released in 1979, I really don't know how to categorise them, but I know "New Wave" is one way to describe them.

Right, the term "New Wave" was a more palatable marketing term designed to sell records to people who incorrectly assumed that any music that was new, was "punk". To the FM radio set, currently grooving to Southern Rock and the stagnant classic rock fare, New=punk, and punk=bad.
As a result,many bands like Tom Petty, were incorrectly pigeonholed. No one really complained tho, and why would they?
They were finally getting their sh*t played on the radio.

I suppose the best example of a 'new wave' band were Talking Heads, who were clearly not punks, but were obviously something new on the block. And they had short hair and skinny ties.....

I avoided this thread since I don't find much interesting with genres, but...

Why won't people call Talking Heads punk?  They moved on fast, but their demo tape is punk to me and a f*** of a lot better than 77 and More Songs, for the most part.  Anyway...I agree, New Wave is mostly a marketing thing, and it seems like a lot of the favored "new wave" bands, like Talking Heads, were around before that was used.  So why not call it punk?  It's like when people call Television new wave.  They started punk!  They started CBGB!  People want punk to be some really rigid thing, keep it open and interesting.

Couldn't agree more. The Heads are punk of the first -- OK, maybe second -- order. (By demos you mean the "Sugar on My Tongue" stuff or something else?)

And what dumb f*** would call Television "New Wave"?

Yeah, "Sugar on My Tongue," "I Wanna Live," "Psycho Killer," "Book I Read," "I'm Not in Love," "Thank You for Sending Me an Angel," and whatever else is on that tape from 75.  My bootleg is at home and I forget the rest.  But I think the early three piece sound was perfect for their first two albums.  They only needed Jerry and Eno once they hit Remain in Light.


Totally agree, but I've seen people say that.  Puzzles me too.  The new punk fan thinks punk is the Ramones, but the Ramones were just one part of the game.

Yes, the Heads started punk, no doubt.
BUT, again, if you accept New Wave as a genre, they crossed over. Remain In Light is certainly not a punk album, and Fear Of Music isn't either.

I agree.  They went through a short punk phase (recording-wise), then made the leap, like Lydon from the Sex Pistols to PiL, or the Clash with London Calling, etc., etc.  I don't think New Wave accurately describes all their music from 79 on, at all.

I think there is a visual problem with calling Talking Heads a punk band. I mean - look at them, not a leather jacket between them! They used acoustic guitars, they had interesting lyrics. Or maybe this is just a semantic arguement between a UK definition of punk and a US one. In the UK you could never get away with caling them a punk band because for us, punk meant The Pistols, The Clash and the Damned. Was Patti Smith punk? The Ramones certainly were, Televsion with Richard Hell were, but were they without him? US yes, UK.....??? But Talking Heads may well have been responsble for the whole attempt to come up with a new tag as they clearly did not fit with what became in the Pistols wake a tag that the US record companies did not want.
And what were Blondie? (Actually they were a pop group- but they did have short hair and skinny ties....).

Blondie's first two are definitely Punk.

The Producers (from Atlanta) straddled the New Wave / Power Pop line . . . Great stuff, and their first album in 1981 was dedicated to John Lennon.

No skinny ties . . . but the band's attire on that first album was more a look ahead to Miami Vice (in pastels).

M.

Well, that's kind of what I'm complaining about -- making punk too narrow.  The early Talking Heads stuff is as punk to me as anything else, despite how they dressed or if they used acoustic guitars.  The look is more of a marketing angle.  It gets attention.  That makes perfect sense, but I don't think it's fair to say you need a leather jacket in the band to be punk.  Maybe I'm wrong since I was only born in 1983, but I feel like at the time (74-77 at least) a lot of stuff was considered punk, such as Talking Heads in the relatively early CBGB days.  But after the fact the whole definition has changed to only include a few bands (Ramones, Sex Pistols) and the groups that came pretty much directly from them.  It's like saying groups like the Stones, Kinks, or Who aren't really rock just because the Beatles helped push the way for them.  Or that none of them are because we already had Buddy Holly, Elvis, Chuck Berry, etc.

Short-hand labels can never, ever do justice to music. But Television circa "Double Exposure" (the Hell-era boot) certainly fit into the more "narrow" def. of "punk" than they would later. And even Dee Dee Ramone said he never considered Verlaine et al "punk" in the classic sense -- to him, they were "beatniks."

Richard Hell, tho is THE classic punk. Without him, you got nothin'.

Nice post.  I like Dee Dee's opinion.  Bootlegs like Double Exposure and Poor Circulation definitely show off their punk roots.

Yeah! Television with distorted guitars! Hard to believe, but it actually HAPPENED. And would continue to in concert, where they were almost always at odds with what was on their records. (LLoyd, in particular, loved to crank it up.)

Richard Lloyd is an awesome player and a really sweet guy.  I used to email him a bit.  What do you make of Peter Laughner's (supposed) membership in Television, boxer?  Richard Lloyd denied this when I asked him on his website (it's in the Q&A section), but Clinton Heylin had to get it from somewhere.  Verlaine?  Maybe that version of Television just had a few practices.

Lloyd is a great guy. Met him after the RFTT show in Dallas, and he fielded a few questions from me and seemed genuinely flattered when I told him he's my fave guitarist, which was true then and remains so. (He also laughingly dismissed my favorite of his solos -- on Matthew Sweet's "Falling" -- as "just noise!")

