The term " New Wave ".

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by WLL, Jan 16, 2020.

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  1. Stuggy

    Stuggy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Ireland
    I thought the Stranglers had arrived at their own band sound before the main Punk explosion happened.
     
    Willowman likes this.
  2. AFOS

    AFOS Forum Resident

    Location:
    Brisbane,Australia
    "I Got You" is new wave IMO although the Enz were from NZ
     
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  3. blutiga

    blutiga Forum Resident

    This is an interesting discussion. I don't remember Split Enz as really fitting into the New Wave bag so much at the time. They had been around for a while before True Colours. I kinda see it in a quirky Power Pop mould maybe. They had that art school Fringe Theatre Pop vibe which was around in parts of Aussie 70's music. They toned it down a bit for True Colours when Neil Finn emerged. The Church are interesting too, because there was that other thing happening after Punk in Australia which was that 60's thing which a lot of bands were into, post 79-80ish. The paisley shirts bands.
    Then there was the St Kilda bands, Birthday Party etc. And The Saints, Laughing Clowns, Go Betweens, Moodists, Scientists stuff. Very diverse out of the mainstream top 40 music. I think the common denominator is all this happened after the UK Punk explosion of 76-77.
     
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  4. Brewmeister

    Brewmeister Forum Resident

    Location:
    Baltimore
    I don't know if it is true, but I have heard that the term "New Wave" was coined by a record company exec as a way to market Talking Heads and distance them a little from punk.
     
  5. DME1061

    DME1061 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Trenton, NJ
    A friend of mine had that album!
     
  6. debased

    debased Senior Member

    Location:
    Roanoke, Virginia
    I'm right with you with a) and b) but I don't remember hearing the term here in the US much after '80/'81.

    Take it from Kickboy in The Decline of Western Civilization (1981):

     
  7. debased

    debased Senior Member

    Location:
    Roanoke, Virginia
    This is the definition of people most likely to get beaten up in an alley.
     
  8. ANALOGUE OR DEATH

    ANALOGUE OR DEATH Forum Resident

    Location:
    HULL ENGLAND
    I don't think The Stranglers were ever considered post-punk in the U.K.They were barely even punk,having been kicking around since 74 and then latching on to the punk movement by default really.
     
  9. c-eling

    c-eling They're made of light,We never would have guessed

    It's just a wave passing over me....
     
  10. Man at C&A

    Man at C&A Senior Member

    Location:
    England
    I have that LP. Mostly fantastic stuff.
     
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  11. blastfurniss

    blastfurniss Forum Resident

    Location:
    Marion, OH, USA
    Well, there was also the term "college rock" which was a synonym for alternative. When I think New Wave I think skinny ties and synth heavy bands. College rock for me was bands like REM, Let's Active, BoDeans, early Lone Justice-bands that had stripped away synths and gone back to basics with a sound that today would be lumped into Americana. Alternative, like New Wave, became a catch all term for bands. It was ridiculous when Pearl Jam or Nirvana got lumped into Alternative in the early 90s when they were selling platinum albums. You can't be Alternative and Mainstream at the same time.

    Genre names and how to classify bands gives me a headache ;)
     
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  12. c-eling

    c-eling They're made of light,We never would have guessed

    Same here. This topic has been argued to death and back a few times over the years...
     
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  13. uzn007

    uzn007 Pack Rat

    Location:
    Raleigh, N.C.
    This was basically what I thought of as New Wave before synth-pop and the New Romantics came along.

    In the UK, it was actually used originally to refer to punk, ca. 1976-77, before the term "punk" became firmly established.

    In the US, it was popularized by Sire Records owner Seymour Stein as a more "user friendly" term to market music to suburban Americans who were afraid of the word "punk".

    Like the NY punk movement, the term "New Wave" describes a lot of bands that were related chronologically, geographically, or by attitude, even if their music didn't necessarily sound that similar (e.g. Devo, the Pretenders, Boomtown Rats, Squeeze).
     
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  14. uzn007

    uzn007 Pack Rat

    Location:
    Raleigh, N.C.
    There was a brief period in the US when both Tom Petty and Dire Straits were considered vaguely "New Wave" (or New Wave-adjacent, at least).
     
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  15. ANALOGUE OR DEATH

    ANALOGUE OR DEATH Forum Resident

    Location:
    HULL ENGLAND
    As others have said,it is very much both geographical and era defined.Folks of my age(57) and from the U.K. have a very definite idea of what would constitute both punk and post-punk,and also the time frames for each.
    In the U.S it seems much more,shall we say 'liberal '.I do have to have a little laugh to myself sometimes when I see bands like Simple Minds,Flock Of Seagulls and other similar bands being described on this forum as punk by some of our American friends.
     
  16. uzn007

    uzn007 Pack Rat

    Location:
    Raleigh, N.C.
    October 1977. American magazine focused on British rock.

    [​IMG]
     
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  17. uzn007

    uzn007 Pack Rat

    Location:
    Raleigh, N.C.
    Seymour Stein, Sire Records. Half the records in my collection ca. 1979 were on that label.
     
  18. jimod99

    jimod99 Daddy or chips?

    Location:
    Ottawa, ON
    News to me, and I was there..........
     
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  19. uzn007

    uzn007 Pack Rat

    Location:
    Raleigh, N.C.
    See the example I just posted above in post #66. Someone was using the term that way, even if it wasn't within your earshot.

    Also this:

     
  20. Pavol Stromcek

    Pavol Stromcek Senior Member

    Location:
    SF Bay Area
    Ha! Trouser Press certainly got that wrong.
     
  21. jimod99

    jimod99 Daddy or chips?

    Location:
    Ottawa, ON
    That is an American Magazine and the lettering on Lydon's shirt has been printed on by the publisher......I can assure you UK Punk wasn't initially known as New Wave
     
  22. GubGub

    GubGub Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sussex
    Yes, me too. If it was used to, for example, refer to a new wave of bands (which in the UK were groups) coming through before any of them were badged as punk, it was to a very narrow audience. I was 13 when punk broke in the UK and I knew that term well before I ever heard New Wave used in popular parlance, though the distinction between the two quickly became pretty clear. As a musical style UK punk did not really survive beyond 1978 and New Wave beyond the close of the following year, perhaps partly because of potential confusion with the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBH) which emerged in 78/79 if my memory serves me well.
     
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  23. uzn007

    uzn007 Pack Rat

    Location:
    Raleigh, N.C.
    From Wikipedia (emphasis mine) before I get back to work:

    New wave first emerged as a rock genre in the early 1970s, used by critics including Nick Kent and Dave Marsh to classify such New York-based groups as the Velvet Underground and New York Dolls.[29] It gained currency beginning in 1976 when it appeared in U.K. punk fanzines such as Sniffin' Glue and newsagent music weeklies such as Melody Maker and New Musical Express.[30] In November 1976, Caroline Coon used Malcolm McLaren's term "new wave" to designate music by bands not exactly punk, but related to the same musical scene.[31] The term was also used in that sense by music journalist Charles Shaar Murray in his comments about the Boomtown Rats.[32] For a period of time in 1976 and 1977, the terms "new wave" and "punk" were somewhat interchangeable.[24][33] By the end of 1977, "new wave" had replaced "punk" as the definition for new underground music in the U.K.[30]

    In the United States, Sire Records chairman Seymour Stein, believing that the term "punk" would mean poor sales for Sire's acts who had frequently played the New York club CBGB, launched a "Don't Call It Punk" campaign designed to replace the term with "new wave".[34] As radio consultants in the United States had advised their clients that punk rock was a fad, they settled on the new term. Like the filmmakers of the French new wave movement (after whom the genre was named), new wave artists were anti-corporate and experimental (e.g. Ramones and Talking Heads). At first, most U.S. writers used the term "new wave" exclusively in reference to British punk acts.[35] Starting in December 1976, The New York Rocker, which was suspicious of the term "punk", became the first American journal to enthusiastically use the term, starting with British acts and later appropriating it to acts associated with the CBGB scene.[30] Part of what attracted Stein and others to new wave was the music's stripped-back style and upbeat tempos, which they viewed as a much-needed return to the energetic rush of rock and roll and 1960s rock that had dwindled in the 1970s with the ascendance of overblown progressive rock and stadium spectacles.[36]
     
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  24. oxegen

    oxegen Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dublin, Ireland
    That would have been my understanding as well.

    The Clash,The Sex Pistols etc = Punk.
    Talking Heads, Television etc = New Wave.
     
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  25. jimod99

    jimod99 Daddy or chips?

    Location:
    Ottawa, ON
    not everything on Wikipedia is true, probably written by some American journo.........
     
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