Clinton Heylin ... I wouldn't take that guy's word as gospel truth on anything. I don't have his book in front of me, but there are a lot of errors in it I could point out if I did. (Anybody who writes a book on punk that dismisses "Raw Power" out of hand is suspect to me, though.) As for Peter Laughner (pronounced LOCK-ner, btw) being in TV, your guess is as good as mine, or, for that matter, Lloyd's probably. I doubt that he, being out of the band at the time, would even know the full story. But I wouldn't doubt that Laughner rehearsed with TV, although given Verlaine's issues with Richard Hell, I think it's a pretty logical assumption that Verlaine wouldn't be all that willing to allow another such combustible personality into HIS band. Think about it.

If you remember Heylin's other mistakes, let me know.

You're probably right about Laughner in TV.  Verlaine didn't seem to like any strong personalities (Eno) touching his music, as you said.

Heylin's an idiot, plain and simple. What good's knowledge if you don't know what to do with it?
His Dylan book is sh*te too.
Bootleg is the only readable thing he's written IMO.

Haha, good.  My mom got me Bootleg instead of the PiL book by accident, for Christmas.  Is the PiL one worth a damn?  I figure all the good information from it is probably on Fodderstompf.com.

Haven't read the PiL but I'm sure it's worth it for historical stuff.
BTW, did you know about the Tom Snyder DVD set coming out that includes the classic PiL appearance on it?

YES!!!!  I am psyched!  I'd definitely buy it just for that, though it looks like there will be other cool stuff (Iggy).

There really needs to be a multiple-disc PiL DVD.  They have to have a lot in the can since all they did was brag about the movie they were "making" in the late 70s or so.  They could put on the American Bandstand appearance, the "Riot Show" from New York, promo videos, TV stuff.

Have you seen that before? If not, you're gonna be blown away. My parents were big Snyder and punk fans, so I got to see all those when they were on originally. The Iggy was the first time I had ever seen him and it's amazing, he does Dog Food and I'm Bored.
The Plasmatics are great there, too. But the PiL is well worth the price alone.

I haven't seen any of it, Ian.  The closest I've come is reading a transcript of the Tom Snyder thing with some photos.  "I'm Bored" is a sweet song.  I love the version from The Old Grey Whistle Test.  I have Raw Power on now, actually.  "All the pretty girls really look the same."

Especially with a plastic bag over their heads!

And I never tire of drawing your face on that bag.

"Punk ain't no religious cult- Punk means thinking for yourself"

Are the Clash on the Snyder DVD, too? Hardly a groundbreaking appearance, but hell, the Clash are the Clash, I'll take 'em anyway you wanna serve 'em. What's the theme of the release, a general overview of the entiretly of Snyder's show, or does it focus primarily on musicians?

I'd love a PiL DVD as Chris describes. Same goes for the Velvet Underground, there are a bunch of scattered little underground films from the sixties featuring the band that I'm sure people would jump on given the chance. Joy Division too, they've got nothing on the shelves and I think it would be so easy to put together something great.

Chance, the DVD's theme is just punk.  And a Velvet Underground DVD would be nice.  By the time someone goes to work on those DVDs the best footage will be gone.

I've been a music fan all of my life.  And I started listening seriously before the British invasion of 1964.  And through all of those changes in music and style I've always had trouble with the names given the different genres.

And to top that off, my kids have different notions of what constitutes a given genre than my generation does. 

Ask me about R&B, I'm likely to mention a Stax/Volt group, or an early Atlantic artist.  My kids think R&B is some kind of hip hop or rap or such.

To me, Punk was Sex Pistols and such while new wave was Police and such.  This line blurred with these genres (I think) because of their temporal and cultural  proximity.

Anyway you look at it, they helped defeat disco and return us to rock and roll (the granddaddy of pop genre)

But what about Perry Como and Johnny Ray?

The Cars debut is alway's considered the best selling new wave album....as billy joel sang ..Next phase, new wave, dance craze, anyways
It's still rock and roll to me.

Genres really bug me too, because they promote preconcieved notions.
There's only two types of music- Good and Bad.

There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.

- Duke Ellington

When I hear the term New Wave I think of skinny neckties, tight pants, and cocaine.

Of course all these niches have their poseurs and bandwagoners as well as those who just happened to be standing there.  I am not a huge Cars or Police fan but damn there was talent there.  If I never hear another Motels track I will be fine.  But I love Elvis Costello, Talking Heads, and with only 2 LPs (in the day) but Television is in my all time bracket -- "Marquee Moon" can be mentioned with the Beatles, Coltrane, Big Star, Hendrix, freakin' Bach as far as I'm concerned....

And "Yellow Pills' is a cool song.

Yeah, Dad is so New Wave.

Yes, I am resurrecting this thread. Anyone get into New Order's first album, Movement? It's really cool. I would call it a part of New Wave. Devo, B-52's, the one song I heard from Suicide...the Downtown 81 Soundtrack is really cool for anybody looking for some good art music...

Being born out of Joy Division, New Order would most likely be considered "post-punk". MOVEMENT really sounds like the band was attempting to make a third Joy Division album, but without Ian Curtis' vocals and lyrics (although Bernard Sumner made a passable effort at mimicking Curtis' style of lyric). "Dreams Never End" and "The Him" are especially good and are a logical progression from where Joy Division ended. With the single "Temptation", New Order finally broke with the style of the old band and found their new sound.

Dreams Never End is so good...

Evlis Costello and the Attractions. Best backing band ever. Steve Nieve man, it's like having Mozart in your band. This year's Model, Trust, Get Happy, Imperial Bedroom. Amazing stuff.

I adore DEVO. All of their stuff up to and including Oh No! It's Devo! is great, as is their new album.

Siouxsie and the Banshees. Siouxsie is one fine lady.

Anybody mention Suburban Lawns yet? They rule.

Don't know them... where are they from?